What a rough night! Our bed was NOT at all comfortable. I could feel the springs poking into my back and the pillows were extremely hard, not to mention square which left me with a bad kink in my neck. I think there was a miscommunication at some point in our booking process and the owners ended up giving us a triple room with a double bed and a twin bed. I'm pretty sure they thought Isla would sleep in the twin because they didn't provide us the baby bed we thought we we getting. I guess the twin was "the baby bed". Anyway, I ended up sleeping in the twin bed for the last couple hours of the night as it was slightly more comfortable. We improvised for Isla and she had pretty comfy sleeping quarters if I do say so myself.
Isla woke at 6:30 AM and so we got ready and stumbled in the dining room (building pictured below). Breakfast was buffet-style and our options included fresh fruit, croissant, bread, chocolate and regular corn flakes, hot milk (were we supposed to put hot milk on our cold cereal?), coffee, tea, jambon, cheese, homemade grape and apple ciders and fresh-squeezed orange and grapefruit juice. Sure enough, our embroidered pouch with walnut liquor-stained napkins awaited us on the buffet line. We were definitely the youngest guests there. I think the next youngest might have been 72. Everyone loved Isla though and stopped by our table at every meal to talk to her in French.
We hit the road for a day of exploration. I had Graham pull over so I could capture this shot a couple minutes down the road from the farm where we were staying. Beautiful countryside!!
We stopped at the Eglise de Carsac. It was under construction but the setting was gorgeous! It reminded me a lot of Tuscany. I guess we didn't really take any pictures of it, only video. If we'd packed a picnic, I certainly would have eaten it here.
As we drove on, we rounded the bend a caught a glimpse of this castle (Montfort) off in the distance, with the river flowing beneath it. Behind the wall I'm sitting on is a sheer cliff so Graham was freaking out and made me get up as soon as the picture was snapped.
We didn't really have a set itinerary for the day which was nice. We decided to drive up to the hilltop town of Domme and grab a bite of lunch. We walked the streets and bit and did some window shopping before buying a croque monsieur, some cheesy bread with ham (sort of pizza-like) and settling down for a picnic in the park as we admired this view of the Dordogne River and surrounding countryside:
There was a musician in the park serenading us with Irish music. It felt a little out of place, but hey, it was live music! We had spotted a fun ice cream shop during our browsing and Graham promised me a treat after lunch. But when we got up to leave, we saw the shop had closed it's doors for a 2 hour lunch break. The nerve! Graham knew what was good for him and assured me ice cream at a later point in the day and we headed back into the valley to seek out a canoe rental.
Canoe rentals had been a great topic of debate for us. According to our guidebook, one of the highlight activities of the Dordogne was to rent a canoe and explore the riverside villages via boat. Graham was REALLY looking forward to this part of the trip (so was I) but I was feeling a little leary about Isla and how we would manage her in a tippy canoe. We finally agreed that, if we could find a life jacket small enough to fit her, then we'd go ahead and brave the river. Unfortunately, the decision was easily made for us when we were told children under 5 were not allowed to ride in the rental boats. We were pretty bummed but had no other option.
We made a stop at La Roque-Gageac, a town built on the rock cliffs overlooking the river which boasts to be one of the top three most visited villages in France. I can see why--it was way cute!
We walked along the pedestrian-only streets up the hill, admiring the tropical gardens. Apparently the limestone in the rock creates great soil for tropical foliage like banana trees, palm trees, and other pretty flowering plants.
We found a place that sold ice cream bars as a sub-par substitution for the real thing for me. Graham grabbed a fresh raspberry pastry from the patisserie as a snack-yummy!
The village is literally built right on the rock hillside. I decided I could live in this place covered with ivy. The crazy part is that every winter, the ground floor of all the buildings closest to the river flood. Shops are seasonal for this very reason and pack up and clear out come winter.
We knew we had to get on the river somehow so we decided to pay for a riverboat tour (on boats like those in the movie Chocolat). I'm sure it paled in comparison to floating the river in canoes, but at least we were able to say we took a boat down the Dordogne.
