Within and Without Chez Nous

Pere de Bubby..MIA by his own hand. Yes, we have had some secret deleting going on. The great pic of him on the patio, reading with headlamp, the one driving at top speed with lollypop..all gone before Mama can upload him. By god, that elusive big toe shall not escape my digital gaze again. It's onto the blog with you, monsieur, I don't care if you hate this picture!


The interior of the Gite:

The gite is three floors: a basement level with doors out to the garden with shower and toilette (Rubes), main floor with living, kitchen, dining and master bedroom and upstairs with two bedrooms and a bath (with just Henry as the little boys are camping with us...very steep spiral staircase)


We have been having a fire every night in this beautiful fireplace. It is so warm and cozy and of course, the fireplace isn't too bad looking, eh? Notice the sleigh bed that we fight over to its side. It is where we take turns nodding off with books or ..blogging..like I am right now.


Here is a view toward the front doors with the dining area on the left and the open kitchen on the right. Everything is well stocked with many guidebooks and local information, wood, as many walnuts as we can eat, great kitchen with everything (well, I used a vinaigrette bottle for a rolling pin yesterday).

Prehisto-Billy Goat

A companion site to Lascaux is called Le Thot, where we went today. It is a prehistoric centre and an animal parc that consists of the descendants of animals found in the cave paintings at Lascaux. It's an intriguing idea and, because they have signs with the paintings from the cave and photos of the living beast, it comes off pretty well. So for instance, they'll show a picture of an Lascaux bull painting in front of a pen holding massive long horned cattle. We arrived just in time to see a 2 minute old deer being licked by its mother and wobble, trying to stand up. No one was too impressed but me. They'd rather hang out with the shaggy donkey, who had nothing to do with anything prehistoric.


Then there was a mangy old mammoth, covered in moss and cobwebs and going rather bald. Poor guy. It was supposed to be animated in some way, but since it wasn't July and no hordes of tourists, he maintained his mouldy dignity in silence.


There are so many things to see and do in our own "backyard"that we sometimes forget to go there. We have to drive through Beynac many times on our way to places. It is another wonderful village built into the cliff-face along the Dordogne. It also has a castle (we are in the midst of five different castles) perched high above the village. Driving through today, we promised ourselves that we would go there tomorrow under the auspices of going to the post office (there is a limit to how long you can drag small children around..or tweens for that matter). Anyway..we are so damn lucky.

And now, we must carry ourselves off to bed.....


Here's a postscript: the real thing in France:

Bouef a la Bourguignonne