Don't Worry Be Happy

Food is an important part of the travel experience wherever you go.  You mostly want good, inexpensive, available food.  In this part of France food is much, much more than that.  Three course lunches are in the12-14 € range.  Dinners can be 20-35€ for 3-5 courses. There are several foods that define themselves as being specific to this region (Midi-Pyrenees).  Of course, there's the Cahors wine (dark, full-bodied), but there is also duck, foie gras, walnuts, cabécou cheese, saffron, tourtiere and truffles. There are other specialty foods, such as figs and melons, but they are available in many places. Saffron (spice) - extremely labour intensive to harvest, everything is done by hand; the flowers are just being picked now; made from part of the crocus flower which blooms in the fall; the farmer we talked to and his wife do all the work and make saffron products such as chutneys and honeys; we purchased 0.1 g for 3.50€ (which translates ...

Even after visiting several of these 'entire villages/fortresses' built on a cliff it's still pretty impressive when you drive around the corner to this view.  Garry and Alanna arrived Friday and yesterday we headed about 1.5 hours north of here to Rocamadour. This castle/church from the 13C became an important pilgrimage site with pilgrims climbing the steps on their knees with chains around their arms and necks.  By the time we had climbed to the top we felt a bit like that ourselves, even with the elevator ride part way! Lucky Alanna found some shops that were open.  Actually it was quite a touristy place but because of the time of year there weren't that many people around. 13C grafitti? The view from the top of course was spectacular and since we've had a couple of days of intense winds and some rain the appearance of the sun was very welcoming.  Turned out to be a be quite a warm day  - 24 degrees or so. Our next stop was a ...

Bordeaux is renowned for wine of course, but it is a very beautiful city with many old buildings.  It also has quite an open area by the river, which seems quite unusual for most European cities.   We stayed at a chateau and Francois, our host, found us a winery tour that was available that morning - many are too busy with the harvest right now to have tours. The grapes were still being crushed and pressed and the winemaker was busy doing a lot of testing (and tasting). Yesterday we drove east of here for the first time.  In places the Lot river is lined on both sides by huge limestone cliffs, often with tunnels. Of course the French (and whoever else occupied this place) found it necessary to build their castles, fortresses, churches, villages on the highest spots. This is a lovely little village called St-Cirq Lapopie and we climbed to the top to get a good view (although this photo is from below).   They even decided to build some castles ri...

As well as the difference in the products there are other differences between Market Day in St. Andrews (see post from August) and Market Day in France.  The biggest difference is perhaps in the way it's viewed by the people who live here.  Market Day here is really a way of life, all year round - my French teacher informed me that she never buys her vegetables at the store, only the market.  People wait for market day to buy their produce, cheese, meats, fruits, eggs etc. rather than going to the local supermarket. People will go to the market in the town down the road if they need to.  Everyone seems to know when each of the markets are. At Mike's market (similar to Vernon) there were predominantly crafts and prepared food with a few farmers' stalls thrown in.  Here it's mostly vegetables, meats, fish, cheeses, NO crafts.  Also surprisingly, few bread stalls (maybe 1).  Perhaps that has to do with the fact that there are 3 or 4 boulangeries/patisseri...

On Cathy's suggestion (the owner of the house we are renting) we meandered our way past the small town of Gourdon (about 30 km from Prayssac) to visit the caves.  The mist of this morning gradually morphed into a bit of a downpour but by the time we reached Cazals for lunch it was sunny and warm.  Our 4 course meal (soup, salad, plat du jour, dessert or fromage) included a carafe of red wine for 12 euros.  We thought it was a pretty good bargain, even if we didn't know what the main course was when we ordered it.  It turned out to be roast lamb and was quite tasty. Along the way we also stopped at Les Arques which is a small town made famous by the book I recently read called "From Here You Can't See Paris" and at first glance the town appeared completely deserted. We parked the car and got out to walk around a bit although there really wasn't much to see.  I had read about the famous sculpture Zadkine who lived here and the restaurant described in the book....

I'm sure we'll be tired of them in a short while but we visited our first chateau today.  This one was built in the 13th century and had several lines of defense. Chateau Bonaguil The view from the top The little village of Puy L'Eveque is just a few minutes away and is positioned beside the river Lot.  It seems to be built up the hill and many buildings are made of the golden coloured limestone which seems to be the predominant building material all over the Lot (the 'province' we're in). And the grape harvest continues across the road from our house.

Ross tells me he was woken up this morning by the sound of the grape-harvesting machine.  Since we look out across the valley filled with vineyards, it seems entirely possible. View from the across the road. Harvesting this year has just begun, considerably later than most years because apparently it has not been a good year for grapes and the farmers think that if they can leave them a bit longer they might get better.  A cold and wet spring, followed by a hot and dry August didn't do them any good and the wine makers are not anticipating a great vintage.  Most of the wine made here is under the (brand) name "Cahors" which means it is a rich, dark, full-bodied red made mostly of malbec grapes.  We're having to test quite a few! Most of the grapes will be machine harvested, except perhaps for the older vines, which are 200 or more years old.  They will be hand picked. We're becoming quite accustomed to following the tractors with their wagons full o...

The word commune conjures up images of 70s hippies all happily living together, growing organic vegetables and weaving their own clothes.  I don't know if that's what happens in Prayssac but it's one of more than 36,000 communes in France; we might use the term municipality.  About 2500 people live in this village in the Lot Department, in the Midi-Pyrenees region (different levels of government I suspect). The cemetery on the way into town, church in background. The church is the physical, and perhaps the cultural, centre of the commune with its spire sticking up and visible from just about everywhere.  Surrounding the church is a kind of circle road, with all the other roads radiating out from it. Yesterday we drove into town for a brief look around.  By then it was noon so after a delicious 3 course lunch we began to wander around the town.  It seemed odd that all the stores were closed.  Sure it was Thursday in October and tourist ...

Spending a few days in Paris just isn't enough although we really didn't have much on our agenda except recovering from jet lag which I managed to do by sleeping from 6 pm until 9 the next morning. Even though our hotel was directly outside the large train station Gare de l'Est which was non-stop all hours of the day and night. We climbed the almost 400 steps (narrow, winding) to the top of the Notre Dame bell tower (think Quasimodo) to enjoy the panoramic view of Paris. The largest bell has a clapper that weighs 500 kg. but it doesn't appear to be used now. A boat ride on Le Seine (partly to recover from the climb) and then after dinner over to the Eiffel Tower for a brief but spectacular light show. Only a fraction of what was offered at this little shop.  I had the pain au chocolat (surprise). Marvelling at the incredible array of bread, baguette, pastries, at every little corner or patisserie - very common to see people just walking down the street munchin...