Tuesday, October 7, 2014
We slept in to almost 7am today. It is a gray rainy chilly morning, so just as well. Clay set off with his laundry, a bacon sandwich and an audiobook around 7am for the self-service laundry down the street. I got in the shower and dressed and then went down for breakfast alone. I had the cherries with yogurt again as well as 3 speculoos crepes with a strip of bacon and coffee with hot milk. I sat on a banquette at a two top between 2 others with couples on either side and then both sides engaged me in conversation so I was hardly alone. Clay has come back with some good looking laundry. He says he only had one snafu when the clothes were in the dryer and he thought he needed more money so he ran down to the tabac and bought a roll of Mentos. But he said as soon as he put only 2 coins in that the dryer started right up. He said the clothes were not completely dry, but that was good because he can hang them up now and hand smooth them and have a chance to let them dry completely when smoothed. He laundered my white flying blouse with the big breast pocket and it looks just fine. So, that worked out very well.
I see a new word on today’s program, lauze. There is a
traditional style of stacked flat stones on fairly steeply pitched roofs around
here and I guess that is what it is called. Lauze roofed. (You have probably noticed this word in the blog already, but when we were hearing it before today, I didn't actually know how it was spelled!) We’ll see if the
architecture preservation lecture this morning by the French historian
Christophe Larriberre covers it. He introduced himself yesterday as an expert
in historic French firearms. So, we’ll see. We're back! I enjoyed Christophe’s lecture and
he did talk about the lauze roofing as well as other subjects. Most
interestingly, was that other than early government involvement and funding,
the story could have come from Raleigh and Historic Oakwood. Basically the procedure is
not so much about want you want to do, but who is asking whom for a permit at a particular moment. The
other thing was that he had photos of a lauze roof before, during and after
renovation and he said the inside as well as the outside have to be the same
before and after. So, in that example, they could not use any nails and the
wood had to be the same kind cut to exactly the same dimensions and fitted
together exactly the same! That seems excessive and in Raleigh anyway, you can
do what you like inside and the rules only pertain to what is visible from the
street. Christophe said that they actually have a trade school now in Sarlat to
train people to do this kind of reconstruction and roofing and they make 4 times
as much money as he does. The guide at the Jardins the other day was showing us
a redone roof with only the bottom 1/3 in limestone and the rest in slate or
tile of some kind because the cost was prohibitive and there were so few
craftsmen available to do that work.
We first went looking for the St. Mary’s bell tower with the elevator to see if it was open. We knew we were close when we found the brass
geese statue. The tower is only open from 10 to noon and 2 to 4pm on Wednesday,
and I think Saturday and maybe Sunday. I did see people up there last Saturday, but it hasn't been open since then when we've checked. Today it was closed because of rain.
We went looking for the other galleries of Veronique Guinard that were listed on the bookmark I got with the
Rocamadour print. The 2 listed were no longer located where they were listed.
One had a sign to follow arrows to the new location and we followed them through
several turns, but lost the arrows at the main square. We walked on through the
Place de la Liberté towards the Cathedral Saint Sacredos. On the way, Clay
stopped in a candy store to try and buy some nougat. When we left we turned
left and then left again and I found the sign for the art gallery. It was up, I
think, Rue Montaigne. We went in and they had the same 10€ prints of Rocamador
as well as the St. Sacredos cathedral tower seen from the Place de la Liberté.
I bought one of the latter for a set. The woman there did a much better job wrapping it as
she used cardboard. So, we taped the 2 together and hopefully they will ride
home nicely in Clay’s suitcase. Mine doesn’t have any rigid sides!
It was time for lunch now. We had read a couple of menus of
restaurants on the Place de la Liberté and were going to eat in one of those.
Clay thought I needed to have a Croque Monsieur since that was all I could
order to eat the last time I was in France in 1976! I like Croque Madame since
I have been eating those in Durham, but only one place had that and it was much
more expensive. As we were walking back I noticed a little ice cream place that
had all kinds of sandwiches and crepes with some seating in the rear. They were
not busy and the prices were much lower. Added bonus of gelato. I had a ham
& cheese crepe. Very good. Clay had a 3 cheese panini. We shared a bottle
of tap water. Afterwards we got our gelato on cones and kept walking. Clay had
pistachio and I had speculoos. Mine had big chunks of cookies in it. We both
liked it best and Clay finished mine.
