We woke up and had bread and honey for breakfast, then got out but not as early as intended. It was super cold and this made us very grateful that we had switched to a cabin. We tried to get tickets to Font de Gaume again, but no luck. We were able to get tickets to Grottes de (cave) Combarelles and had a lovely chat in line with two ladies on an earthwatch trip. They ended up on our small (7 people + the guide) tour of Combarelles, too. This cave is remarkable for how the animals are created in relief. It is as if the artist waited for the animal to appear to him from the bumpy walls in the candle light and then they etched a few lines and voila! The animal appeared. We had a lovely guide who was willing to do a bit of translating in English, since five of the seven of us didn’t speak French. He still did most of it in French and we were admonished to thank the French couple for allowing it. Reminds me of people in America who are so hard-assed that you shouldn’t even be there if you don’t speak English. We then went on a short hike to where we thought the river might be but it was not there. So then we headed back up behind the cave on a nice long wooded trail to the top of the hill. Then we turned around and headed right back down. Got to our car, loaded up and headed into the little village of Les Eyzies for lunch. We found a place with ‘3 course lunch for 13E’. Pam and Rob both had that. I ordered the Cod with Vanilla (the ‘menu’ was all animals). I had Pam’s desert and tried the panacotta. It was okay. We had a couple of ice cold Leffe. Well, Pam and I had a couple, but Rob being the driver limited himself to the one.
After lunch we headed out to the castle that we had discovered before and knew that we wanted to revisit. I found it very interesting, Rob seemed okay with it but Pam was very bored. She doesn’t like civilizations that did not live in the land.
Finally headed to the medieval village of Sarlat. We had been recommended to go there. We missed market day and we’re not sure whether we are happy or sad about that, but we tried to follow a map with numbered places and a little blurb but we were having a lot of trouble figuring it out and eventually decided to abandon. We would have stayed longer, had actually sat down to have a beer break but because grocery stores inexplicably close at 7p we decided that we better bail and get some food. We bought the makings of Paella and Pam created a wonderful dinner in our tiny little Gypsy Caravan kitchen.
