A quiet day on the farm in St. Nathalene

Home in St. Nathalene
We had a revolt on our hands after driving for six hours on Saturday and then visiting two caves on Sunday and we were informed, "We are not going in the car today." So we said "OK" like smart, obedient parents and rapidly got embroiled in projects. Sven carved and chopped some olive wood that he'd been carrying around since Corsica. Balika caught up on uploading pictures, writing and finished a book. Bubbe and the girls wandered through the walnut orchard while we went for a walk through the 'neighborhood'. On the hour-long walk (lead by the house dog Toffee) we walked through three hamlets of houses- one with a barn drying tobacco and one with a kiwi grove and one where we stole two awesome apples off a tree. Fish picked up flint and we in general soaked up the quiet, peaceful feeling of Dordogne. The kids played and read and relived what it is like to have a day where your parents don't drag you around to museums and make you pack up all your toys into little bags. So what did we do next, of course? Took them to a museum.

morning view from the yard.

Picking walnuts.

Our humble abode.

Toffee the dog.

Picking apples.

Les Ezyies
By around 3 all of could conceive of the idea of doing something and we decided to go to the nearby town of Les Eyzies which our friends Tina and Theresa gushed about after their bike trip. We had driven through it the day before and had remarked about the amazing geography and the incredible 'cuteness' of the town. Plus, there was a Prehistory Museum there that we had seen and we had read that it was the biggest in the area. I secretly rejoiced that we didn't get there until 4 so we had only one and a half hours to spend in the museum, but to my surprise we all actually enjoyed it. We spent quite a long time watching videos about how prehistoric tools were made, how the Venus of Villendorf was made, and Bella spent a long time looking for butts in rock carvings. Afterwards, we walked through the town and admired the multitudes of fancy Fois Gras stores (regional specialty) with their stacks of gold foil cans. I tried to keep my revulsion to myself as I looked at a photo of a smiling woman happily force-feeding a goose with a big tube. Everywhere we looked we saw photos and statues and stuffed geese decorated with red bows and looking excited and vital. In this surreal world we decided to move on and find dinner.

What the horse sculptures looked like in Cap Blanc

Sarlat dinner
Afterwards, we headed back to Sarlat where we wandered the medieval quarter looking for a restaurant, finally settling on a restaurant called Medieval something or other, had some great pizzas, encountered to our frustration, surprise and happiness waiters who didn't speak a word of English, and were subsequently surprised by our dinner. Sarlat was beautiful and surprised us, as we'd driven through its outskirts a couple of times and found lots of farming stores and apartment buildings, but its medieval quarter has apparently been named an architectural 'museum' by UNESCO as its buildings are a snapshot of 300-500 year old houses built on little, winding pedestrian streets. Beautiful!