Once again we took the opportunity to spend a couple of nights in Paris. The Starry Night by Van Gogh in the Musee d’Orsay took my breath away.
We hopped on a train to the town of Brive and picked up our rental car; note that you should check-out traveling all the way to Cahors via train. Cahors is in the Lot department with the river Lot flowing through the district. We stayed at a B&B west of Cahors near the town of Douelle. Cahors is very easy to wine tour, no need for reservations and friendly proprietors. Cahors is Malbec, malbec is an allowed grape in Bordeaux wines but is rarely used today. A French malbec bares little resemblance to an Argentinian malbec, with the Cahors malbecs being black ie highly concentrated and tannic as opposed to the easy drinking Argentinian wines. The wines are not our favorite since we like more fruit, so you dirt lovers would probably love these wines after aging a bit. The area however was beautiful with the towns populated with medieval houses that have exposed timbers, including the city of Cahors. We did a day trip over to the village of St Cirq Lapopie, which is picture perfect.
Two other famous towns just north of Cahors are Sarlat and Rocamadour. Unfortunately we got rained out in Sarlat but got the idea of the town. Sarlat is a larger town than St Cirq but similar medieval architecture. This is goose and duck country, every shop has canned duck confit and foie gras. We had never had duck confit before but are now huge fans. In North America it is a delicacy, in this part of the world it is as pervasive as a burger would be to us. Rocamadour is a neat town built on the side of a cliff, we did this on a bike and it was quite a challenge climbing out of the valley.
From here we went cycling in the Correze, a plateau NE of Brive. This was the exercise portion of the vacation. We did get a lot of exercise in between rain days but we did not lose any weight due to the excellent food. We stayed at a Bike accommodation that included our biking and meals (breakfast and dinner). The British couple that runs it did a fantastic job renovating an old stone barn into the rental accommodations. The food was great, think Jamie Oliver type of British cooking not mushy peas and shoe leather. At the end of our trip it was like leaving our new friends Sam and James and le petite chien Henri.
About a two hour drive west was Bordeaux, the most famous wine region in the world. Bordeaux is not an easy area to DIY, you cannot just drive up to a winery and knock on the door. However that does not mean you cannot taste great wines here. We booked two half-day tours, one on the Left Bank and one on the Right Bank. This gave us a solid understanding of the appellation. There are several great wine bars, the wine museum where you can also taste wine and a store where you can taste samples of some very high end wine (like Lafite Rothchild). The store and one of the wine bars will sell you a card with a dollar amount loaded on, you insert the card into an enomatic machine select the amount you want and presto you have a small sample to taste. You can find wine tasting opportunities everywhere; we did a boat cruise on the river where some small winemakers presented their wines.
Bordeaux is a grand city with some architectural marvels. We stayed at a B&B about 15 minutes from the main area of town. This is probably the best B&B I have ever stayed at. What made it so special was the proprietor; we would chat with her for over an hour as we ate our delicious breakfast. The bed was the most comfortable I have slept in in all of Europe.
Another great trip filled with great wine, great food and great sights just lousy weather.