Here There and Everywhere

Leaving the Perigord for Salers, in the Auvergne

Morning in Domme:

Major gate into Domme, the Porte de Tours:

 

 

Around thirty five years ago, when our son was young, we visited this part of France, and spent a lot of time in the caves, and also at Castlenaud, a castle near Beynac with an impressive medieval war machines and weapons museum. It was July, and hot, and there were other visitors, but not a lot. Castlenaud was wired for sound, and the music was wonderful. I went to the ticket person and asked what the music was. It was Monteverdi, Un Concert Spirituel.  Once back in Germany, I searched until I found it. It’s one of my favorite CDs to this day. I learned a little more about Monteverdi, that he was sort of the Jimi Hendrix of his day, mixing human voices in ways they had never been mixed before.

 

Here is a close up of one section. It is mountainous. The roads are tiny!

 

On our way to Les Eyzies, and Castlenaud, on that trip, we spent the night in Salers. I knew nothing of Salers other than that the town was roofed in slate; it was a poor area, but rich in slate.

We had stayed at a hotel called Hotel Les Remparts, which had a fairly simple menu with steaks from local cows; many of these same cows were in the valley below the hotel, busy munching and making the milk which goes into the famous Cantal cheese.

As the three of us walked through Salers after dinner, we came to a church entry where the door was open, and maybe five to seven people were in a candle lit entry hallway singing old sacred music – sounded a lot like Monteverdi, with wonderful echoes bouncing around off the old stone wall. It was magical. Even our ten year old son was spellbound.

It was a little bit of a drive from Domme, three hours, but I really wanted to visit that hotel once again.

 

Once again, Google took us on some very strange roads until my husband begged me to use the map and stick to the main roads. Honestly, he was right. We had been on some mountain roads, one lane, with French drivers going must faster than we were comfortable. And here’s the thing. The French used to be crazy drivers, with terrible wrecks, and now, we can hardly believe it, but there has been a huge cultural shift and the French are law-abiding, safe drivers. We knew on these narrow, single-lane roads, with no protection from steep drop-offs, that WE were the problem, and I agreed with my husband, and we kept to the larger roads.

French bikers along the route:

(very careful, well-behaved bikers)

Even so, it took us longer that we had hoped, or maybe it seemed longer.

At one point, I remember AdventureMan pulling over and saying “Take that picture! It may be the only sun we see all day!” and he was right, it was drizzly and very dreary, and it colored our impression of the drive.

Our first sighting of one of the slate roofs. Can you see why I love them? Look how lovingly they have been cut to have a curved bottom. I try to imagine how to cut slate so that the thicknesses are so much alike.

We are getting near to Salers, but we are tired and we need to stop. We stop in St. Martins, at a hotel and they tell us no, they don’t serve until dinner but that is a really good little Bistro just off the main road to Salers, and to stop there. We do, at Le P’tit Bistrot. The place is packed, but the waitress likes us. “You are American?” she asks, with a big smile. Some customers are leaving and she puts us at that table, and cleans it off.

“I’ll check with the chef to see what is left,” she tells us, and hurries to the kitchen. Coming back, she points to the daily special and tells us we are in luck, that there is still a little left. It is turkey. We are hungry. Fine with us.

This stuffed tomato was wonderful! Tasty, and artistically done. Simple salad, good local bread.

I apologize. We really were hungry. It’s a good thing my husband reminded me I had not taken a photo. The turkey was perfect, moist and fork-tender, with a home made gravy. Even the rice has flavor. So simple, and so good.

AdventureMan had french fries (actually, pommes frites) with his, and said they were hot and fresh.

The rain had not let up as we left (pardon the splotch on my lens) St. Martin’s.

And we arrive at the Hotel Les Remparts in Salers – still raining.

As we checked in, we could hear cow bells. When we got to our room, we opened the windows and the cow bells were so loud, I thought maybe it was a recording. No, then we spotted the cows, and as they munched the grass and raised their heads, the tinkle was incessant, in a good way. I loved the sound of those bells.

Salers is wonderful for walking, even though today it is a little dreary, and the cobblestones are slick. Salers is a little isolated, tourist season is over, and it is October 31st, which we think of as Hallowe’en, and it is in France, too, but it is also the night before All Hallows Day, which is a French national holiday, in the solemn religious sense of the word holiday. Almost everything will be closed.

Just before dark, the sun lights up the clouds and we have a little brightness:

You can dimly see the cows.

There is a little white cat in the bottom right of this photo, as some hotel guests’ window saying “please, please, can I come in?”

What I had originally been photographing was this roof, all planted with greenery and herbs, but the cat distracted me 🙂

I love the way the French will find a way to grow a garden in the tiniest spot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My dinner that night was disappointing. I had thought that pate’ cepes would be some kind of pate’ made out of mushrooms, but AdventureMan rightly guessed it would be pork with mushrooms, more pork than mushrooms. My main dish was pork, so much like barbecued pork that I might have been back in Pensacola, and it was accompanied by their famous truffade, which was a heavy potato and cantal cheese dish, so heavy and glue-y I couldn’t eat it. For dessert I ordered the pear torte, which turned out to be a little bit of pear on top of a custard. My bad, I ordered these things, but I didn’t have to eat them, so I didn’t.

When I was young, and we would dine in France and Germany, my father would say we had to eat things or we would hurt the chef’s feelings. I love being a grown up. I don’t have to eat it if I don’t want to, LOL.

January 3, 2020 - Posted by intlxpatr | Adventure, Cross Cultural, Cultural, Food, France | France, Hotel Les Remparts, Salers