Salut Sarlat

March 30 - Day 15

Not being able to come up with our own ideas for the day, we entrusted the decision-making duty the car's GPS 'point of interest' search. We ended up with what sounded like a nice relaxing park so we set off for a drive.

After half an hour of driving through the French countryside, we reached our destination, which turned out to be a cheesy prehistoric park for kids, complete with colourful plastic dinosaur statues. It might have been worth going to if we didn't haven't to pay, but instead we decided to go spend our money at La Roque Saint- Cristophe.

La Roque St Cristophe is a big old cliff face that is classified as a world heritage site. It was used as a dwelling by humans as long ago as 55,000 years ago, when wearing loincloths was acceptable and fighting off bears was a daily chore, until the end of the middle ages, when they built houses into the rock. It was all very interesting and we had the entire place to ourselves.

Afterwards, we went to Beynac, a small town that sits on the edge of the Dordogne, for lunch. For lunch, we both had a 'faux' filet de bœuf. I don't exactly know what was so 'faux' about it, but it was pretty good and also the cheapest thing they had. After lunch, we had a walk around the streets. As with most of these small towns we've stopped at, Beynac didn't really have anything going for it except looking good so we went back to Sarlat.

According to our GPS, there was an automobile museum along one of the main streets of Sarlat which we went in search of. No such museum actually exists although there was a driving school and a few car dealers on the road which I guess is kinda the same thing. Nevertheless, we stopped asking the car for tourist advice. Following this, we made what has become our daily trek to the supermarket (me, reluctantly and my dad, very eagerly) to stock up on supplies (read: wine) and returned to the house for a rest.

Later that evening, we headed into town to check out the Friday nightlife, expecting it to be a bit more exciting than earlier in the week. As it turns out, even on a Friday, Sarlat's nightlife is about as lively as roadkill and marginally less interesting so we returned home for a dinner of apples and potato chips.

March 31 - Day 16

Saturday is market day in Sarlat, which more than makes up for its sucky nightlife. The stalls run along the main shopping street and spill into the medieval part of the city. There was a large range of goods on offer, from fresh vegetables to clothes to spices, beds, toys and even a couple of samurai swords. We ended up buying two huge chocolate macaroons, a punnet of strawberries and fish and chips for lunch (which is a little bit fancier here than in NZ).

Dad also finally got a picture of the baby traffic lights he finds so amusing.

After lazing around for a few hours, we headed back out to do some laundry which I guess was a pretty exciting way to end our last day in Sarlat.