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."

Paris Photos

The Paris photos are now up on Flickr.  Click here.

That covers 3 days of the trip.  At this rate I'll be done by Christmas.  :-)

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