Rocamadour

It is truly amazing how people built homes, castles, and full on TOWNS directly on the cliffsides.  Back in the 1100's when this town was being established by massive pilgramages of thousands of people to come and  worship in this church, towns were being attatcked and overtaken on a regular basis.

It seems the popular thing to do was build on the cliff face so if anyone was trying to approach they would be seen before hand.

Without our modern day engineering available, it is beyond me how they ever accomplished the building they did then.

This town is just stunning, and very small, and in it there are 7 churches, if you can believe that. 

I had to get up VERY early in the morning to get a picture of the streets in this town without crowds of people there wandering.  We are finding many more tourists everywhere we go than we ever have. :(

Of all the pictures I have taken on this trip so far,

I am up to about 800, (its ok, you can laugh)

this is one of my favorites...

Rocamadour S France

This is another highlight of this trip.  We've seen this balloon festival several different years now. 

It is always fun. And it starts Early in the mornings.  I've learned to manipulate the exposure setttings
on my camera because when I took these first few pictures, it was just after daybreak and there was not
a lot of light surrounding us.  In fact, there was still quite a bit  of fog wafting through this valley at times.

The balloons land in this narrow valley at the foot of Rocamadour on Sat afternoon and the next morning over a 3 hour period about 30 balloons inflate slowly, and float up and down, creating quite a show.,

Eventually they drift away, a couple at a time, with the breeze. 

Just after sunrise the activity in the valley starts.  The support vans with the balloon baskets come streaming down the hillside (seen in the background), it almost looks like they are in a race.  And immediately start  to

inflate the balloons.  You can hear them before you can see them.  Then they slowly start to pop up like brightly colored snow-cones clustered into a small area in this very narrow valley below.  A couple at a time, they gently and slowly lift off! 

Canoe Trip Page 2

I can only put so many pics on each page or the computer starts to freak out, so wanted to just throw in a couple others from that day.

We were just approaching our little town at this point.  La Roque Gageac.



  Here we were approaching Beynac Castle in the next town over from us.  At the top of the hill you can see the Castle.  We walked up there one day and wandered around.  It was another great view of the river and the valley.



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Canoe Trip on River

I've lost track of what day it is. imagine that. 

One of my personal most memorable days on

this trip so far was the day we hired canoes and

floated down the river together.  It took a couple

hours.  We did more floating laughing wine-ing and cheese-ing than we did paddling.  It was great!

The river was really clean and clear, and the

scenery was fantastic.  As you can see, we could

not have asked for better weather.

 It was obvious Newton had spent many a day on a river.  He did great effortlessly manuvering the apparatus.  I have to admit I was proud of him.  He didn't exactly fit into that little seat in the back.  :)
He pretty much looked like a bear on a rollerskate in that canoe.

Speaking of bears on a rollerskate ?

And now for our next act...    The people in the front of the boats had the coolers, and the people in the backs had empty glasses, so we had to get creative.  "Could ya please pass the jelly?"          We pulled up on a beachy area about halfway through our trip, and had a really fun lunch.  Fresh baked baguettes, 5 kinds of cheese, 3 types of Foie Gras, and of course, you know the rest of the story...Wine...nice, light, fruity, yippee.  Jody has pictures of the picnic and when she sits down long enough to check email we'll have her send me a couple of those so I can add them to this page.  You'll have to check here again later.

Chef at Dordogne House

Kitty, the owner of the house suggested if we were

interested she'd make arrangements for us to

ahve a personal chef come in and cook for us

one night.  That sounded great and it WAS great. 

He started us off with a chilled melon and mint soup.

It was excellent.  There wasn't a drop left.

I am usually not a chilled soup person, but my cup  was licked dry too.

His name was Dimitri.  He was nice and very professional and made a 3 course  meal for us including home made "death by chocolate" type dessert.    All I can say is Yummo!

