Voyage en Dordogne

Me and Karina outside the musée de la préhistoire

This weekend we had our « Voyage en Dordogne » organized by Middlebury – basically they put us on a bus and packed as many cultural activities in the Dordogne valley, the one right next to the Gironde (the department where Bordeaux is), as they possibly could. On Saturday after getting up super early, we first visited one of the famous grottes of the valley – where you venture deep into underground cold, dark caves on little carts that reminded me of Gringotts to see some of the first prehistoric drawings and paintings, mostly of animals. It was too dark (and prohibited) to take pictures, but we saw drawings of horses, mammoths, goats, buffalo, rhinoceros…which were pretty cool.

Monument outside the musée

Next they bused us off to another town to see the Musée nationale de la prehistoire, and to have a ‘taste of the region’ for lunch. Unfortunately the ‘confit de canard’, which looks like a chicken breast/wing, served with french fries (can you say odd combination ?) didn’t really agree with too many people’s stomachs, and pretty much everyone felt sick that afternoon. And it didn’t exactly help our queasiness on the bus when they explained how they prepared the duck in that way…Essentially they extremely overfeed the duck, shove something down its throat so the food stays down, then keep feeding it more until it can’t sustain that much food in its stomach and eventually dies. Then they cook the breast in some oil, hyper-salt it, and serve it. At least that’s the way I understood it as I was cringing listening to this process. Yum, right ?

Prehistoric paintings inside the grottes

After lunch we visited the Grotte de Lascaux, kind of like the grotte we had visited that morning but there were many more drawings and paintings in much more detail, practically covering all the walls of the cave.  Later that afternoon we had a tour of the Château de Beynac, which has a beautiful view over a huge part of the Dordogne valley. It also happens to be where King Richard the Lionheart lived and ruled from 1189-1199! Luckily, the tour finished just in time for an amazing sunset !

Barons of the Chateau de Beynac

Chateau de Beynac

We finally finished off the day by arriving in Sarlat, quaint little medieval town, for another ‘taste of the region’s cuisine’ for dinner – which started around 10pm, so we were all completely exhausted.  We didn’t have much more luck with the food that night either – the entrée looked something like Irish cabbage stew put on a plate next to some soggy bread that had no taste with some weird looking slice of sausage on top, with some uncooked ham rib on the side.

         

Amanda and Me - View from the gardens

After completely crashing at the hotel after a long Saturday, we got up super early to start our next jam-packed day, which started with a guided tour of the historic monuments and sites of Sarlat for a few hours. Afterwards we visited the Jardins de Marqueyssac, a huge botannical garden which was a mix of French and English styled gardens, traditional and organized versus a mixed design style with plants, flowers, and trees. We walked through the gardens to another beautiful panorama of another part of the Dordogne valley and river.

Monbazillac

Our last stop on the trip was a guided tour and wine tasting at Monbazillac, a renowned chateau which specializes in sweet white wines. After finally getting back to Bordeaux, I was so exhausted at dinner I couldn’t even think or speak and french – and of course my host family wanted to describe everything I’d done!