Amanda’s Red Guide : 09/20/2006

Disclaimer: Amanda's Red Guide is based on Amanda's taste only. Occasionally she takes input from her travel companions, but more often than not, her opinion dominates her reviews.Unfortunately, she didn't write down the exact names of her dishes due to various constraints.

Lunch :

La Petite Borie
4, Rye Tourny
24200 Sarlat
05 53 31 23 69

As usual, we just randomly picked a lunch place that looked promising instead of consulting Michelin Le Guide Rouge. We went to this restaurant near the south end of the Old Town. It was pretty good for what it was; nothing fancy, but solid local food. Loïc and I ordered their daily special, a collection of local cuisine. I loved its traditional style of Confit de Conard, salty but tasty, and its fat saturated fried potatos. Its fois gras was not as silky nor refined as what we had at Augerge La Plume d’Oie, but that was expected. The goat cheese wasn’t bad, but I had no space for it. The salade was fine. For 12 Euros, it was a pretty decent meal. On the other hand, David’s fixed menu dish was pretty lame: A small salad with some duck inners as the main course and ice cream as dessert for 15 Euros.

Conclusion: Recommended for their daily special.

Dinner :

Hôtel Belle Étoile
24250 La Roque-Gageac
05 53 29 51 44

Every guide book we carried recommends this hotel/restaurant, so we went there for dinner. We ordered its 24-Euro menu, the least expensive one. Because last night’s dinner still lingered in my mind, tonight’s was a disappointment. Not a fair comparison, I know; I should’ve compared one 45-Euro menu against the other. On the other hand, things could’ve been better executed and the waiters could’ve tidied the place after we left. My fois gras terrine was a bit too hard to spread on the cold toast. The main course was OK but not exciting; its sauce tasted like my can chicken soup. My banana dessert would be better to use Angelico instead of Rum. I felt that we were rushed out of the restaurant, even though we were the last clients in this salon. As we walked out and passed by another (smoking) salon, we saw that they still got a full house of diners. So why the rush? Overall it was good value, but I didn’t enjoy my dining experience.

Conclusion: Depends.

Hôtel :

Auberge La Plume d’Oie
24250 La Roque-Gageac
05 53 29 57 05

See 9/19/2006.

Beynac

We headed towards Beynac, since its cute stone houses had been lingering in my mind and I wanted to check out a real medieval castle.



The afternoon sun was beaming down on us without mercy. We took refuge in Hôtel du Château, to recharge ourselves with cold drinks and file off some postcards. After feeling like humans again, we drove up to the cliff-clinging castle, Château fédoral de Beynac.

We learned some interesting facts from our knowledgeable castle guide:

• The film, “The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc,” was filmed here.
• The castle owner’s wife was the one selling us entrance ticket.
• Due to the Christian belief and the preciousness of water, the sanitary condition at the castle was not good, far worse than the Roman time. (More than 1,000 years ago!)
• In the entire castle, only 2 tiny toilets presented, and they were for the master and mistress of the castle only. How did others take care of their business was a big mystery to me.
• The Plague wiped out more than half of the residents at the castle, but nobody understood it.
• The interior layout was very clear. Would be even better if someone thought of putting a few more toilets.
• This castle was occupied by the French during the Hundred Years’ War. It was used to watch the castle in Castelnaud, occupied by the British, across the Dordogne river.
• The original entrance was tiny and heavily guarded. Nasty stuff would be dumped from above if guards found someone suspecting.
• Cooks didn’t just hang meat in the air to dry, they also hung their babies in the air, not to dry, but to avoid them crawling around and getting into trouble and to protect them being eaten by rats.

My first medieval castle experience was quite a shock to me! Now I understood why the Middle Age was the Dark Age…

Sarlat

We found Dordogne Market Schedule in “Rick Steves’ France 2006” and planned our Sarlat visit on Wednesday accordingly. (We later on visiting a couple other markets, but none of them could complete with Sarlat’s.) Actually Saturday is its best market day, but we had other engagement this weekend and had to settle for what we could get. Even so, this was plenty for us.

All our guide books place Sarlat on the top of their list. Rick Steves’ describes it the best:

“Sarlat is a pedestrian-filled banquet of a town, scenically set amid forested hills. There are no blockbuster sights here, just a seductive tangle of traffic-free, golden cobblestone alleys peppered with beautiful buildings and stuffed with tourists and foie gras stores. …Sarlat is just the right size — large enough to have a theater with four screens, and small enough so that everything is an easy meander from the town center. …”

This is pretty much what we experienced. Unlike Saint-Émilion, people actually live here (OK, maybe not in the touristy Old Sarlat). And unlike the small Saint-Émilion, Sarlat’s size felt “right.” Mabye because the town was so alive, with the big market and lots of restaurants and shops to keep us busy. Saint-Émilion is very charming, but Sarlat easily tops it by providing more interesting architecture, more history, and just more everything except wine. Also, Sarlat can be reached by train, a big plus IMHO.

Sarlat’s narrow streets and tall buildings mean that it’s hard to take good pictures with my little camera, and it also didn’t help that the sun brought too much contrast to my photo targets. As a result, I probably didn’t do Sarlat justice, but that goes without saying. After visiting one after another beautiful Dordogne towns, it’s clear to me that no photos can replace the real things. Plus, photos in guide books can be misleading! When I drew my Sarlat, France, the photo in Michelin The Green Guide suggested that it was an 1+ floor house. When we found it (actually Loïc did), there was a whole floor beneath it, as shown in the photo on the right.

