Vineyard Touring and Sarlat

For Tuesday, my dad had made arrangements for a van and driver to take us to two local wineries with a break for lunch in the middle.  The rental was through a husband and wife team, and it was the wife who took us around.  She was full of great information, and she was also wonderful with the kids, which made for an enjoyable day.

The girls took to the latest form of transportation with smiles.

Our first winery stop also had a chateau to visit, so we explored that first.

I didn't get any pictures inside the chateau because I was on Elena chase duty, and I only managed to get one slightly blurry picture of the tasting.  

The girls were pretty crazy, but our guide was great and kept an eye on them while we tasted.

We got some lunch at a restaurant about ten minutes away.  Their specialty was a soup of the day, which Vivian and Elena devoured.  We also learned that we like foie gras mi-cuit, which literally means half baked.  It's prepared fresh in restaurants.  It doesn't taste super livery, and it's nice and smooth, yum :-)

After lunch we went to a second winery.

The tour was not stroller friendly, and the girls were a bit cranky, so I stayed in the van with them during the tour, and then our guide came and sat with them while I went in for the tasting (the best part!).

It was a fun outing, but the best part of the day came when we were making dinner in the evening.  I've heard artists talk about "light" before, but I didn't really understand what they meant until we stayed in the house in Beynac.  The sun sets slowly over several hours, and there's this soft, magical light.  I tried to capture it.  This was the view out the kitchen window as we were preparing dinner.

It was just fantastic.  We spent most evenings just looking out the windows at the beautiful views.

The next day, our goal was to go and explore the nearby town of Sarlat.  There were a LOT of other people with the same idea.  The traffic and parking was crazy.  We almost gave up, but then, miraculously, we found two parking spots close to each other.  We were congratulating ourselves and walking to the restaurant when the skies opened up and it started pouring rain.  The main problem I had with this rain (besides the fact that we were short on umbrellas and Elena's legs were getting soaked) was that it was COLD.  Some went down the back of my shirt and I yelped.  I am NOT used to cold rain.  Luckily, the restaurant was lovely and made up for the traffic and bad weather experience.

Sarlat is a medieval town and the restaurant was in an old building surrounded by a garden.

The best part was that they gave us a special table for our large party on a private balcony overlooking the garden.

Vivian decided that the stairs leading up to the balcony were her own personal imaginary land and played happily until the food came.

And what food!  This was the children's menu.

Vivian tried the foie gras and decided it was pretty good, but rich, so she only ate a little and left the rest to the grown ups.  She got the duck as her main course, since Daddy is such a duck fan.  It turns out, she is a duck fan too.  She devoured it, and left most of the pasta for Elena.

Her excellent eating was rewarded with some vanilla ice cream.

We took our time enjoying our meal and surroundings, and then we went to explore.  You could see why Sarlat was so crowded.  The narrow streets were really cool.

Foie gras is really big here.  There were lots of stores selling it, as well as lots of items for sale decorated with geese.  There were even stuffed geese for the kids.  We decided to go for a picture with geese as our souvenir.  

We enjoyed another beautiful view that night, this time looking at pink and purple clouds.  We were looking towards the Jardins de Marqueyssac, our destination for the following day.

I am officially in love with this part of France.