Saturday, October 4, 2014
We had our most comfortable bed of the trip last night, so I guess that will make up for a lot here at Hotel Plaza Madeleine. It still only had a duvet and no top sheet. But no matter how high we move the thermostat it is still cold in here so we need the duvet anyway. It got down in the 40’sF here overnight so it seems really cold in the room. Breakfast buffet was nice. They had an egg boiling machine for soft to hardboiled eggs you could make and time yourself. Clay had to play with it but it isn’t clear he’ll do that more than once since he made a bit of a mess. Other than that it was a pretty standard spread. They had hot mini crepes on the steam table behind the beans. After I had yogurt, bacon and scrambled eggs I had some crepes with speculoos. Yummy! I still have not had a chocolate croissant though. I am trying to be good.
We got our QuietVoxes and got out our earpieces from the
other day and divided into 2 groups as we watched a pair of hot air balloons
float by overhead. It was still chilly but you could feel that the sun was going to be
blazing hot again. We had Bruno as our guide. He lives in a nearby village and
owns a wine store here in Sarlat that is closed in the off season (not summer).
We cannot imagine being here in summer when they claim they get over a million
visitors. It would be much hotter and much more crowded and be miserable! We
walked through all kinds of narrow passes and half arched corners and up ramps
and stairs and down and around into places I would never have entered without a
guide. I just would have thought they were private spaces and not public
walkways! Bruno showed us the 2 fountains, or springs, that brought the first
documented residents, monks, to settle here. Evidently this group of monks
originally lived on the Dordogne River somewhere nearby and when the Vikings were
invading up the rivers they took their relics of Saint Sacredos and moved away
from the river and when they found the first spring in a kind of natural basin,
they stopped and started building. Because of the holy relics they were a
pilgrimage site and wealthy and attracted other wealthy people and merchants
and soon had a fortified medieval city. Sarlat had many ups and downs and was a
forbidden locked city at a few times due to different plagues. But, Sarlat
always rebounded but never thrived again right up to the 1960’s. Bruno
remembered coming to Sarlat as a boy in the summer before there were any
utilities like sewage lines. He said it was truly a miserable experience. He
says the government of France offered its old cities federal money during the
1970’s to modernize their infrastructure and stabilize their heritage
architecture and that Sarlat was one of the first in line and got a lot of
money for work that continues to this day.
He left us about 11am in the Cathedral of Saint Sacredos. He
offered to guide anyone who wanted back to the hotel but we decided to stay. I
had seen a glass elevator and people up at the top of an old church bell tower and wanted
to go up for an overview. We wandered until we found it again and there was a 20
minute wait to go up. We decided that would rush us to get back to the hotel
for 12:30pm lunch and said we’d come back. It was closed for lunch from noon to
2pm. We got back right at 2pm and they told us it was currently closed because
there were a bunch of bees up there and they were waiting for the fire
department to go up and tell them it was safe. We went about an hour later as
the firemen were leaving and they told us that no it was not safe and they were
closed for the rest of the day, at least. Oh well. It seems that we walked and
wandered all over the small town at least twice. You can’t get truly lost
because there is just one main street, but with all the little alleys, lanes
and twists and turns and different levels it is hard to find your way directly
to or from the same place twice. The market that we had the afternoon free for
was packing up and leaving town as we left lunch. So, right now I fail to see the
difference between the Wednesday morning market and the Saturday all day
market. (Spoiler: Saturday's market covers more Sarlat real estate than Wednesday's.)
Lunch was, by the way, much better than dinner last night
according to everyone at our table. How weird is that? I mean I knew mine was
better because I actually ate it. We all discussed that the supposed mushroom
sauce that I was worried about had no mushrooms in it or that we could taste
and it just tasted like a brown chicken gravy. It was fine. Everybody was still all up in knots about that duck gizzard salad though!
We finally figured out after lunch that our room was not
being serviced because we had not put out a sign asking for service even though
the maids had seen us heading out this morning for the tour. We hope that was
the problem anyway. After lunch we put out the sign in front of a maid and made
a point of speaking to her as we did it. When we got back the bed was made. We
took a nap!
