This year, when we leave the Dordogne, I feel like we've done everything we really want to do, though not actually everything, by a long shot. There are a surprising number of mills involved.
We get to eat at Au Vieux Moulin (The Old Mill), the restaurant in the unbearably cute converted mill in the almost unbearably cute town of Les Eyzies. We eat American hours, from the restaurant's opening at 7pm till around 9pm. As you can see from the photo, we have the place to ourselves. Yes, there is foie gras.
We take a day to go old-timey at Le Bournat, a more-or-less 1900s-themed park.
It's old-fashioned fun, all right. Gigi enjoys stacking the cans even more than knocking them down. We get to ride on a mechanical horse that goes around the track. And Anthony tells me this mirror makes me look, and I quote, "even shorter and squatter than usual."
This year we manage to squeeze in the Jardins de Marqueyssac. It's not our favorite thing ever, but I can tell you it's a whole lot better than a rain-soaked, horse-drawn cart at an old-timey park.
And we knock off two more of the "Most Beautiful Villages of France," a list I have found to be unfailingly consistent. So many of these villages are in the Dordogne, there's no way to see them all. But this time we add Belvès with it's medieval market roof that used to hang a cage for prisoners. Nowadays there is a sample cage which, inexplicably, has a grubby Santa Claus doll in it. What is the world coming to when Santa himself is on the naughty list?
The photos don't do Belvès justice, because it's really quite magical. As is the medieval, hill-top village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, which is basically prounounced "San Seer La Poopie," and is therefore as much fun for Pippa to say as Les Eyzies (a.k.a "the penises").
Amazingly, we don't visit a single castle in the Dordogne this year, mostly because after the Loire, the girls have had their fill. But they better get ready, because the next stop on our trip is the most castle-y place of all...
We get to eat at Au Vieux Moulin (The Old Mill), the restaurant in the unbearably cute converted mill in the almost unbearably cute town of Les Eyzies. We eat American hours, from the restaurant's opening at 7pm till around 9pm. As you can see from the photo, we have the place to ourselves. Yes, there is foie gras.
We visit a mill where paper has been made since medieval times, and even get to make our own...
We take a day to go old-timey at Le Bournat, a more-or-less 1900s-themed park.
It's old-fashioned fun, all right. Gigi enjoys stacking the cans even more than knocking them down. We get to ride on a mechanical horse that goes around the track. And Anthony tells me this mirror makes me look, and I quote, "even shorter and squatter than usual."
We take a real horse cart ride (at my insistence) which becomes our family joke (at my expense) for the worst vacation activity ever, mostly because after waiting and waiting, we finally get on the overly-mellow cart ride just in time for the heavens to open up on us. So now I know: wet and bored is not my family's favorite state of being. Yes, Le Bournat also has a mill, which is still in operation, grinding flour to this day.
And we knock off two more of the "Most Beautiful Villages of France," a list I have found to be unfailingly consistent. So many of these villages are in the Dordogne, there's no way to see them all. But this time we add Belvès with it's medieval market roof that used to hang a cage for prisoners. Nowadays there is a sample cage which, inexplicably, has a grubby Santa Claus doll in it. What is the world coming to when Santa himself is on the naughty list?
The photos don't do Belvès justice, because it's really quite magical. As is the medieval, hill-top village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, which is basically prounounced "San Seer La Poopie," and is therefore as much fun for Pippa to say as Les Eyzies (a.k.a "the penises").
Amazingly, we don't visit a single castle in the Dordogne this year, mostly because after the Loire, the girls have had their fill. But they better get ready, because the next stop on our trip is the most castle-y place of all...
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