Best Western Grand Hotel De Bordeaux Aurillac

We spent the entire afternoon canoeing down the Dordogne. We packed a lunch and found a nice spot along the river to enjoy some wine and cheese. It was so peaceful and beautiful. Every couple of Kilometers was anothe castle overlooking the river. The river was so flat that we could just float along and enjoy the view.

From the cousins house we moved further west to Neils parents house. They have a place in a beautiful old town. It is an old walled vilage on the hilltop overlooking the valley. The village is full of cobblestone streets, windy narrow alleys and cute little homes. We ate great meals, enjoyed excellent wine and spent time with Neils parents. thank you again for hosting us!

We left the west coast and headed inland to look for work. We stopped at Angouleme for lunch which had a spectacular view from the old city. We carried on into the Dordogne, and looking for a campsite came across a municipal site in a little town called Argentat-sur-Dordogne. The weather was stifling hot, which that night brought on 24 hours of massive thunderstorms and then 3 days of rain! The Dordogne was flooding and even Argentat lost electricity one night!

... sense. So, after making the drive up the Costa Brava in our slightly disabled car, we arrived back in Avignon, where we'd rented the beastly thing a week before. By the way, the toll road in France can be pretty hairy, in terms of giant tailgating trucks. It IS very fast, but just a word of caution to timid drivers or those who have a problem with constantly having to stick your credit card in toll gate machines before ...

alright, our first rest day. I apologize to anyone who finds a typo in my writing first of all. the french use a different keyboard layout and i'm not very adjustable apparently. So where to start? so far our trip has been wonderful, and having a day of rest only amplifies our feeling. today, while resting, we've managed to meet with a friar of the local cathedral and monastery dedicated to saint ...

... are hoping to capture something of the spirit that drives people on these walking tours, and what people are looking for and finding as they walk, and what is especially particular to this pilgrimage and walk. So far we've done a good job of capturing the walking parts and our own thoughts, but our lack of french and the intimidation of the camera have kept people from talking on camera with us, even though people have been extremely nice ...

Finally the day of departure from the BB arrives! Plan was to be gone without trace before it awoke, but packing and pondering took too much time for that. Lengthy goodbyes to the Welsh boys and Andy. Everyone else was too busy meditatin. At the last minute before disappearing, Dani ran out with fruit for us. Felt like the spotty kid who gets a momentīs attention from one of the big girls. Why so ...

Misery. Weīre so WET. Chris didnīt sleep. And I barely did. Found a cheap super market and bouhgt a cheap roast chicken to dry our sorrows. A bad move. This over-preserved chickenīs soul will come back to haunt us. Catch about six rides from village to village til we get to ...

... possible lunch, right here on our very first day and from here it would be hard to find better. But we will try. On Wednesday we drove north to Tuscany to meet our old friend Robyn Vulinovich in the little village of Greve in Chianti. Of course you know Tuscany will be beautiful, but even so,it takes your breath away. And arriving into the village of Greve and following Robyn up the winding hills to the wine estate of Villa Branca, we were stunned by it all ...

... winter. We don't pretend it's not coming...we know it will be there every single year without fail. When it gets cold at home we bundle up in down filled coats and toques, turn up the thermostat, and drink lots of hot drinks (or other warming beverages). When it nippy here in Europe, they don't have forced air heating and without wall to wall carpeting, the old floors are bare wood or tile. Perhaps the people walking ...