QUE SARLAT, SARLAT

Thursday (but written Friday morning). 

Today was a travel day, driving from Lyon to Sarlat. But first, a word about dinner last night. We walked ten or fifteen minutes through the wind and the rain to arrive at the restaurant on time, but the door was locked! Fortunately, we found a place out of the rain to huddle until, in all good French time, they deigned to open the door. We were first in line (like the Brucatos), but soon the place filled up. Our waiter was young and handsome, sporting a set of perfect teeth, but also dripping with attitude toward his bourgeoise American customers. In the end, he managed to get most of our order filled, but forgot the coffees for Bob and Karin, both of whom tipped him anyway. (Bourgeoise Americans!)

We began with a pot (pronounded poh) of red house wine. You know how most wine bottles in the States have a hollowed out area at the bottom of the bottle, as if someone had poked his finger up the middle of it, thereby making it look as if it held more liquid that it does. Well, a pot does the opposite, but for the same reason. The bottom inch or two is clear, solid glass, making the bottle look like it's a full-sized, but it holds at least a tenth less wine than a normal bottle would, even one with a hollowed-out bottom. So, we easily finished off that one and had another. And then, with more than just a little help from Karin, a third one. As for what we had to eat . . . I'm trying to remember. Oh yes, a couple of us had “free range pork chops. (Let your imagination play with that one.) And Bob finished off with some kind of red sorbet so suffused with liquer that he had to show his ID to prove he was over 21. (Blackcurrant sorbet with blackcurrent liqueur and vodka!) And so, we merrily bade farewell to Lyon.

On the dreaded day of travel (Thursday), Bob and I went to Europcar to pick up our little Citron and find our way out of the spagetti complex of streets back to the flat to pick up Karin and our baggage. What would have been a nightmare a few years ago, with my fumbling for the right road on a paper map while Bob demanded I just choose one—any one, NOW--we were guided by the GPS that Bob brought with him. We've re-named her Suzanne, partly in honor of an old Vermont friend, and partly to differentiate her from all the Susans we know in Tucson and through Karin in Colorado. And she did beautifully, even instructing Bob which lane to be in before an up-coming turn. In no time, we arrived at the flat, packed the car, and headed out.

Except that road signs were in meters instead of miles, I could have easily mistaken the landscape for Vermont in springtime. There were still lingering signs of snow in the high elevations, but most of the way, the trees were my favorite pastel shades of pale green, bronze, red, and yellow. The hills and valleys, some of them extremely deep, were green and lush, and both cattle and sheep lounged around on their soft meadows. The architecture of the houses was distinctly French, not Vermont, but there were few of them visible from the road. It was even numbered 89, the same as the one that runs all the way through Vermont from New Hampshire to Canada.

Around noon we stopped for lunch at a roadside complex unlike any I've seen in the States. It had rest rooms, of course, a store filled with snack food, and several different sections selling everything from salads to soups, “Italian-style burgers,” baguette sandwiches, French pastries, French fries, and lots of French pastries. I promised not to reveal what any of us ordered OR took away for snacks, so don't pry, Chris.

The house we rented in Sarlat was not officially ours until 4 pm, and Karin somehow had discovered that there was a discount shop for Limoge China in, of all places, Limoge. Since we would have arrived at Sarlat at least a couple of hours early, we took a couple of hours' detour and let her satisfy her shopping urge. We too found a plate to add to our travel collection. Then it was back on the road, guided by our faithful Suzanne, stopping only to fill the car with gas and spending about as much as we did to rent the thing for a week and a day. Around 5, we arrived in Sarlat.

The House

Our house—for that's what it is—has three floors and as many bedrooms. Unlike the flat in Lyon with its single toilet, we now have three of them, one per floor. The place is made of stone and is obviously quite old, but nicely restored. I'm particularly taken with the curved banisters, which are obviously hand carved and joined—impressive work. It also has something extremely valuable in this tourist-popular town, a reserved parking space. 

However, the

The Entry from the Street

owners, rightly, had the heat turned down to somewhere around 60 degrees, and for people used to Arizona heat, this was far from acceptable. We turned the thermostat way up, opened the bottle of wine our hosts had graciously left for us, and slowly began the thawing process.

Later, since we could walk to town in ten minutes or so, we ventured out into the chilly night for dinner

Looking from the porch to the entry.

at Le Bistro. The town was ghost-like empty, but the restaurant was nearly filled, and, most important, warm. We had several of the area's specialties: duck breast, potatoes cooked in duck fat, a local wine, and walnut cake. The quality left something to be desired, but at this point in our long day, it didn't matter much, especially for Bob, who had driven over six hours to get here. Then we hurried home to our slowly warming, stone house to snuggle

Front Porch

under down-filled comforters. The prediction for the temperature this night was one degree below freezing. (I think it did drop to 39.)