Week of Adventures!

What I’ve been doing!

Wed/Thurs
Mostly we just had orientation to our classes and got all our cards for free entrance to museums. I went on two of the 18 required “Paris Walks” and got to see the Place de Concorde, Tour Eiffel, Louvre, and the Palais Royale. My lunch was a roast beef sandwich. Upon opening the bread to push a loose piece of lettuce back in and before beginning to eat, I discovered that the roast beef was raw. There was blood soaked in to the bread. I ate it ALL, Mom.

Collonges-la-Rouge and Sarlat - Friday
We started our trip south today, and stopped in a little village called Collonges-la-Rouge, which is neat because it is made entirely out of red sandstone. It is very picturesque. We drove on down to Sarlat, which ended up being my favorite village. For dinner, the first course the hotel served was salad with salmon on top – raw salmon. I did eat one bite of the salmon, you’d be proud, and then just at the salad that wasn’t contaminated. Luckily he next courses were tasty and we finished off with a nice Crème Brulée

Sarlat, Beynac, and Domme - Saturday
This was the best day of the trip by far! There was a market in Sarlat (these have been happening every Saturday since the middle Ages) and it was great fun to wander the stalls around the city and look at everything from huge cheese rinds to knife shows to purses and rings. They used to have livestock too, but a few years ago laws banned that in the middle of town for sanitation reasons. I got lots of little things there, and I am happy with them ALL! (I got something for Becky…)
After the marché, we went to a canoe rental place and went, as it is in French, canöing down the Dordogne for about three hours, seeing châteaus every half hour or so. We pulled off the river at the Château de Beynac, which is a medieval castle built for defensive purposes and one of the only châteaus in that region to remain loyal to France during the Hundred Years War. The end of the movie “Ever After” was filmed here, and part of that movie was also filmed in Sarlat. We walked up the huge, ridiculously steep hill of the city and arrived at Beynac pouring sweat. (Did I mention that the humidity is killing me?) We had a funny tour guide with a very thick southern French accent and who made fun of me for mispronouncing Dordogne (the river and also the region) and randomly would exclaim it to me as we walked through the chateau. Finally I got it right, and not only is it my new favorite French word, but also nobody else in my group can pronounce it right except for me. It took me an hour to say it right.
We spent the night just outside of Domme in the Hotel de Quatre Vents, which means “four winds” but on their sign written in a calligraphy-type font, the V of Vents looked like a D, which would make it the Hotel of the Four Teeth. Which was very funny. There was a nasty silverfish centipede thing in our room which caused lots of fuss with us, and we got yelled at all night (once after centipede, which we deserved, and once when we were ASLEEP, waking us UP) by a lady who was shrieking in French, “Silence, s’il vous plait! En FIN!”


Church, St. Cirq, Pech-Merle, and Figeac - Sunday
We went to church in Brieve and doubled the size of the branch. The hymns were very cool to sing in French, but we only stayed for Sacrament Meeting. We made a short stop in St. Cirq-Lapopie, which was another city on a hill (quite literally) and headed to Grotte du Pech-Merle. Pech-Merle is a cave filled with cro-magnon paintings. France is a big site for such things, and we got to see a painting of spotted horses which was very cool and is one of the most famous cave paintings and is put in most textbooks as an example of what they’re like. The caves were cool, and we got to see cave pearls and we saw a cave pearl top and it’s one of only 3 known ones in the world.
We went then to Figeac, where we went out to put our feet in the pool before dinner and two people got pulled/thrown in the pool by our bus driver (who is larger, very French, smokes at least 2 packs of cigarettes a day, and was wearing a speedo) and I elected to voluntarily go in (don’t worry, I didn’t ruin my skirt, I wore boxers) and keep them company. Dripping hair and clean clothed, we went to dinner which was an amazingly tasty l’agneau dish (lamb) with very very tasty potatoes and may very well be my new favorite food, if I could remember what it was called. We also had mousse au chocolat! We went on a walk in the city and 3 of us decided to go back to the hotel before the rest but we got lost, although we eventually found it. There were a lots of prayers said by each of us then, since we didn’t know what our hotel was called or what street it was on and there were lots of French men who were probably harmless and lots of dark streets. It turned out to be close, so we were okay. Unfortunately, my roommate with the room key was still out walking, so I sat, locked out, in the neighboring room in my sweaty shirt wanting a shower.