I went back to the room and used the
restroom and brushed my teeth and was typing on this while Clay went down to
Carrefour (small grocery store) to buy another Coke Zero. Clay got all hairy about leaving the room
because I was typing while he was eating nougat and picking it out of his teeth
with his Coke and I failed to notice the bus had pulled up outside. It was 1:05pm
and we had 10 minutes to get down there without causing delay. Anyway, he was
so harried that he left his camera in the room and didn’t realize it until
after the bus had left. So, we have no photos of this afternoon. Sorry.
Oh, it rained all morning. But when we came out of the wine
shop the sun had come out and it turned into a beautiful afternoon about 72F.
The good news is that the first part of the afternoon was at
Lascaux II and no photos are allowed because the artist who painted the
reproductions owns the copyrights to them. We learned that there is a Lascaux III touring the world now! I can't imagine how we have missed hearing about this before now. We drove past the construction site of Lascaux IV.
We spent about an hour in there and it was fascinating. The real paintings in the
actual cave are thought to date from 18 to 36 thousand years ago, I think Adrian said.
He said that in 1940 a dog named Robert had rediscovered the cave. The boy who
went down there later with his friends were the first humanoids to be down
there in 10’s of thousands of years. When we were about to enter the partial
replica cave there was a large photo of Robert’s owner and another boy with 2
men who first explored the cave. Clay and I both asked, where’s the dog. Adrian
answered, He took the photo. Clever!
On the way back to Sarlat, we detoured to St. Amand de Coly.
This was a cave where another hermit lived and died. They built a church right
in front of his cave and then they fortified the church with defenses and there
was an abbey there. Only the church still stands and the cave is walled up. The
church and the village have literally tons of the stacked limestone lauze
roofs. There was a guard house inside the defensive walls of the church that
you could enter and look up and see the internal structure of the lauze roof
construction that Christophe had talked about. It was amazing. On the way, I
learned from Monika about the round huts with lauze roofs called borie. Sorry
no photos!
We are having some free quiet time now waiting to meet to
walk to another included dinner off site. This one is at Le Petit Manoir. We
have no idea what they are serving. It will be a surprise.
On the bus ride back, Monika passed out tomorrow’s
itinerary. Breakfast buffet is from 7 to 10am. We have the entire morning free.
There is a small market day in the Place de la Liberté in the morning. (Not all
over town like Saturday’s.) Maybe the St. Mary’s tower will be open and it will
not be raining! We have lunch on our own. At 1:15pm, we depart on the bus for
Tursac to visit a Madeleine troglodyte village. I really hope it isn’t raining
because we are advised to wear sturdy shoes as there is a half dirt/half stone
path going up and down. After, we drive to Ruffignac Cave where we ride a little
train through more than 6 miles of underground galleries with 100s of depictions of
mammoths and other extinct species. At 7pm we have dinner at Le Bistro de
L’Octroi. At 8:30 to 9:30pm we have after dinner entertainment in the room next
door. It is a folk music and dance program. Audience participation will be
expected. I don’t think so.
Dinner tonight at Le Petit Manoir was good. They
had us at smaller tables than the last restaurant, so that was better. They also
had us in different rooms and in our room not everyone was with our group, so
that was nice too. We were at a table for 6 which was a nice size. All of us
had been on the pre-tour. In fact, one of the couples were 2 of the 6 of us on
the bus from the airport in Bordeaux our first day. Dinner was first course of
a salmon tartare that was actually cooked. The men seemed to like it better
than the women. I had greens with some kind of julienned root vegetables in a
pile in the center. I ate some leaves. Main course was prawns over black rice.
I had steak frites. It was not well done, but it wasn’t a bleeding mass either.
I ate around the cooked edges and ate fries. Clay finished it. It was good.
Dessert was chocolate mousse over caramel with whipped cream and a walnut lace
cookie. It was good. They served both red and white wine. I never saw the
labels, but I am sure they were local wines. There were smeared decorations on
the edges of the dishes and one of the women at our table made Lascaux
reproductions from them very well. First an aurochs and then a horse.
