Day 18 – 13th May
Where have 18 days gone?? I cant believe we are this far into our trip already, it is just a daze but what a great daze!
Up at 6.30am again today, bags out at 7am. Left the hotel at 8am on the road to St Emilion. Today turned out to be towns off the beaten track – the real France. St Emilion wasn’t far and it was the quint essential France… population 300 . It was a small narrow cobbled village that had a wonderful feeling about it. Graeme would like to come back and stay sometime. It seemed to be the type of place where you would sit and talk with the locals and really find out about their lives.
Then we moved on to the Dordogne valley, where we stopped after a couple of hours for an optional lunch and another first – roast duck. It was beautiful, tender and a mix between chicken and lamb. The aussie girls weren’t doing this one, so it was a much more straight laced affair. We had country soup with bread, roast duck and sliced garlic potatoes and walnut pie with custard for dessert. Heaven… We walked around the small town after this. We also saw the amazing houses built into the high rocks above the town, they were like caves but proper houses. The troglodytes lived in these from the 17th century until 1930.
It got very hot as the day went on and by the time we went down the road in the bus and got on a boat for a 45 min river cruise, we felt a bit overheated. After the cruise we went and lay on the cool grass under some tree’s until it was time to go.
Next we travelled via some pretty windy roads to our chateau hotel in the Dordogne. Everyone felt a little ripped off- our tour group is away from the chateau and in a hotel/dorm style residence near by!!! However we did eat – fine dining, in the chateau and amazingly enough we were hungry again at 8pm!!
Feeling pretty shattered tonight as is everyone else, so off to bed at 10pm to crash!
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