Into the Woods

Bonjour!

Writing this on the last night in La Maraval, our vacation home away from home. We've had a wonderful time here and it flew by. Here's a link if you'd like to see pictures of the property and read about its history.

Yesterday we drove to St. Emilion, a wine region in Bordaux. The town itself is ancient and one of the oldest vineyards in the world is located there. While the guys went wine tasting, we girls toured the ancient underground church. The town is incredible, built out of the stone that was excavated to build the church.

Today we stayed close to home, visiting the caves of Villar and having lunch at the quaint town of St. Jean de Cole. It has an interesting church: they could not figure out how to build a dome, so they filled in the space with timber.

Last Wednesday, we went to Perigueux, which has a farmer's market. The town was much larger than we expected--a city really, and the market was great! We spent a small fortune on cheese, but it was truly artisanal--down to milking the cows by hand in order to get the utmost quality control. Frankly, I'm happy with string cheese from Trader Joe's, but I can appreciate good cheese when I taste it. Unfortunately, so can my waistline.

The day before that, we went to Brantome, which has an abbey founded by Charlemagne. We purchased regional specialties there: mushrooms, duck sausage, wine. One of my favorite regional specialities, however, is the foie gras. I'm embarrased to admit it, because it's not nice to the geese, but OMG does it taste good!

I've managed to get a little bit of running in this week. Besides the 5 miler last Sunday, I got in a quick 3 miler in on Wednesday and then ran 10 miles this morning. There is a "rails to trails" path that starts in St. Pardoux la Riviere called the Voie Vert and it is wonderful. I ran through woods and under arched bridges and past flowering trees. I encountered only two other people, locals out for a stroll and it was peaceful and quiet. I swear I heard a cuckoo bird; it sounded just like a cuckoo clock.

I must be off. It's 11:30 in the evening and everyone in the house is in bed. We have an early start tomorrow to our next destination, so I will say au revoir for now. I'll post pictures when I can, but it may not be until I get back.