The tale of five villages

Big news: I finally have internet (real internet - a router, unlimited access) in my apartment; I won't have an excuse for only updating once a week anymore. I'd forgotten what it's like to respond to e-mails when I feel like responding to them! I still, however, don't have a functioning cell phone. Long story, but to get it to work with the new cell company, I needed to get it "unlocked" so I took it to an internet cafe on Wednesday night. They told me to pick it up today (cause for some reason they needed several days to unlock it) and then for no reason at all, they were closed today even though they were supposed to be open. And tomorrow is Sunday, so they are of course closed. Maybe Monday I can finally end the cell phone saga...

There is plenty of other stuff that still needs to be figured out (stuff with the government paperwork, health care, linens in my apartment - it's all never ending) but that is uninteresting and also bums me out. So instead I'll talk about what I did this past week.

Perigueux is very nice - but it is also small and very quiet. Our coping mechanism is to go out and see other parts of the region, the Dordogne, as often as possible. Even if we go to other quiet villages (which is pretty much our only choice in this part of France), just getting out of Perigueux gives us a much-needed refresher. Luckily, it's hard to go wrong. There are a lot of beautiful and interesting villages close to Perigueux, so we've seen a lot of great stuff already!

Wednesday, Marina, Azahara, and I only had classes to teach in the morning, so we rode to Bergerac (like Cyrano, the main character of my favorite play Cyrano de Bergerac) with one of the teachers I work with who lives there. We wandered around the city for the afternoon and then took a bus back to Perigueux for two euro. Not a bad deal.

Cyrano statue #1.

Cyrano statue #2.

The cathedral in Bergerac is clearly totally different from the cathedral in Perigueux. It's cool to see all the different architecture - and how much it varies between towns, even though the towns are fairly close to one another.

Old church in Bergerac + Cyrano statue #2

Example of the architecture in Bergerac (with the wood on the houses and the different colors). Perigueux is mostly stone and very Renaissance-looking.

The river in Bergerac.

We found a "barbe a papa" (cotton candy) stand at a fair in Bergerac...

...and Azahara got the biggest cotton candy I have ever seen in my life.

All in all, we really liked Bergerac (though I really think that most of the reason I liked it was because of Cyrano) and had a very good afternoon there. We found some cool shops and bought presents and ate yummy food at the fair (Marina and I bought what were essentially hollow churros filled with Nutella) and wandered around.

Today we basically repeated that - but in four villages! One of the Spanish teachers at Bertran de Born offered to take us out into the country to see some villages and castles. So the aforementioned crew set out again! Be forewarned, I don't have a ton to say about all the villages, because mostly we just wandered around and took pictures - so I will make up for that by putting up lots of said pictures.

First we went to Sarlat, a medieval village I'll be visiting when my family comes in about four weeks. Basically all of the buildings in the town are the same color - they're required to be - and are reaalllyy old. The streets were very winding and narrow. It's also apparently the home of the cathedral where they filmed a movie about Joan of Arc.

Sarlat's cathedral.

Pretty house with pretty ivy and cool stones. A lot of Sarlat (a lot of France, really) looks like this.

An old church that has been turned into a covered market. Those enormous doors actually work and they open and close depending on the hours of the day.

The region of Perigord (I know that I've called it Bordeaux, the Dordogne, the Aquitaine, and now Perigord - but they all mean different things and they're all true; Perigord is a cultural classification) is none for it's foie gras - but also for it's walnuts. A lot of the oil on this table was made from walnuts. In this market I also tasted alcohol made from truffle. Sadly I mean the mushroom type of truffle, not the chocolate type of truffle.

More Sarlat.

We left Sarlat and went out into the "pleine campagne" to see some other small towns and castles. First we went to Beynac, a town built on a cliff overlooking the Dordogne River and capped by a castle that was owned by the French during the Middle Ages and beyond. That may sound obvious since, well, I am in France, but across from the castle in Beynac is another castle in a town called Castelnaud - and that one was owned by the British. The two towns/castles spent several hundred years fighting and throwing stones at each other. Yeah, it was stupid. Seems like they could've moved farther apart. Or ignored each other.

View from top of the cliff in Beynac. Looking down the river, beyond the bridge, you can see the castle that was owned by the British.

The (very steep) streets of Beynac. They were a joy to climb back up after we walked down to the bottom.

But I got to take this picture when we walked all the way down! Pretty cool, right?

Looking back on Beynac and the castle on top of the cliff.

So since we were only a catapult's distance from the castle at Castelnaud, we went over there next. We visited the castle at Castelnaud, which is now a museum filled with weapons from war during the Middle Ages. Aside from catapults and canons and guns there were also crossbows that could shoot arrows that were four feet long. And shields that weighed 40 lbs. And weird knight armor. But it was all pretty cool and we got to go all through the castle (which was freezing because it's made of really solid stone and has almost no windows - gotta keep those pesky Frenchies out) and had some cool views of the valley from the towers and walls.

Walking toward the castle.

Looking down on the village of Castelnaud from the walls of the castle.

One of my few pictures with people in it.

Examples of the many catapults that were used during the Middle Ages. Apparently the strongest and most powerful catapult could shoot stones weighing 225 lbs up to 200 m - precisely two times an hour.

To finish up we stopped in one more town, Domme. It's a tiny town on top of a cliff and surrounded by a wall. We saw maybe 12 other people in the town because I guess it is also a vacation town - I don't know where all the French people go during the year, but all the towns we visited today were very quiet! Apparently they're busy in the summer...

Walking along the walls of the city.

Looking down on a garden and the valley. I didn't take too many pictures because it was getting dark and there weren't many lights in the city.

It was a good day - but now I'm so tired that I'm falling asleep over my computer. More later! Enjoy the pictures! I'm still loving my new camera!