Leaving our little house, heading north, rediscovering Sarlat

Day 14 France 2012

We left our wonderful little house in Caunes-Minervois and headed north toward Sarlat.  We drove on the toll road through Toulouse and Montauban (12.00 Euros) and then got off to go through more scenic country.  The toll roads are excellent and fast, but often have tall trees or berms beside the road so that you can’t see a lot of the scenery.  We crossed the Tarn and Lot Rivers, saw the landscape change from vineyards to fruit orchards, and went through wonderful little villages.

As we drove through the village of Gourdon, situated on top of a hill, I felt like déjà vu all over again.  I kept telling Leon that I had been through that town but he did not remember it at all.  I remembered a church with a clock tower on the left side of the street and a sign with a picture of a goose on the right (this is foie gras country).  Well, as we drove on through the town, there was the church and the sign with the goose was still there!  We had been here with Jason and Caroline back in 1999.  I have photos of the church and the goose sign in an album from that trip.  Gourdon seems to be the only town we have revisited on this trip that was just as I had remembered it. 

Some observations:  Most cars in France are hatchbacks not sedans.  Side mirrors all fold in so you can go down narrow village streets.  Butter is used on sandwiches instead of mayonnaise or mustard. The rapeseed that we see growing everywhere is used to make canola oil. Roadside markets advertise “Fruits & Legumes (vegetables).”  Corn is mostly grown for cattle feed.  Our street in Caunes-Minervois was called Rue Les Lavandieres…I thought it had to do with lavender…nope, it means the street of washerwomen!

Sarlat:

When we got here, it was market day.  Our host, Herve, had emailed us to warn us that we would not be able to park anywhere near the B&B.  We drove around town and managed to find a parking spot a few blocks away, so we made a few trips to the car to haul all our stuff to the B&B which is on the Rue de la Republique, the main street in the old part of town.

We are staying in a place called Le Petit Manoir.  There are only two rooms as a B&B although there is a nice restaurant downstairs that has been here for several years.  We talked with the owner who said that the upstairs where we are is where his daughter used to live, but she has moved to Paris to work and so he turned her apartment into two bedrooms that he rents out.  There is a big sitting room with leather chairs around a fireplace just outside the bedrooms.  Everything in the bathroom is very classy and new.  The bedroom has wood floors, a canopy bed, antique furniture, and a beautiful marble fireplace.  

We asked him the history of the house since it is really beautiful.  He said that part of it dates from the fifteenth century and part of it was added in the seventeenth century.  The older part has black and white marble flooring and the newer part has beautiful parquet wooden floors.  The man who owned this house was a lawyer and was called to be a lawyer for Marie Antoinette during the Revolution.  He said that although he was a good lawyer, there was nobody who could have saved the queen during that time.  He also said that Sarlat was home to a revolutionary tribunal for ten years.

The stairway is in a round tower at the front of the building.

This is a wonderful town of narrow streets and old houses.  Just looking out over the rooftops is interesting.  The building next door to us is probably 400 years old and has a satellite dish attached to the top floor.  When we first started coming to France years ago, I took photos of the rooftops with TV antennas sticking up from every roof.  We do not see that as much now although there are a few mixed in with the satellite dishes. 

We walked along the main street to see the market.  We had been to the market a few years ago with Diana, and remembered wonderful fruits and vegetables in a central square and then inside a building with the largest door I have ever seen, there was an indoor market that sold foie gras and walnut products.  Sarlat is the center of foie gras and walnut (what we call English walnuts) production.  In fact, this is called the “Route du foie gras.”

 Anyway, the square is now all sidewalk cafes and the building with the huge door was all locked up.  The market is now mostly trinkets and t-shirts and is all along the main street.  We saw only a couple of vegetable stands.  I was so disappointed.  Leon said we were going to have to stop coming back to towns we had been to before because they are changing so much that we are disappointed when we get there.  Honfleur and Mont St. Michel were like that this trip.  

 

Dinner in the restaurant downstairs seemed like a good idea since it was so close, and we really liked our host who also ran the restaurant.  We noticed that over half of the patrons in the restaurant also spoke English and wondered if the restaurant is listed in tour books.  Sure enough, when we got back upstairs, we looked in our Rick Steves’ book, and it is listed as a good place to eat. I had a gizzard salad with a poached egg and foie gras pate on toast.  I had a gizzard salad in Carcassonne years ago that had actual duck gizzards on top of the salad, but this one had minced pieces of gizzard wrapped in a thin pastry shell and fried.  It was delicious anyway.

Leon had an entree (what the French call an appetizer) that was foie gras pate with a creme brulee of foie gras.

I ordered salmon and Leon had boeuf for our main courses, and they were both delicious.

Because this is walnut country lots of the desert choices have walnuts in them.  We both chose the walnut tart with chocolate sauce.

We were really tired, so decided to go to bed early.  We told Herve that we wanted breakfast about 9:30, so that meant we could sleep 10 hours and catch up on our lost sleep.