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| Sarlat-la-Canéda |
30 minutes doesn’t sound like much. Should be easy enough to find 30 minutes to sit down and write a quick blog entry, stick a few pictures in there and voila! But as you may know when you have sub-1 year old rolling (crawling!) around your house and waking up in the middle of the night for unknown periods of time, a “free” 30 minutes can be a rare commodity. And when one finds oneself with such freedom, often a nap takes precedence. Or even staring at the TV with an episode of Big Bang Theory dubbed in French is a lot less effort than doing anything requiring brain power. Like writing a blog post. So, sorry this entry is once again a bit late.
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| The church town view from the back patio |
Donc. Alors. We’re finally getting around to it and sharing one of our small summer vacations in France. Instead of taking a big 1 or 2 full week holiday this year, we chose to do a few smaller outings, Iceland being the first. The second was a 5 night road trip to the Dordogne region of France!
The Dordogne region is in Southwest France about 350 miles from Paris. Specifically we stayed in the medieval village of Sarlat-la-Canéda using the town as our base for the trip. We rented a lovely apartment in the center of Sarlat from the absolute nicest French couple you could ever want to meet. While they spoke almost no English and us with our limited French, we still had good conversation about what to do in the area, places to go and how much time we would need to get around. And how quickly they made friends with Josephine, they seemed to just adore her and even gave her a little toy as a welcoming gift.
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| Château de Castelnaud |
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| Sarlat market |
First order of business in Sarlat was the market which takes place on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. Filling up the old street we walked around and bought up some local cheese, meats, fruits and veggies for the rest of our stay. What we also noticed while walking around was that there were lots of other families there as well, so we didn’t feel so bad going into restaurants and stores with a baby. We were not alone in that regard.
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| La Roque-Gageac, with the river behind |
After exploring Sarlat for the first day, we then hit the road on the second day to see the sights in the area. The region is known for its castles and in particular, 3 that are well known including the small villages surrounding them. All of them line the Dordogne river which is a big attraction for many who want to rent canoes and float downstream for the day which looked like a lot of fun. It really is a pretty area hitting up La Roque-Gageac, Castlenaud, and Château de Beynac which are lined up along the river about 10 minutes drive from each other.
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| After wine tasting in Pécharmant |
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| Monbazillac getting ready for the Tour |
After driving around and seeing the castles, we then went toward the town of Bergerac where we found two lesser known wine regions of France to visit, specifically Monbazillac and Pécharmant. As we drove toward the small village of Monbazillac where the Tour de France would run through the following day, we saw all the decorations and people already out lining the side of the road in preparation. It was pretty neat to see the excitement of the race in a rural area the day before. People went all out on the decoration and camping.
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| In the cave à vin |
After tasting a few wines and spending the day in the car it felt good to get back to the apartment and get ready for the next day. The plan for the next day was to drive to Saint-Émilion which is one of the very well known AOC’s of the Bordeaux region about 2 hours from Sarlat. We were to spend time there, have lunch, try a few wines, then head back toward Sarlat stopping in the town of Bergerac to watch the finish of the Tour de France stage.
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| Our car, ankle deep in water |
What we did not expect was a torrential downpour of rain that afternoon. We made it to Saint-Émilion and during lunch the sky opened up and basically did not stop for several hours. The good news was that it forced us to choose the wine shop across the street from the place where we had lunch which turned out to be a really nice shop with an owner who spent some time with us. After all, the town emptied out after the rain and we were basically the only ones there. With some wine in tow, we just went straight back to Sarlat skipping the Tour de France that day. The Bean had no interest in standing in the rain.
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| Chez McDo! |
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| Allez! Allez! Allez! |
Saturday was then our last day in town with no real plan. So, since we missed the Tour the day before and the actual town of Bergerac, we decided to get back in the car to check it out since the sun was shining and the Tour was leaving that day from the center of town. We had lunch then sat out watching rider after rider go before deciding we had enough sun and heat and went back home to enjoy our last evening of vacation.
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| Good way to travel... |
With as much time as we spent in the car on this trip, we also discovered that petite Josephine is a good little traveler in the car for the most part. It seems to put her to sleep pretty well and as long as she wasn’t hungry, the screaming was at a minimum. Sometimes she even fell asleep with her little Sophie la Girafe in hand. And given it was a road trip, she also got her first stop at Chez McDo!