La Roque-Gageac

We came to the dining room before the breakfast was ready, so we went for a morning walk. Completely different from yesterday, it was quite foggy and reminded us of our sweet home.

P.S. More photos on La Roque-Gageac.

Amanda’s Red Guide : 09/19/2006

Disclaimer: Amanda's Red Guide is based on Amanda's taste only. Occasionally she takes input from her travel companions, but more often than not, her opinion dominates her reviews.Unfortunately, she didn't write down the exact names of her dishes due to various constraints.

Lunch :

D’un Terroir À L’autre
51, Rue Ste Caterine
24100 Bergerac
05 53 27 16 37

Our duck was overcooked, but edible. My dessert, poire au vin Bergerac, at first tasted like mouth wash, but after we figured out what spice it used, it was OK.

Conclusion: Not Recommended.

Dinner :

Auberge La Plume d’Oie
24250 La Roque-Gageac
05 53 29 57 05

We had dinner at our hôtel tonight, because otherwise Hiddy Walker wouldn’t book rooms for us. And I’m surely glad that she did! Marc Walker is a great cook, and he made my best entrée and main dish of this entire trip. My fois gras entrée was silky and refined; he spread some sea salt to enhance its flavor, a technique that I applied for the rest of my fois gras exploration. My main dish, scorpion fish, was perfect! The caper sauce with a touch of lemon, the juicy fish with crispy skin and some sea salt, a little green mountain made of mixture of peas and patato and decorated with broccoli… Yummy! The cheese course was OK; some of the cheese seemed a little too old, and some needed to warm up a little more. My apricot dessert looked pretty but was incredibly sour! Yes, sour! Marc must be fond of sourness; he decorated my entrée with 3 little balls of Granny Smith apple. I’m not a big fan of sour flavor, and I just can’t understand a sour dessert.

Conclusion: Highly Recommended.

Hôtel :

Auberge La Plume d’Oie
24250 La Roque-Gageac
05 53 29 57 05

Rick Steves recommended La Belle Étoile; we called but it was full. So we called the next on the Red Guide list, Auberge La Plume d’Oie, and was told that we had to dine in their restaurant at least one night. It’s a little pricy, considering that there was a shower curtain rather than a shower door and we could hear our loud New Zealand neighbors all too well. 4 rooms total; 2 rooms facing the Dordogne river have the view and the traffic noise. Marc Walker prepared breakfast as well, and his egg dish was yummy!

Conclusion: Depends on what kind of neighbors you get.

Domme

We continued eastwardly on D703. After crossing a bridge and driving up the mountain, we found ourselves in Domme 10 minutes later.

Domme is a bastide town. According to Eyewitness Travel Guides’ “Dordogne & Southwest France“:

“Bastide Towns

Between 1220 and 1370, the counts of Toulouse and King Edward I of England, ordered nearly 300 fortified towns (bastides) to be build in southwestern France. Laid out to a set plan, they were established for political and economic as well as military reasons. Through them it was possible to bring together local populations and to maximize yields from agricultural land. A reciprocal agreement between the founder of a bastide and the owner of the surrounding land safeguarded the rights of each. The bastide was governed by a bailiff, who represented the king.”

The main road lead to the covered market, located in the center of town, was full of tourist shops, and it reminded me of Provence towns a lot. Other parts of town felt dead, while this section was swamped by tourists. Under the covered market was the entrance to caves of stalactites and stalagmites, and we happened to make it to its last tour.

Maybe because I had seen the CD that my dad made from his trip to Guilin, China, I wasn’t all that impressed with the caves. 45 minutes later, we finished the tour and I was amazed by the panoramic view of the Dordogne region.

Somehow we couldn’t find the famous Porte des Tours, which “is marked with graffiti made by Knights Templar who were imprisoned here,” and these two guys were tired by now to explore further. Well, next time then.

Bergerac and La Roque-Gageac

We continued driving eastwarly to La Roque-Gageac and only stopped by Bergerac for lunch. After yesterday’s beautiful Saint-Émilion, Bergerac’s Vieille Ville (Old Town) was a disappointment. What I didn’t know was that we could keep on coming back to it, and by the end of our Dordogne trip, we got the illusion that we knew it by heart.

After dropping our luggage at La Plume d’Oie Auberge in La Roque-Gageac, we explored this incredible rock town. The narrow D703 splits the Dordogne river and the stripe town; both people and cars learn to share it in no time. Because the town is digged from the rocky mountain, it is shallow and doesn’t have much room to grow. We tried to go up to the troglodytic fort, which was mysteriously closed way before its official closing time. So we went to the other direction to its garden of exotic plants and verified that it indeed has quite a collection of exotic plants.

Since we weren’t interested in taking the tourist boat down the Dordogne river (we saw some people riding canoes as well), there was not much else to do in La Roque-Gageac. If I thought Saint-Émilion was small, La Roque-Gageac was minuscule. Dinner wouldn’t start in a few hours, and the weather was too nice for us to sit in our tiny rooms. David decided that we would go for a ride.

“But to where?” I asked.

“East!” he declared.