Things like charm.
And beauty.
Le charme et beaux.
Off we set.
Rolling hills of trees, closing in on flat bottomed fields of brown wheat or green, knee high sunflowers. Winding, single lane roads, D807 dropping to D807a and so on. Lazy white signs, propped up by rocks, lean and sort of haphazardly point the way to the next village.
Maybe.
Stone farms, rock sheds with slate roofs, leaning against old trees, hugging the road.
The road switch backed up, up and over the limestone cliffs rimming the valley, to Martel, then back down winding along the river.
We drove across a bridge so narrow...
so narrow it would make you cringe.
But for me, it is all part of the fun.
And yes, I did park the car there and jump out and run back to take the photo.
What did we find?
Beaux Villages. Beautiful villages. Village du Charme.
Everywhere is Le Charme.
Good view, no patisserie.
Le Charme stone houses and patisserie, no view.
Nice location, view, restaurants, no stores.
Cute, but no.
All the stuff you really need in life, but no le charme.
Le Beaux, but nothing else.
And so on.
We rolled through the villages: La Roque-Gageac, beautiful on the river. Saint Sousi, beautiful under a cliff. Loubressac, beautiful on top of a cliff.
You get the idea.
More towns, and more: Autoire, Carennac, Padirac (We were singing, "with a knick-knack Padirac, give yer dawg a bone…") Sarlat-le-Canéda, Marlet, and others.
You can google map them. Search for Rocamadour and zoom out a couple clicks.
The winner?
It was a clear choice for us.
We like Carennac best.
Nice manageable size, good food available, lots of le charme and beaux both. Walkable, slightly hilly, patisserie, things of interest. Good history, a church with an interesting barrel-vault ceiling and bones (BING BING BING! Extra bonus points for the bone crypt!) and lots of photography choices. Good bells.
Martel, another true small town like Carennac, takes third. Lots of vertical spires, nice central market.
The photos of each village are below, each set is designated by a sign before the photos of that particular village. Carennac, Sarlat-la Canéda and Martel are in the first slideshow together, the rest are in the second slide show.
At least this gives you an idea of a place to drive, search and have fun on your own.
For some of the day, we followed part of the Route de la Noix.
That is "The Way of the Nuts.”
Why not? Sounds appropriate.
To be fair: we are also on the route of foie gras (and all things duck and geese related) and the route des vin (wine).
It is simply the Route de Gluttony.
Love this route.
Beauty, charm, food and wine.
I could live here.
We like to listen to Nostalgi Radio. A mix of American oldies and French classics. The commercials help me pick up the pace of French. It gives my ear time to practice, so to speak.
I hate the French language. Though it is easy to read, the pronunciation is crazy. Why can't it be easy like Italian, German or Spanish?
That is the big detriment to moving to France.
I love the French language. It sounds wonderful, and every little damn word sounds like something you love, something old and amazing, something adorable, or something delicious.
For example, wouldn't you just love to order this in a restaurant:
Chaussée Déformée.
"I'll have the shaw-say dee-for-may, and a glass of red Bordeaux, S'il vous plaît."
Actually, that musical sounding concoction you just ordered a plate of is "Deformed Road."
See what I mean?
Even a sign telling you that you are about to die if you don't slow down, sounds delicious, magical, enticing.
Slow down, enjoy a glass of the red wine and some Chaussée Déformée, or you shall surely go off the road and die.
Or perhaps you would murmur that in your lover's ear after dinner?
"The food was superb, the company fascinating, your beauty moves me to tears. Let's walk to my place, where we will slowly remove your lovely gravillons..."
Chips.
Like gravel.
Car's gonna slide off the road on those gravillons.
Better slow down, and not in a romantic sort of way, honey.
Today one of the phrases is "Je regarde, merci."
It means, "I am only looking, thank you."
For when Gail goes into yet another store, and I am standing there trapped, and the nice lady comes over to see if I need help?
Or if perhaps I am sick?
Why the sad sad look on your face?
Je regarde, merci.
Now I can say it.
And I have had a lot of times to use it.
We made it to Carennac in time for lunch. La Petite Vigne, it is also a chambres d'hôtes. We simply chose the pre fixe midi, a three course meal of the day. There were three choices.
Gail picked ham and melon salad to start, salmon for the main and apple tart for dessert.
I chose the Roquefort tarte to start, lamb (rare, French style) and Ile Flottante to wind up. I didn't even know what the dessert was. Turns out it is like merengue in a lake of caramel with almonds. A "floating island."
I should have got the tarte citrone.
It was not fancy, and the presentation was haphazard, but for €13 for the three courses, it was a solid meal, served to the locals. To further the deal, the half liter of red cost €8.
We barely made it at 13:30, the midi (lunch) service ends at 14:00. Two bongs of the church bell and the kitchen shut down, but we ate till three bongs.
We ate at Le Vin au 10. You can google it and find it yourself.
It is on a side street, up from the main old-town square area. The menu is completely on a chalk board that they bring to your table.
This soup was new to me, and besides the amazing taste it was presented in an interesting and amazing way.
It is Velouté de Parmesan, jamon du Perigord, eschalottes, ciboulette et noix.
Let's go though it a little at a time: So, like velvet (creamy) parmesan cheese which means soup.
Jamon is ham or bacon, and Perigord is the area, and they are proud their pig is the best kind.
Shallots. That is easy.
Ciboulette. Chives. Though if you haven't seen that before on a menu, you'd have to chance it.
And of course, nuts.
So, at least four of the five ingredients we know, and they sound good. It sounds like an interesting mix, let's take a chance on it.
Well, let me tell you, the taste was amazing. The tang and creamy smoothness, the balance of flavors, the lingering savory taste. Chewy deep tasting smoke of bacon, and crunchy tang of chopped walnuts. Little crunch from the chives and the cream of the soup.
I have never had a soup like this.
And the presentation. It was a big, empty white bowl, "dusted" with the scattered ingredients. Little colorful pieces of chive and chopped nuts and bacon. He swooped in and set the bowl in front of me, and then from a white pitcher poured the creamy soup right in on top of it, lifting the pitcher dramatically as he did it. He poured about half the pitcher, leaving the rest for me.
"Monsieur."
But I sat there with my mouth open, then when I recovered I just laughed.
Anyway, I had a duck breast for the plat, and that was really well done, in a tasty sauce.
Gail had an omelette with mushrooms, which she liked in spite of not liking mushrooms.
The potatoes that came with both meals were excellent as well.
We split a tiramisu for dessert, and I had a café espresso).
We really enjoyed the meal, and I had one of the best wines so far, with it. A photo of the lable is with the food photos below.
Here we are, three weeks into the trip and in spite of the Chaussée Déformée and gravillons, I can finally order our entire meal and converse simply in French.
Though to be fair about it, the next day after I wrote this, I started out ordering our meal in Italian, totally out of the blue, and I am thinking, "Damn! This French language!"
Anyway, three weeks in: The French is (sort of) picking up. My photos are getting better and I am having more fun writing as I relax.
Three weeks it took.