Monday’s visit to Sarlat was a completely different experience with no market stalls and shoppers clogging the streets, if fact a lot of the shops do not open on a Monday so it is the ideal time to explore the medieval quarter which is mostly pedestrianised and of course parking is also much easier.
Lidl has made as much of a penetration in France as it has in the UK but Aldi is trailing behind and their stores are not as large but they do sell an amazing houmous, have you ever noticed how many different spellings there are of this word, nearly as many as the different recipes there are for it on line.
The French love their dogs and I am with them on that, also on all my trips here over the last twenty years I cannot remember seeing any doggydoo which is the opposite of my first visit to Paris in the late seventies when walking along the pavement was akin to taking part in a marathon hopscotch competition. The other thing I have noticed is there are not so many cats around, this is particularly noticeable to me as the village I live in is overrun with them which probably accounts for the declining songbird population in the area. I am not against cats per se and I know that they do a good job of keeping vermin down in certain situations but house cats should be treated like pet dogs, not allowed out unless on a lead, one of the reasons that I propose this no doubt shocking proposition is that over here with a lower cat population there are a lot more song birds and they are less frightened of people and animals than they are back home.
Anyway back to exploring, yesterday’s visit to Les Eyzies de Tayac started well at the very informative Pole International de la Prehistorie, a centre providing lots of friendly information but then everything stopped, the main reason for the trip, the Musee National de la Prehistorie was not open, this seems to be a national trait ie we are open on these times except when we don’t want to be, so tough on you visitors who have travelled all this way only to find we are closed!
On the other hand today’s trip to Bergerac and the surrounding area was a complete success. Bergerac is a small pleasant city with a medieval heart near the covered market and it is especially vibrant on market day with all the visitors unlike Sarlat which feels more like a film set. I would recommend the Rue Des Fontaines with its pavement cafes and restaurants for lunch. However I joined the queue at the local sandwich shop with all the students and it was well worth it, my ham sandwich was an embarrassingly long baguette full of ham, salad, cheese, egg and mayonnaise, I am glad I took my book with me, I was there a while. From there I went on to Eymet, a Bastide town and then Issigeac another medieval town both worth dropping in to find out their history and of course enjoy the ambience, otherwise known as local wine.
Well thank you for putting up with my mini rants and I hope that this paints a picture of the places and things that I have seen.
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