Monday 10.18.2010


Wine-ding West

We're up a bit earlier today, but not much. Our Winnipeg couple is in the breakfast room as is a couple from Annapolis, and everyone chats from opposite corners. We “will” our Arles city map and a couple restaurant recommendations to our new Canadian friends, help the Annapolis guy with his laptop and finish packing up. We chat with Chris a bit before we leave and ask about the North Americans he has hanging around. Since he has been featured in the Rick Steves’ book, his clientele has gone from 20% North American to 70%. Rick called in July to book a room here for September and couldn't get in – obviously his own fault.

Since we got so far astray yesterday we will spend most of the day today around here before moving along. We do the in-depth walking tour of Sarlat taking special notice of stone roofs, 700 pound market doors and a 900-year-old monument erected to the saint who ended the plague in 1147. He did a lot of praying but also implemented hygiene standards while he was at it. One or both of those seemed to work. Mary continues her crusade to visit every post office in France and completes a nice transaction with a woman who is obviously practicing her American (Bye Bye!).

Next up is the mountaintop village of Domme. The main claim to fame here is the view, which stretches for miles along the Dordogne River Valley. The Dordogne is a popular tourist destination especially in summer when visitors can rent canoes for a one-way down-stream paddle past several walled castle-dominated towns. The idea is to coast-drift for a while, visit a touristy town, repeat until you get to Beynac where you turn in your canoe, have a glass of wine and hop the bus back to your starting point. Even with the chilly weather today we see a couple brave canoeists and our Canadian friends are out there somewhere on a bike. We think we will need just a bite of something to get us from breakfast this morning to dinner tonight so we pick up a couple walnut Gateaus (cakes) in Domme to prevent starvation.

We corkscrew back down to Dordogne level moving downstream to La Roque-Gageac, yet another ancient city stretching the better part of a mile on the riverfront. The cliffs, dotted with caves of inhabitants from 1200 years ago, drop vertically down allowing only a one-building depth before hitting the road and the river. The river floods every year with winter rain covering the road and the first floor of these buildings. There is a little path that leads a bit up the cliffs where the locals have created a tropical garden with bananas, pomegranates, lemons, roses and other exotic plant life. They apparently need a bit of something to brighten up their lives after the floods.

The other main sites here involve 10,000 – 18,000 year-old Cro-Magnon cave paintings that are among the best preserved in the world and the tours of goose-stuffing foix gras farms. While both might be interesting, we opt to keep moving. The first of the Gateaus, some chips and a Coke Light keep us nourished for the drive.


We continue to follow the river for the next couple hours moving past feudal villages like Beynac and big cities like Bergerac (sans Cyrano). The goal is the little wine village of St. Emilion about 25 miles northeast of Bordeaux and in the heart of that famous wine region. As we are driving through a grapevine filled plain near our destination we look up to see a storybook gleaming city (think Disney) up on a hill in the distance and we both say, “could it be?” Yep, this is St. Emilion and we make several passes through winding cobblestone streets that are 7-inches wider than our car before we find our hotel. They direct us back through some of those same streets to their parking area.

We hustle out for a walk and this place is all about the wine. Every block has multiple wine shops and several wineries have set up pretty elaborate display facilities in town. Being perched on top of a hill like Gilligan’s Island in an ocean of vineyards, the city has a lot of ups and downs and things we are looking for on our two-dimensional map that should be right here are really down there. We check out a couple potential spots for dinner and make a reservation halfway down a slippery cobblestone slope at La Cote Braisee.


We take a break for a while to catch up on the news. We didn’t have a TV in Sarlat so we have had a blackout for a couple days, and while we have heard about the continuing strikes in France, we didn’t understand the pace of escalation. Now we know that transportation is being shut down including the elimination of public fuel supplies (gas stations). This is a concern since we don’t have enough gas to get to Spain for the next phase of our trip.


We picked our restaurant tonight because for the first time we see a “menu” at a reasonable price that includes all the things we think we want to eat. There are four courses for each of us: Mary, fish soup, John, a creamy duck terrine; Mary, smoked salmon, John Coquille St. Jacques (scallops); Mary a steak with Roquefort sauce, John a magret of duck with pepper sauce; Mary, the cheese plate, John, chocolate mousse. At 23 euros each, this is the best deal we have seen and all of it is pretty good.

We take another walk around town where we see a few folks still in restaurants, but nobody out and about. Off to bed to dream about gas stations.


Today’s weather: Cloudy and cool with peeks of sun. Low, 38, high 60