Tourist Spots

Today (our 'P' day) we visited a medieval town that's a little over an hour drive from Bordeaux and ate lunch at a French restaurant there. On the way there we passed through a village that was originally a prehistoric site with houses built right into the sides of the cliffs and hotels with names like "Cromagnon." One place was called "La Grotte de la Grande Roche" or "The Cave of the Big Rock." We didn't stop there but plan to sometime soon. We drove on to the medieval town called Sarlat. They have cool old buildings and little narrow streets just wide enough for pedestrians and people on horseback. The old church has been turned into a closed-in market place. Which is unfortunate for the old church, but there is also a "slightly newer" but still very old cathedral about a hundred yards from the older church. The French countryside is beautiful to drive through around here also.

Bordeaux is full of lots of neat old buildings including its own "Statue of Liberty" and an ancient Roman ruin that is similar to the Coliseum in Rome.

Toulouse is not too far from here, about a three-hour drive. The guy that is the head archivist at the archives where we work is an expert on Toulouse history and has written three books on the subject. He gave us copies of all three of them and wrote the cutest dedications to us in each one of them. His name is Christian Cau pronounced "koh."

We took this picture one day at the archives. It was in the summer and the weather outside was hot, so some of the ladies that work there made these cute bonnets to protect their faces from the sun. They are made from the paper we use to wrap the old documents in. Mr Cau walked in to talk to us and mischievous JoAnn stuck one of the bonnets on his head just before Arnold snapped his picture. Being a good sport he left it on and just kept reading what he had in his hand while his picture was taken. One of the workers there said the bonnets look like what the Nuns used to wear in France so he dubbed the picture "Soeur Christian Cau" "Sister Christian Cau."