Seen Around Town

We had a particularly pretty sunrise a few days ago. Some days recently it’s been so foggy we can’t even see the other side of the river! The birds we were missing in Brittany are abundant here. The cliffs house hundreds of black birds called choucas. Every dawn and dusk huge flocks swirl overhead, coming […]

Dordogne Barns

There’s a style of barn here in the Dordogne that we’ve never seen anywhere else. What’s the purpose of the slatted sections? Air flow for drying walnuts? No, tobacco drying! We never imagined tobacco as a local product until we read it in Wikipedia. The local barns also have a lot of individual character, not […]

Hiking Périgord: Vézac

Fueled by our Thanksgiving leftovers, we headed out from La Roque-Gageac this afternoon on a hike that looped to the north and west of the village. It was amazingly warm – we never expected to be dressed like this on November 29th: After a short walk on a road, we headed up into the trees. […]

La Roque-Gageac: After the Flood

When we arrived in La Roque-Gageac on 1 November, it was raining, had been for a quite a while, and continued for days. We hadn’t realized, however, that things were actually pretty normal at that point. Then we looked back at some pictures for this post: By 6 November, that had all changed… Just how […]

Le Château de Beynac

The first time we visited the Dordogne, in 2004, we were surprised to learn that the English had spent a lot of time fighting the French here in southwestern France – not just during the Hundred Years war but for several hundred years. The English King Richard I was actually imprisoned in a tower in […]

Hiking Périgord: Beynac-et-Cazenac

On Sunday we visited the castle (château) at Beynac, which will be a separate post, and then headed out on a hike to the north and east of the town and castle. As an aside, what is up with the village names here in the Dordogne? At least half of them seem to be multiple […]

La Roque-Gageac at Night

The town is beautiful during the day and it’s equally stunning at night!

Sarlat-La-Canéda

We wrote about the Saturday market in Sarlat a few days ago. This time we’d like to show you the town. Wikipedia says the center of Sarlat is an excellent example of a French town in the 1300s, because “modern history has passed it by.” I’m guessing that wasn’t so great for the inhabitants, but […]

Food, Glorious Food

J has been stretching her culinary wings lately, as the French markets have many vegetables we’ve rarely, or never, eaten. For example, endive has been prominent in several salads. Combined with the already-cooked beets available both in the markets and individually packaged at the supermarket (such as the ones in the photo – good until […]

Hiking Périgord: St Julien

Whew! Yesterday evening, we were happy to be in our apartment, warm and fed, rather than just getting back, long after dark. Our three-hour hike came far too close to being a six-hour slog. More on that later… Our hike began on the GR (Grande Randonnée) 64 – our first steps on this hiking path, […]