This salad was fresh local greens, herbs, roasted red peppers, delicious vine ripe tomatoes and a warm piece of Chevre (with a great nose) alongside hand carved tomatoe roses.  Very creative.  We paired our courses with very nice red wines from the region which we purchased from the wine cave just above the house on the back road.  I can't tell you how nice it was (and funny) to  walk out the back door, and 30 steps away there was a wine cave open all the time.  The lady was really nice and friendly too.

Main Course... Roasted Lamb topped with herbed bread crumbs with stuffed tomatoe, roasted garlic a beautiful delicate sauce drizzled over top and broccollini.  Just gorgeous. 

It started getting cool outside so we moved in alongside the fire to enjoy dessert.  It was fantastic.  Thank You Dimitri!!!

House in La Roque

This was the view from our upstairs bedroom.  It was amazing.  We could not have had better weather the whole time we were in this area.  Incredible.    One night Lorenzo cooked for us.  It was fun.  Jody made her favorite salad and dressing and we all pitched in to help.  The kitchen in this place was just great.

Went out exploring one day on the road that winds along up behind "our house".  Loved the ancient stone work.  Every where you look the masonery was outstanding.  (and still standing!)                   

 the patio "pre-dinner" 

The Dordogne River Southwest France

 This  is one of the most beautiful areas we love in France.  We have been to this region many times over the years.  This river flows slowly and peacefully through farm lands and over many eons has created this valley.  In the background you can see the lighter colored cliffs.    Our town was called La Roque Gageac.  It is on the right hand side set of cliffs in tthe background of this picture.  I took this shot one day after a great lunch overlooking the river  from a town called Domme.  It does not get much prettier than this.  We stayed in this valley for a week.

The town we stayed lies riverside as you can see.  In the afternoons the balloons (montgolfiers- if I spelled that right) would float right by our house.  They almost touched down into the river and then would lift off again and float right back up and drift away with the breeze.  It was great advertising for them.  We looked into hiring a ride, but it cost $500.00 per couple.  We could not quite swing that.  But it was fun to watch them up so close.  Many times we could hear their blowers from our outside patio before we could see them.    The castle in the background that looks white in color, back in the day was the kings castle.  He lived close to his town but not (in) his town.  It was only about 1000 ft from the last house in the row.  It was good to be King!  On this stretch of river, you can take a tour boat ride (1 hour) and hear the history of this area.  Its incredible and hard to believe.  There are 5 castles within about 5 miles  of each other.  At different times they were owned and controlled by different countries, and whoever survived the take-overs were forced to abide by the new King's ( or ruler's) rules, and their current religion and have to speak their new ruler's language or else you were out, done, dead.  No other options.    And these castles can see each other from one hillside to the next and warred and spied on each other constantly.  In fact they built  "Castlenaud" only about 1/2 mile from Castle "Beynac" on the hilltop literally to spy on them so they could not be surprised by their actions and attacks from across the valley.   It is mind boggling that two families in castles could fight so hard and for so long ( The Hundred Years War was a biggie) and actually fight to the death with people who were really your neighbors.  It was really interesting to hear all this.  Remember the book (and then movie) "Timeline," it was filmed in the Castles Beynac and Castlenaud.  They did not make that stuff up.  Its HERE.

   The house with the red shutters in the middle is the house we rented.  Lorenzo found this place on VRBO.com and it was a fantastic find.  It had 2 bdrms upstairs and 1 bdrm downstairs, with fully stocked kitchen, large living room and fireplace on ground floor.  Also, there was a really nice outter deck/patio we spent a LOT of time on in the afternoons when we were done exploring the nearby towns, lunch spots, and wine caves.  We loved staying in this place.  It was busy with tourists in the day time, but in the mornings and evenings it was quiet.  We were the only thing happpening here.  It was great!

           This was our patio deck on the right.  There were grape vines covering it creating nice shade from the sun in afternoons.  We would be sitting there enjoying ourselves laughing and giggling about whatever we may have been talking about at the time, and people who would be hiking UPHILL  passed us would then realize we were there, until then unnoticed, hidden in the shade relaxing and loving life.  The looks on their faces would drive home our thoughts... "Oh what a great place to be in the world.!