July 23

I guess it's time to leave Amboise. This morning dawned with pounding rain and thunder rattling the windows. We had an early (and I mean early) train to catch so our hostess told us to come to her kitchen to eat so she wouldn't disturb the other guests. We fumbled about for a while trying to remember French ("we" being "I" since Amy never really had any French) and eventually described our upcoming trip to the Dordogne Valley.

Our train trip wasn't terribly long, but I realized it's actually better to sit across rather than next to. When I'm opposite Amy I can intrude into her space, but when I don't know the person across from me I have to keep my legs tucked away. The trip took us into some spectacular hill country and past incredible castles which we're supposed to see in the next day or so.

Sarlat is larger than Amboise, but has a tightly concentrated downtown core so it feels more intimate. I was constantly getting turned about, but Amy seemed to always know which direction was which and where such and such a shop was. She has a gift like that. We spent the afternoon wandering around the shops in the blistering heat. Thankfully it wasn't too bad in the shade and by the time night rolled around it was cool enough we could sleep.

July 24

45 kilometers by bicycle and now another 21 kilometers by canoe. It's a pity we'll never know how far we've walked on this trip or we could do a section by the numbers.

Today we floated from the Dordogne River from Carsac to St. Vincent de Cosse. We started around 10am with a thin veil of fog still clinging to the valley and didn't turn in our canoe until nearly 6pm.

The day started with a taxi ride courtesy of Allo Phillipe Taxi. Apparently old Phillipe is the only English-speaking cabbie in Sarlat so he's amazingly busy. It's not helped (or is, hard to tell) that he's also mentioned in Rick Steves' books. Amy thought he looked like Andre the Giant in Princess Bride, but to me he was more like Indiana Jones' Egyptian friend in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Soon we were on the river with approximately one million other tourists who had always wanted to float the Dordogne. It seems that while it's all well and good to recommend your favorite bits of a trip to others it's like a grand pyramid scheme where the canoe companies get all the money. I tell 10 people and they tell 10 people and now there are 10 canoe companies raking in the francs. Of course, at some point people will realize floating a river when all you can see are other yellow and orange boats isn't what they really wanted and it'll all fall apart. Put your order in now for a slightly used canoe, they're going fast.

Of course that's still in the future. Today (or at least when we were there) it was a great experience. The weather was brilliant and hot, but the river cool.

Shortly after leaving Carsac we came around a corner to be confronted by Montfort. It was huge, imposing, inspiring, but otherwise an enigma. I suppose we could have looked into it more, but this is vacation, damn it, not research.

Floating was amazingly relaxing. There wasn't a whole lot to do and certainly no dire need to pay a ton of attention to the river or paddling. We just enjoyed the weather and watched the cliffs slide past. We passed under two stone bridges before arriving at La Roque.

Some fortresses are built in the plains and some on top of hills, but La Roque is built into the hill overlooking the river. Looking up at it we were hard pressed to see what was La Roque and was the rock. (Ouch, I know, bad joke. Sorry.) All that was visible were caves bricked up with windows. Since there were no doors on the face (and no way to access them even if there were) the caves must be interconnected by tunnels and entrances elsewhere. You can tour the inside, but it was too early in the morning for such an educational tour. We came back through La Roque at the end of the day, but the hill leading to the entrance was a tad too daunting so we put it off for our next trip.

Visible from La Roque, but at the other end of the valley, is Castelnaud. It's built on a huge cliff so the only approach is from the north. In spite of the natural defenses the fortress changed hands frequently, mostly as the result of shrewd political moves. It also has a huge collection of working siege engines, so I was quite keen to see it.

We pulled ashore at a beach with half the rest of the river population and lumbered up the steep hill that must have been murder on attackers. The big attraction for me was a working trebuchet and a variety of other throwing devices. We found a great tour guide with wonderful English, but horrible teeth, who shared all sorts of secrets about the construction of the weapons and the castle as a whole. We spent an hour above ground and another half an hour in the museum before heading back down the hill.

From the third bridge across the river at Castelnaud it was but a short paddle downstream to the fifth bridge at Les Milandes and the takeout point. The van ride back to the starting location was hot and unpleasant with fully one half the one million boaters crammed into a Volkswagen Beetle-sized vehicle, but we made it in one piece.

Back in La Roque (headquarters of the boat company) we found a deserted pizza place that seemed genuinely thrilled to have customers, even if we were American. They made a great bolognaise pizza and, more importantly, had ice-cold Coke that was gone long before the food arrived. We called Phillipe again and he whisked us back to our hotel in Sarlat.

Showered and finally cool, we relaxed with nothing planned for tomorrow. It promises to be another scorcher, but with a bit of ice cream we ought to be ok.

July 25

After the last couple of days we needed some downtime. Ahhh, how relaxing. We finally booked a place to stay in Rome (about time, huh?), canceled our hotel in London on our way home, confirmed our hotel in Carcasonne (always fun for me to try to speak French over the phone), did laundry, got a haircut, went online (for fun and to answer some work email), and went shopping. I'm sorry, did I say we got to relax?

Don't worry. Our busy schedule will start up again in Carcasonne.