2/52 b&w

Jardin de Marqueyssac

One of the most magical places we went in France was the Jardin de Marqueyssac, a chateau and garden in Vezac, near Sarlat.  The chateau was built in the 17th century, and overlooks Beynac and La Roque Gageac on the Dordogne (where we canoed earlier in the week).  The garden is filled with niches and twists and turns, and thousands of sculptured boxwoods.  See all  the pictures here. 

The Dordogne River Valley, La Roque Gageac to the far left, Beynac near the center.

I can't get enough of these shrubs!

In the woods.

Hot and sweaty.  This was 8pm - sundown wasn't until about 10pm.

New Project: 52 weeks of black and white

I had fun doing the 365 project, and miss the forced creativity, but trying to do a photo every day got to be too much. So I'm starting a new project - one black and white photo every week.   

So, to start....

1/52 The Flower Theater

Wisconsin

 Lily and Michael are wrapping up a fun-filled trip to Wisconsin.

1111.1 miles

There was tubing:

 

And cornholing:

And swimming in Lake Superior (Lily's now been in 4 out of the 5 Great Lakes):

And large animal statues:

 
And, best of all, grandparents:

Caveman Day

The Dordogne region is home to prehistoric caves, many with prehistoric cave art.  We visited the Grotte de Rouffignac, a smaller cave about 40 minutes from Sarlat.  It contains over 250 engravings and cave paintings dating back to the Upper Paleolithic era.   During the Second World War the cave had served as a hide-out for the French Résistance. A little electric train took us about 2 km into the cave, where we saw paintings of mammoths, bisons, horses, and whoolly rhinoceroses.  There were also bear scratches on the walls, and burrows where the bears had hibernated.  It's amazing to think of people millions of years ago going into these dangerous, cold, narrow, pitch-black caves and making art.  No photos from inside the cave but here's a sample of the cave art from a French stamp:

After the cave, we stopped for lunch nearby at a roadside cafe, which involved jumping off things:

Then we went to the very well-done and sleek Pole International de la Prehistoire (Prehistory Welcome Center) in Les Eyzies-de-Tayac.  Notice the cave dwellings in the cliffs in the first photo:

Everything was in French, so we just played with the bones.

I love these chairs.

At the end of the day, Michael realized he lost his license somewhere.  The good people of the Rouffignac cave mailed it back to him in the US.

More photos (including Dordogne canoeing photos) are here.  (You have to scroll to the bottom).

Sarlat-la-Canéda

After Paris and the stop in Oradour-sur-Glane, we drove to Sarlat-la-Canéda.  Sarlat is a town in the Dordogne department of France, in a region known as the Périgord Noir.  Sarlat is a beautiful medieval town, and our hotel was amazing - an apartment in a 14th century building, with our own terrace. From Wikipedia:

Sarlat is a medieval town that developed around a large Benedictine abbey of Carolingian origin. The medieval Sarlat Cathedral is dedicated to Saint Sacerdos.  Because modern history has largely passed it by, Sarlat has remained preserved and one of the towns most representative of 14th century France. It owes its current status on France's Tentative List for future nomination as a UNESCO World Heritage site to the enthusiasm of writer, resistance fighter and politician André Malraux, who, as Minister of Culture (1960–1969), restored the town and many other sites of historic significance throughout France. The centre of the old town consists of impeccably restored stone buildings and is largely car-free.

While in this region we canoed on the Dordogne river, visited a goose farm, toured a prehistoric cave and saw the paintings, shopped at the weekly Sarlat market, and enjoyed nightly shows in the town square.

See all the photos from our first 2 days in Sarlat here.

Oradour-sur-Glane

On day 4 of the trip, we took a train from Paris to Limoges, in the Southwest. I chose Limoges as the place to get our rental car even though it was two hours away from our next hotel town (Sarlat) because I wanted to visit nearby Oradour-sur-Glane.  I only learned about Oradour-sur-Glane from the travel guidebooks I had been reading.  It was the site of a World War II atrocity.  From the Wikipedia article:

The original village was destroyed on 10 June 1944, when 642 of its inhabitants, including women and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company. A new village was built after the war on a nearby site but on the orders of the then French president, Charles de Gaulle, the original has been maintained as a permanent memorial and museum.

 My photos are here.  They don't capture how somber and eery the place really is. Lily seemed to grasp the purpose of the memorial.  She looked intently at all of the objects in the memorial/museum, and noted the names of children her own age.  She decreed war "stupid."