Today was another rainy day, so our plans for canoeing on the Dordogne were not possible. Instead we decided to go check out some caves in the area. We wanted to go to the Grotte de Font de Gaume (44°56'13.2"N, 1°01'35.8"E) which is the only one of the Vezere valley Cro-magnon caves that you can still visit (others are replicas now, the most famous being Lascaux). Unfortunately they only take 180 people through each day and the tickets were sold out. So we went to our second choice, Les Grottes de Maxange, and are we ever glad we did. The story goes, that it was a stone quarry, and in 2002 the fellow who owned it, Angel, was doing some work and broke through into a cavern, he soon realized it was no regular cavern. This cave is filled with weird eccentric stalactites and stalagmites. It was really an amazing thing to see. We were not able to take photos but if you'd like to see a bit, go to this Youtube video promo (44°50'12.3"N, 0°55'00.8"E): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgCxox-aTJo
On the way to St. Émilion, we hit probably the culinary low point of our trip and a first for us on any of our trips to Europe. It's true confession time and we're not proud of it. As was previously mentioned it was raining, yet again, and our picnic was out of the question. At Bergerac (yep, Cyrano's home town), in frustration, we succumbed to Ronald's spell and stopped for lunch, at McDonalds. Cindy says it was actually pretty good.
We continued on to St Émilion, one of the pre-eminent wine regions of Bordeaux. It's really just a small hilltop village with medieval and Roman history. Here's a few pics from there.
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| (44°53'31.2"N, 0°09'26.5"W) |
(44°53'31.2"N, 0°09'2.15"W)
(44°53'41.8"N, 0°09'24.1"W)
We bought a couple of bottles to have later. Here's the wine list from one of the places in St Émilion. Perhaps you could help us select the wine we should have bought for you (prices in Euros).
(44°53'37.0"N, 0°09'21.7"W)
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