| We went to the Sarlat market and bought a lot of food, Gina and Graham decided to cook dinner. It was roasted pigeons and flageolet beans, so delicious. We had olives and three kinds of canned foie gras with terrine that I bought at the market to taste test. All good, none good enough to bring home. I'm adopting Gina's attitude: eat a lot of it here. And I bought another tablecloth -- I couldn't help it, it was so beautiful. Then we hung out by the pool until around 4, when Jim and Jonee and Hawk and I took off for Rocamadour, a city built vertically into a hillside. We stopped on the way to take pictures of this beautiful wheat field filled with poppies. We had to stop. |  |
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Here's the church with the village below. |
| Hawk read us the history on the way, it was all about this black virgin. Here she is. |  |
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The upper part of the village stretched along a ridge. So beautiful. |
| We took an elevator down to the church (otherwise it was 165 steps). Jim and Jonee have a discussion about where to go next. |  |
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Here they are with their backs to the village below them. |
| The walls had some beautiful stone decorations on the corners. |   |
 | And this metal detail came from a door. Amazing. |
| This gorgeous castle was on a hill on our way home. |  |
| While we were having all this fun, Haley and Liam and Charlie were having their own special time getting home. Here's their description:
The airport was fine. You need to be at the counter 1 hour ahead of time (there was road construction on that JFK avenue that leads into the airport, so you might want to allow like, 10 minutes extra). We got there about two hours ahead of time and they wouldn't let us check in until 1 hour ahead of time. Literally. There was no one there from our airline to even do it any sooner (and according to a frequent traveller, it's usually only 45 minutes ahead of time because it's such a small flight). So we sat. And sat. And waited. I think this was the "Haliam Trip For Learning." Aside from all the other "learnings" you heard about and experienced, the hotel is just the latest. Suffice it to say, the Soretel was cheap, but not great. You get what you pay for. The food was alright, but the room was right over the courtyard/outdoor dining patio. Our room had a broken A/C (which of course Liam refused to notify the front desk about because he couldn't do it in french and felt like an asshole doing it in English so suffering was WAY better an option apparently) so instead we had the window open to all the smokers, not to mention the floodlights. Delicious. And of course, they gave us two twins instead of a double. And no crib for charlie. Needless to say, no one slept much at all that night. This, however, was a mixed blessing for the flight home: Great in that charlie slept probably 6 hours of the 8.5 hour flight (in two shifts). But not so great in that we were at each other's throats at the drop of a hat. Like when Charlie spilled my water glass on my lap, leaving me with wet spots that looked exactly like I had wet my pants. Exactly. And somehow, this was all Liam's fault in my opinion (I'm terrible, I know). So when I got up with Charlie to try to give Liam a chance to clean up the seats, he tried to take her and said he could handle it. And I spat back, "No you can't. You can't handle anything." And stalked off. At which point he muttered, "What the fuck, Haley?!" What a pair. To answer your other question about the china, it was actually fine once we got to the airport. We had to rent a luggage cart, so be sure to save a single Euro coin for that! We of course, did not have any, just a 10 note, and Liam came back all panicked because we didn't have any coins and we still had to return the rental car (but it was only 5:30 and our flight left at 7:45...but ANYWAY). So I ran in and approached the first stranger and asked if he could break a 10 and he just gave me a coin. And Liam wonders why I'm always right... |