Sarlat EVENING Two

Time can pass slowly, especially when I'm writing about it much later... This, our second day in Sarlat stretches out to two chapters (and then there will be another day...)

Anyway, I left you awaiting a report on our evening tour of the wondrous medieval village of Sarlat. We knew we couldn't eat dinner before 7:00 or 7:30, so we took our time walking back down the hill to town. After perusing many cafe options, we settled on one that was displaying fresh chanterelle mushrooms. Miam-miam!! So we split a mushroom omelette and a salad, and I discovered a Bergerac rose wine, which tasted unlike any rose I've ever had. (Sorry if there's any confusion; this program doesn't seem ready to accommodate a French vocabulary. I'm not writing about rose the flower; rather I'm focusing on rose the wine.)

As we sat there over dinner, we noticed something interesting. This restaurant where we were eating was French; next door was a Spanish tapas place, and up the way was another French place. It was clear that the staff of at least two of the restaurants in this immediate area worked interchangeably among the places. We wondered how that works...

All that aside, I want to focus on our evening exploring the eminently photogenic village of Sarlat. So this will be mostly photos without a lot of further editorializing. Let's start here, and just go through some streets and alleyways, and architectural details, that enticed us.

I love these two houses. The one on the right is the former house of Etienne de la Boetie, a judge and humanist poet. But the one on the left is a classic example of building where you can find space--and that doesn't necessarily mean a plot of land. Just wedge your building between the walls of the buildings on either side and build right over the street.

This is the St. Sacerdos Cathedral:

Records of this cathedral (a status it actually acquired only in the 20th century under Pope John XXIII). As an abbey, records date it back to at least 1081, and it has the distinction of being one of the few not raided by the Vikings. Now, however, the town is swarmed by visitors from the northern countries annually, so perhaps the Vikings recognized that their descendants might one day want to vacation in such a lovely place.

Behind this cathedral is the Lanterne des Morts, a monument built to honor St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who came to Sarlat at at the peak of a plague that had already killed a quarter of its population. Rumor has it that he blessed the bread and the plague was stopped. Speculation has it that he instituted sanitary practices and regulations. I'll go with the speculation... Anyway, the surviving townspeople built this out of gratitude.

As the evening closed in, we were enchanted by the artistic lighting:

And the juxtaposition of old and new:

You know there's a solid tourist business when a medieval French village has a burger joint and an Indian restaurant sharing an alleyway. And what I really loved was the three-dimensional sign right above the burger place:

If you expand the photo, you'll see that there are two ducks hanging out with what looks like a chicken.

It's encouraging to see a historic place find a way to use structures in contemporary ways without destroying the original integrity and beauty of the place.

And that does it for a very full day in Sarlat. Coming next on June 14, a very special day on the Dordogne Valley.

(Just a side note to explain why it's taking me even longer to post chapters: It's June 30/July 1 and we're now in Salzburg--we've covered a lot of ground in the past two weeks--and I'm prepping to sing with a big chorus under the baton of Dr. Edie Copley (Cindy's friend and colleague) tomorrow evening in the Salzburg Dom. So I've been studying my music the last couple of nights instead of doing this. You'll see more on this when I get to it...)