Isla provided live entertainment for our fellow boaters.
She found a French-Canadian friend aboard and the two of them had a good conversation.
Our tour ended with a view of the Chateau de Castelnaud, a 13th-century fortress overlooking the picturesque region.
It was mid-afternoon and we decided we'd played tourist for long enough and opted to head back to the farm for a swim in their pool. When we arrived in our room, we set Isla down, and look what she did! She started to crawl (but only with Mr. Crab as a motivator)! I was honestly hoping she would learn this skill on our trip because, how often does a girl get to say she learned to crawl in France!? (Please see the video for footage of our lovely room. PINK!!!)
Anyway, it's a good thing we decided to make time for swimming when did too because from this point on, we were never able to use the pools (when they had them) at our various accomodations because it was always raining...
The water was not heated so Isla was a little hesistant. We distracted her though and eventually got her in with us and she seemed to enjoy herself....for a bit.
Then came the out-of-nowhere-meltdown. Isla totally lost it as we were laying by the pool, probably because our day consisted of lots of getting in and out of the carseat every 20-30 minutes so she never got a solid nap. We couldn't get her to stop crying, even after attempting to feed her so we loaded her in the stroller and went for a long walk down the country lane leading to our farm. Of course she fell asleep almost instantly. We passed gorgeous fields of wheat, fields of corn (used strictly for feeding the duck for foie gras-the French are horrified that Americans actually eat the stuff!), a coop of foie gras ducks and walnut trees. The setting was so perfect, so remote.
We returned to the farm for another lovely 5 course dinner. We were offered Pinot as our aperitif and I was quite thrilled to have wine as an option over the liquor but I was mistaken and apparently there is a French liquor called "Pinot" which is what I was served. Again, I could only take a couple sips. Of course we also had a bottle of red wine provided to enjoy throughout the meal.
The soup that evening is still a mystery to us. It had a white broth with little bits of pasta. I have no idea what made the broth white but I thought it was only so-so. Next came our salad of pickled white asparagus, radish and jambon (ham). I opted not to feed the white soup to Isla (since I didn't know what it was) and she was getting squirmy for food at this point so I went ahead and offered her a salt-fest of pickled asparagus and ham. I even gave her some radish--her face was so priceless! I'm quite sure she thought she was going to die. I'm so mean but at least she really liked the ham and asparagus. We also were served a small green salad with walnuts (same as the night before) which made for sweet relief next to the salty options. Our main course was slices of pork loin, served with a dark gravy. It was served along with fried balls of cheese which were to die for and the most amazing ratatouille I have ever tasted. Graham loved it and so did Isla. For our cheese course, we were pleased to learn that we could have a cheese plate instead of the fresh white cheese with jams. I have no idea what kind of cheese we were eating which was pretty much the case on our entire trip. I had a trio of ice creams (walnut, fig and ????) for my dessert along with Maxwell House decaf and Graham had a frozen strawberry "souffle" and tea. We politely declined the digestifs and our waitress teasingly gave us a hard time but I think she understood that we were wimps.
Isla made such a huge mess this meal with the wet ratatouille and the pork with gravy. She performed her annual evening BM (for the THIRD night in a row) and so I had to excuse myself toward the end of the meal to give her a quick change. She got a little bored when she was done eating and so we tried to entertain her with the basket of walnuts that was on the table but she proceeded to chuck them across the dining room. Oops!
I'd stowed three of Isla's books in our suitcase thinking that we could rotate through them for her bedtime stories. I ended up letting her pick her story and for the 6th out of 7 nights in a row, she picked Pat the Bunny. I guess we have a favorite! She did not want to go to bed again and so we had to let her cry for awhile (which is hard when you're all in the same room). Eventually we got her Baby Einsteins playing on Graham's I-Pod and got the room dark enough that she fell into deep enough of a sleep that I could read to Graham before retiring at 11.
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