Conques and Albi - Monday
We went to Conques, which is where St. Foy’s remains are kept on Monday. St. Foy was a 12 year old girl who was killed for not renouncing her Christianity. We saw her reliquary which was given to Conques by Charlemagne, along with various other objects of great significance. One of those was a box which allegedly held rocks from Christ’s tomb and pieces of His cross. I don’t know how true that is, but if I were a Catholic pilgrim (like the many, many who come there and start the Camino de Santiago de Compostela there) I would start the Camino there, too. The symbol of Conques is a shell, the same as the symbol of the Camino. We met several pilgrims just starting out, and all were very surprised to hear that my sister had done the Camino this summer, and told me to tell you, Becky, (in case you plan to do this again and didn’t catch this importance by yourself) that if you were to do it every summer as they, seasoned Camino veterans do, to bring good shoes. Don’t go forgetting that, as I know it never occurred to you! There was also a way cool sculpture thing on the face of the cathedral that was of the Final Judgment that was very detailed and had funny little demons.
We went on to Albi and saw the museum of the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who was born in Albi, and so when he died his art was donated by his mother to the city. This fellow was a midget and had lots of genetic disorders since his parents were first cousins. His mother took him to Montmartre (near Sacre Coeur) and he spent his life there from adolescence until death, spending a lot of time in Moulin Rouge (in the movie Moulin Rouge, he’s the midget) and he is famous for his style and also for his posters. If you think of a poster of Moulin Rouge, the famous ones are his. I’ll try to get a picture of one to post for you. Also at Albi we had nasty gross pizza with Roquefort cheese and yummy, tasty profiteroles.

Cordes-sur-Ciel, Rocamadour, and Limoges - Tuesday
To make a long morning short, my roommate and I spent 50 minutes lugging our luggage around Albi trying to find our bus, which turned out to actually only be five minutes away had we gone the other direction. That was not fun, and that day my daily drenching of sweat (I think as a group we’ve pretty much given in to the fact that everyone is going to be SOAKED and DRENCHED all the time. We wonder if we should just toss the deodorant and be like the French?) came early that day.
We went to Cordes-sur-Ciel and walked up yet another tall city hill (drenching number two) and I was dismayed to see that we walked all that way to no castle, no cathedrale, but just for the view. I was somewhat disgusted with this motive, since this particular trek was optional, but there was indeed a lovely café that gave me a nice steak, an okay salad, and very fluffy mousse au chocolat and we got a chance to dry out on the top of the city in the breeze. The entire city was absolutely covered with stray cats; I have never seen so many.
We went on to Rocamadour, which is a city “clinging perilously to the cliff” (as says our tour guide packet) which I thought looked a lot like Minis Tirith from Lord of the Rings. We (and when I say we, I mean the TA and only the TA) decided that instead of taking the free elevator down and up the city, we should walk down yet another city on a hill, or rather city of and stuck to a hill (and by hill I mean cliff. As though when Westly climbed up the Cliffs of Insanity in the Princess Bride he stopped and built a town in his spare time.) It rained very heavily the entire time. And instead of meeting us at the bottom as was expected, the bus had to stop halfway up, so we got to walk back up half the city. (Another two drenchings, sweat and rain.) Apparently in the middle ages the pilgrims to this place would walk up the stone steps on their knees, arriving at the top bloodied and penitent. I did not walk on my knees.

Oradour (Village Martyr) and back to Paris - Wednesday
This morning we went to Oradour, a village burned in WWII. The massacre and fire took place on 10 Juin (June) 1944, just four days after D-Day. When the village finally had hope for freedom, the Nazis, partly in response to D-Day and partly continuing as they had, began the massacre. All the women and children fled to the church for sanctuary on that day (occupation had been in place for a while) and the men had joined in little groups, “stakeouts” of a sort, but all the stakeouts were killed and some extremely small percentage of those men escaped. The Nazis then went to the church and shot all the women and children. All of them. Houses were burned to smoke people out or kill them. Some were gassed, some were burned alive, and the Nazis burned the bodies to prevent identification and for reasons of corporeal mortification. Less than 10% of the bodies were recognizable. Now the entire city is called Village Martyr and is left pretty much as it was (but there are tombs for the bodies, some of the grounds are kept in rein, and there are memorials and signs, and the church was washed out) but there are still bullet holes all over the church, and the ruins of the houses, only the brick remaining.
Now I’m on the bus and we’re close to Paris, heading off to meet our families! I live in Le Sec, the “chic” district outside Paris, with an old lady. I hope she likes us!