Travel |
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Janet Vogel Perkins
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Now we come to the famous Lascaux caves. Not easy, so if you go, be prepared You cannot purchase tickets for the caves at the entrance. This has to be done in Montignac which is a good distance from Lascaux. As we approached Lascaux, we realized that in order to hear the comments in English, you had to book in Montignac. So we bought a guide book.
The caves which we visited are not the original. They are called Lascaux II. It seems that the original caves had to be preserved since too many visitors created an atmosphere condusive to destruction. The II is an exact duplice of I so it serves the purpose and the orignal can be preserved. There are at least a thousand caves in this area. Faced with a choice of this number,Cro-Magnon man selected Lascaux 17,000 years ago. This is one of the largest caves in the area and the one that was most suitable for painting, engraving, and mural art. The artifacts left behind in pre-historic times remained in their places on the ledges of the walls and lying on the ground, where they gradually became buried under layers of grit that fell off the walls. On to the Grotte de Rouffignac - There was a small train used for transportation. Nearly everyone on this train was English speaking so we had a tour en English. Our guide spoke knowledgeably and amusingly in Inspector Clouzeau-type English. The caves were riviting. Wonderful engravings and pictures in black outline of mammoths, horses, bison, ibex and rhinos, plus scratchings made by bears who used the caves to hibernate. The train is an engineering feat. The light was minimal and sometimes complete darkness enveloped us. It was an experience, in a small way, of what it would have been to walk into this cave during pre-historic times. In addition, it was the ORIGINAL. Onward to Brantome known as the Venice of Perigord. Most of it looked like a set of a World War II movie. Buildings on the shabby side; shops selling incredibly tacky souvenirs; cars where there should only be pedestrians and a machine in the parking lot for which a PhD was required to obtain a ticket. Off to the Marche Nocture in Ste. Alvere tonight. Tables were set up in front of the church and a Latin band installed in the indoor market. Plenty of good food - BBQ run by M. Colier of local foie gra fame serving "assiettes poerigourdin" - slices of "magret de canard" and "perigourdin," potatoes and chunks of bread. Alternatively, you could have "moules" and "frites," "poulet roti, salade de gestiers" (fried gizzard salad), crepes, "gaufres" (waffles) and "chichis" (fried dough in sugar). For dessert, there was cake, framboises and fraises with Chantilly cream and tarte de framboises. You could also buy wine, uncorked and ready to glug. It was a village fete, French style - marvelous!!! The icing on the cake was the huge, black velvet sky dotted with stars. In Ste. Alvere, we saw a tablet in a church in memory of the Marquises de Lostanges who built the church and who were the "seigneurs" for four centuries. The plaque was placed there in 1944 by their descendants - the Lostanges something or other of Houston, Texas. Salat - full of meandering streets with stalls and shops. As the sky darkened, the gas lamps went on everywhere in this ancient city. We watched an entertainer tell a story with marionettes - something about fire, animals, earth, water. What had looked to us like a pile of stones were two marionettes depicting pre-historic cave man and woman. We had to guess at the story but it didn't matter. The puppeteer made the marionettes seem alive and full of personality. Unfortunately, it was all in French. We returned to Limeuil because of a lovely restaurant. We wandered down the little streets and paused to watch huge bales of hay being forked from a tractor onto a loft on what is opotimistically called Grande Rue! We stopped to admire a plant with enormous trumpet flowers. Plants occupy one side of these narrow strreets opposite the houses and are tended with loving care. The owner of the admired flowers was at her upstairs window and came down to give us a cutting with elaborate and undecipherable instructions concerning the care of the soil and "beaucoup de l'eau." The cuttings unfortunately did not survive our trip. Orleans was very, very hot. We headed up the Jeanne d'Arc Rue to visit the Cathedral Ste. Croix. Beautiful church - incredibly high ceilings and eight wonderful stained glass windows telling the story or Joan of Arc. In the side chapel was an inspiring statue of her. There were also plaques to American and British soldiers who fought in France and are buried in French soil. Outside, the cathedral is intricate and delicate at the same time. It took us four hours from Orleans to Calais. We were all set to shop at Cite Europe only to find that it was "ferme" on Sunday. Evidently, Sunday is not a shopping day in France, not even with the heap of Euros to be made. If you have to see something different in France, do do the Dordogne.
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