At lunch Monika handed out tomorrow’s itineraries. We have an early
start and what looks like a long strenuous day. Buffet breakfast is from 7 to
8am. At 8:10am we depart for Rocamadour. Approximately a 1 hour drive with a
photo stop at Hospitalet. We will have guided tour of Rocamadour. The movie
Timeline set in this area of France is one of the reasons I wanted to come on this trip even
though I know the film was not shot here! We have an advisory that there are
216 steps to go up and down between the chapel of Rocamadour and the village or
we can pay to take elevators. We’ll see. We have lunch from noon to 1:30pm at
the restaurant Hotel du Chateau. At 1:30pm we drive back to Sarlat via Souillac
to visit 12th century Ste. Marie’s church. After that is another 30
minutes driving back to Sarlat.
We have the cheese and wine welcome reception from 6:30 to
7:30pm at the hotel and we are on our own for dinner. We have 2 spots in easy
walking distance picked out for dinner if we still feel like a big meal after
7:30pm. Monika advised reservations, but we didn’t want to lock ourselves in by
holding a table we might not want later. So, we’ll see what happens and hope we
made a good decision.
There is nothing until dinner after that so I assume we have
the afternoon free in Sarlat again. It is a charming and beautiful little village,
but it is very touristy with lots of gourmet and other shops and lots of cafes
and restaurants. I guess I’m saying that if you are aren’t eating or shopping
that you don’t need that much time here! Dinner tomorrow is at 7:30pm at the restaurant
Le Quatre Saisons. I don’t remember seeing that one today! The itinerary says
we’ll meet in the lobby at 7:25pm to walk there. So, it must be close.
So, we spent about 45 minutes at the wine & cheese
welcome reception. It was held in the same room where we had dinner last night
and breakfast this morning. I assume it is the hotel’s former restaurant. We
went through a buffet style line and had a choice of 2 white and 3 red wines.
They were all local. There were 5 cheeses, again all local. We didn’t make any choices there
to start as they were fixing small plates with a sample of each for us and we
all just took what was offered and went back for more of our favorites if we
wanted. They had some sliced white or whole grain breads and some walnuts as
well as ice and water. Some apple slices or other fruits or vegetables would
have made it perfect. We liked everything except maybe the very salty sheep’s
milk Roquefort. I had asked Monika earlier about if she thought we could eat
without reservations tonight and she didn’t advise it. I still did not make a
reservation, but she got the phone number of Les Tulipes and told me that she
would call during this reception if we decided then that we wanted to go. So
she could check whether we should walk down there. At 7:15pm Clay and I decided
not to make a meal of wine and cheese and go eat crepes. I went and asked
Monika and she offered to make an 8pm reservation. I asked her to shoot for
7:35 or 7:45pm instead. She said you’d need to leave now. OK. She came back and
said we had a reservation under Burch for 7:35pm and we got my purse and my
blazer from the room and set off. Clay had already taken his Irish wool blazer back to
the room after he got his wine and plate of cheese. There were about 50% of men
with and without jackets and he said it was too hot in there for him. We should
have ignored the Gohagan packing list and dress codes and come as we wanted
like everyone else!
We really liked Les Tulipes and it was very reasonably priced.
I ordered steak frites with green peppercorn sauce and Clay ordered a ham and
cheese crepe. These are Dutch-style pancakes. We loved those things in
Amsterdam, so we were looking forward to this ever since Monika pointed the place
out on our way into Sarlat. Monika is Dutch. The steak was cooked well done, no
problem, but it was a bit stringy and tough. It was very thin cut so it was
still chewable though. We each ate half and then swapped plates so we each had
some. For dessert, Clay ordered 6 butter and sugar poffertjes and I ordered a
honey crepe. I ate one of his poffertjes and didn’t love it. He liked them and
finished them, then he ate about half my honey crepe. It was not very sweet and
we didn’t know if it was a quality of the local honey (which they were selling
tons of at the market today) or because they just didn’t put much on it. Clay
sat with a view of the crepe chef and thoroughly enjoyed his evening. We each
had a glass of the white Bergerac local wine which we have also been drinking
at the hotel and we like a lot. (I never did get a look at a label, so can't tell you the winery or look for it at home.) We finished up about 9pm and this is Clay’s
latest night out in a long time!
