Rain, sunshine, and walking tours from Z to A and A to Z

Day 15 France 2012

It was raining when we awoke this morning.  We did indeed sleep about 10 hours.  We were not sure we got breakfast with this B&B but Herve came by our dinner table last night to ask what time we wanted breakfast.  We took our Rick Steves’ book down to breakfast, and Herve saw it.  He said that Steve Smith, who is co-author of Rick’s France books, was here at Le Petit Manoir day before yesterday and is going to be in Sarlat for the next 3 days.  I guess that he is doing research for the newest edition.  

We came back to our room and did a little computer work while we waited for the rain to let up.  When it did, we walked up to the car and got my umbrella and our jackets since it had turned off cool with the rain.  We decided to walk around the old town according to a walking tour that Rick has in his tour book.  Leon thought that since we were at the end of the walk already that we could just do it backwards.  I was trying to read the descriptions and was so confused because the descriptions would often refer to things that we had already walked by.  One good thing about the walk was that the market in the old parish church was open (the one with the huge seven-ton doors), so we were able to pick up some goodies to have in Paris next week. 

 

 There was a race going on this morning right through the middle of town, so we watched several of the runners as they went by.

 It seemed that most of the English speaking visitors had gone from the town.  We picked up a couple of sandwiches and came back to our room and ate lunch. 

The rain stopped and the sun came out, so Leon decided we needed to do our walking tour all over again from the starting point in Rick’s book.  All of the photos we had taken this morning were done in cloudy and rainy weather anyway.  The walking tour was much better in the correct order!  I am such a librarian at heart that it really bothers me to do things from Z to A.  We took all our photos over again, and they look much better with blue skies and sunshine.  In spite of the disappointment of the market yesterday, today’s walking tours of Sarlat reminded us just what an interesting and historical place this is.

Our B&B has a wonderful spiral staircase.  We read that there are 20 of these spiral staircases in Sarlat.

The Cathedral of St. Sacerdos has some 12^th century carvings on the exterior, but most of it is from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  When the plague came back around in 1348, the faithful believed that Mary delivered them from it, so there are lots of things dedicated to the Virgin Mary here and in the old town. The church was closed for services when we were walking this morning, but was open this afternoon.  We always make Diana light a candle when she is with us and we visit churches, so the red one on the bottom right is one we lit today for her..  

One of the columns has a list of all the local men who died in WWI.

Behind the cathedral is a rocket shaped building that was built in 1147 and is the oldest monument in town.  In four days, the plague killed one fourth of the population, and so the people prayed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux who blessed their bread and also instituted hygiene standards that stopped the disease.  The Lantern of the Dead was built in gratitude to St. Bernard.

The salamander is the mascot of Sarlat.  It is on the city crest, is on the wind vane on top of the cathedral, and has a street named for it.

We were fascinated by the stone roofs we saw because they are different from other roofs we have seen on this trip.  These are lauzes or roofs made of stones gathered by farmers clearing their fields.  It was cheap roofing materials that generally lasted 300 years or more.  The small windows in the roofs provide air circulation that allows the lichen that coat the porous stone to grow, sealing the gaps between the stones and waterproofing the roof.  

The Place des Oies is where the goose market takes place from November – March.  Remember that geese and foie gras are big businesses in this area.

For generations, this was the only source of water for the city.  This 14^th century vault leads to a fountain that is supposedly protected by the Virgin Mary.  

The House of Etienne la Boetie was a typical sixteenth century merchant’s home with business downstairs and home upstairs.  It was built during a time when anything Italian was in fashion.

We took a little break to have something to drink.  Leon tried out a Belgian beer, but I stuck with good old Coke.

We continued our tour with  the old Bishop’s Palace, next door to the cathedral.  It is another example of Italian influence.  The Italian bishop who lived here was a special friend of Queen Catherine of Medici, a connection that got him this fine house.  A few years later, he skipped town with lots of local money, so it caused quite a scandal.  

Many of Sarlat’s Renaissance buildings come from the period after the Hundred Years’ War (1450  1550) when the king rewarded Sarlat for its loyalty by giving the town money to rebuild itself in stone.  Sarlat’s new nobility needed fine new houses that are still standing today.

I sort of liked this little cottage up on a side street.