Or Sarlat-La-Canéda, a medieval town in the Dordogne, capital of Périgord Noir. We rented the car in Toulouse and drove to Sarlat through the departmental route to avoid the toll. The rental guy at Sixt tried to sell us the upgraded Opel for 35€ more a day. We turned him down, but got the same car because we promised him a good review :). The plan is stay in Sarlat for 4 days, and use as base to visit Lascaux and Cahors.

Cahors is the capital of the Lot department of the Occitanie region, on the Lot river, and is the birthplace of Malbec. We stopped briefly to get more info about Malbec wine. It turned out Malbec originated from this region of the Lot, not Argentina!

The airBnB in Sarlat is right in the middle of the medieval city, which means no car entry, which means lugging luggage through the pedestrians-only cobblestoned walkways. During the month of November and maybe all winter months, public parking is free.

The apartment is on the ground floor (yeah!) of a stoned building with a small courtyard. The living room with high ceiling has 2 tall windows opening out to the courtyard and overlooking the church tower. A heavenly peaceful place to sit with a cup of tea, blog and contemplate life! And every half-hour, the church bell rings to remind me to live life now because another hour has passed. Camus if he was sitting here, would say life is meaningless.

The apartment has a very necessary and important “secret door” that leads to the toilet room. Look how innovative is the design of the toilet with the small sink on top of the water tank.

We are in Sarlat too early in the year to be able to taste the black truffles of Périgord, whose season starts in mid-December. But I’m truffled out from having too much truffles . The first night here, I had a Truffle menu of Entree (Truffle Soup) + Plat (Truffle Magret and Foie Gras) + Dessert (Truffle Tiramisu). I could still taste truffle on my breadth waking up in the morning. I’m truffled out!

I think I’m ducked out too. No more canard and oie. I can safely say that I’ve been having canard, magret and confit, foie and gesiers, no less than twice a day since arriving here. Too much of a good thing …

We drove to Lascaux, which is 35 min of driving north, and afterwards, La Roque de Saint-Christophe. Lascaux was a learning enriching experience. Lan and I had stayed in Montignac, and visited Lascaux II in 2016, which was an incomplete replica of Lascaux. Lascaux IV is today an entire replica of the cave.

In 1940, in Montignac, a group of teenagers and their dog Robot discovered a cave with paintings that are perfectly preserved for over 17,000 years. This discovery led to the finding of the most famous Paleolithic cave art site in the world. Visit of La Roque, just blah.

Wednesday is the Open Market day in Sarlat. Yesterday, the town was quiet and almost deserted; most shops were closed. Today, the town becomes alive with merchants and tourists. Since Sarlat is the heart of Périgord Noir, the market is abundant with products that are signatures of the region, such as duck, foie gras, walnuts (oil, liquor, cake). The market opens at 8:30 -1:30. At exactly 1:30, the trucks and shops started their closing. By 1:45, the town goes back to being empty.