Back to the Romans!

Allo!

Well, we’ve decided that we’ve had enough of caves for the moment, and that we needed to move a few years forward and start looking at Roman remains. So, today we headed to Perigueux, about 60 km to the north of Sarlat and once a large Roman city. The weather was promising – lots of blue sky; crisp temperatures, probably about 60; a great day for adventures! R found some incredibly lovely back roads as we made our way to Les-Ezyies; some lovely vistas; even cute cows! Then on to Perigueux, which turns out to be a fairly large town on the banks of a river. Perigueux seems to be in two separate parts – we saw signs to the Roman sites and signs to the Renaissance. Heading first to the Roman, we parked in the big underground car park, and made our way out through Monoprix (and I FINALLY found the sunscreen that I’d left behind last year and have been looking for ever since ... it’s actually Nivea and sprayable! Great stuff!) Bought a plan of the city and headed toward the Roman museum. It opened in 2003, and is really quite lovely! I was a bit concerned when R read that the museum was designed by the same architect that did the new Musee Quai Branley in Paris (which was a good building design, but we thought that the museum itself was very poorly laid out, labeled, etc.) but decided that was the curator, not the architect. At any rate, this museum, while lots of glass and steel, is built around an old Roman house that had been excavated in the 1960's; also a great tower just outside the museum, which is still standing. Many of the artifacts were from the house and surrounding areas. As it turns out, one Roman house was built directly upon another, and the first house had many beautifully painted walls – which were just covered up with rubble when the second house was built. As a result, while much of the wall paintings had crumbled, they had crumbled in situ as it were, and were able to be reassembled during the excavation. Had a lovely look around; good audioguides, then headed back to the car. Had more difficulty finding a place to park in the Renaissance part of town; finally managed to find a place down by the river (but did notice that we could easily have walked from the Roman section instead...). The other big site is St. Front, the cathedral, initially started in the 1200's, but finished bit by bit over the last 800 years. The big attraction here are the domes, of which St. Front has about 10 or 11. (Think Sacre Coeur gone mad.) It’s very byzantine looking, and if I never get to Byzantium, I’ll certainly have seen the next best thing. However, for one of the rare sites in France, this church actually looks much better and more impressive from the outside, than from the inside! The domes are very plain inside; indeed not much decoration at all, and what there is is very somber and dark; dark altar and dark organ; to be honest, not my favorite cathedral.

Decided to head back to Sarlat; beautiful drive home, past some wonderful fields of poppies! Can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this year the poppy fields. They’re just like California poppies, only RED instead of orange, and in the sunlight, they make quite a statement! They grow wild everywhere, and I think must be my favorite flower! Also lots of yellow rape seed; fields and fields, but that is usually grown commercially for the oil. Haven’t seen any sunflowers yet, but am assuming it is way too early in the season for those! Did stop at a Leader Price grocery store for tinfoil (yes, Robert, I know it’s really aluminum...). While we had seen Leader Price products in other stores, this is the first Leader Price grocery store we’ve been in...and it’s like a Costco! Large quantities available, and no shopping bags! But lots of boxes you can have! So, boxed up the few things we needed, and back to the flat. My turn to cook dinner, and made beef tips over rice; really great meat from the Champion, and while it’s difficult cooking things without lids for the pots and pans (we’ve discovered that here in France, when you buy a pot or a pan, you do NOT generally get a lid for it, unless you buy it separately!?) (Hence the tinfoil, which is certainly flimsier than Reynolds!) While I was cooking, another storm cell blew in – lovely lightening and thunder; very dramatic, but didn’t last too long. Hope the prospect is for good weather tomorrow, as we are invited to Alain and Graciela’s home near Albi for the day!

Lots of love!
m