Adaptability – Wednesday Oct 10th

On our list, one of the cities (towns) we wanted to visit was Cahors.  It’s another regional wine center, I’d heard about it well before I’d ever heard of Gaillac, and we’d read a couple books by a guy who spent a year in the area with his family.  Besides, they make BIG red wines and that’s our favorite.  So, last night I did a bunch of research on Cahors.  Tried to find stuff to do in the city.  More importantly, tried to find their equivalent, if it existed, of Gaillac’s Maison du Vin.  Didn’t have a lot of success and was a bit wary because it seemed that most of the interesting regional wine stuff was going to be due west of Cahors, which at 2 hours, was our theoretical limit of how far we wanted to drive for a day’s excursion.  Nevertheless, we went to sleep assuming we were going to Cahors in the morning.  Even set the alarm for 7:30.

Got up, we’re both ambivalent about Cahors, so we decide to head directly north instead (adaptability?).  We had 2 sights in mind.  First, to Saint-Cirq Lapopie.  A hill town, but also one that had received the official French government’s designation as the prettiest town in the country.  Yes, really.  The French government did do that.  And after Saint-Cirq, we were going to head 20 minutes further north to Pech Merle to look at cave paintings.  We’d seen prehistoric man paintings in Les Eysees nearly 20 years ago, and the chance to see more is/was very compelling.  So, we had a plan for the day.  And started out around 9:45 (everything seems to take longer here), planning on getting to Saint-Cirq in time for 45 minutes of walking the city, then lunch from noon till 1:45, then Pech Merle.

Got about 45 minutes from Broze and were driving through a pretty town.  Maxine checked our Michelin Green Guide and we discovered that Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val was not just in the guide, but was a one-star sightseeing attraction in itself.  Started looking for the tourist office, which is always a great place to start, if only for the free map.  Decided I could get there just by driving down streets.  Discovered that ‘street’ is a relative term.  Found myself on a ‘street’ which was so narrow (and I’m completely serious about this) that when I heard gravel under the tires, I thought the scraping sound was the side of the car, and I couldn’t even tell which side might be scraping, it was so narrow.  Needed a drink when we survived, scratchless, and parked in a square.

We saw a woman and in our broken French called to her from the car to ask for directions to the Tourist Office.  She struggled back in French.  And so forth.  Then she asked if we spoke English.  She was… English.  And her brother lives in Woodland Hills, which is near enough to us in real life that it’s trivial.  She walked us down narrow street after narrow street, making turns, until she led us into the Tourist Office.  With each step we became further convinced that we would never find our car again (but, to make a long story short, we did, without any problem at all).  We spent an hour in Saint-Antonin.  Lovely little town.  But, in October, in an area of France that doesn’t get all that much tourism, not all that much was open (we’ve found that to be the case in many of the towns).

 

 

On the road.  A piece of the road under construction.  GPS leads us around it.  We find ourselves on unpaved farm lanes.  Maxine changes the setting on the GPS to require it to only use paved roads in the future, but this makes for our second stressful driving event in one day.

Eventually in Saint Cirq, which is a pretty town.  Quite pretty.  And most of the shops open – we figured that owning property there became a license to print money once the French government gave its imprimateur.  We do wonder though if the blessing from the government came because of a personal connection of some sort.

 

 

We are now, however, nearly 2 hours off schedule.  But, lunch calls and we do as others are doing, walking from restaurant to restaurant to read the menus.  This is where I have to confess to my animal immorality…  I love foie gras.  Like the taste and also like it because I can’t get it very often (expensive in the US, and illegal, yes illegal, in California).  We find a restaurant with a 22E foie gras tasting menu. It was great!  First foie gras I’d had since we got to France.  And I get 4 different versions!  Great lunch!!!!!

And then we walk Saint Cirq, which is pretty, but also hilly – we earn our lunch calories.  We’re back at the car park by 4:30 and I’m relieved to find out that Pech Merle closes at 5.  Frankly, I’m beat.  Maxine drives us home, stopping at Leclerc so I can pick up a bottle of Pastis to drink – hypothesizing that the alcohol will cut the feeling of the duck fat that I’m still digesting.