- We were not allowed to take photos at any of the archaeological sites. This is a French National law that I was not about to break. Therefore most of the really interesting caves that we visited are not represented by any photos. By using the blog, I am able to include links to official web sites of some of the locations that we visited.
- One of the members of our tour group was able to capture images of the sites, in her mind and sketch book. Megan Baehr is a 24 year old artist from Vermont. The purpose of her visit to the caves of southwestern France was to perform research for a graphic novel she plans to write about the pre-historic artists who created the cave paintings that we saw. She has graciously allowed me to provide links to her blog pages. I have attempted to provide links for each day, but you may wish to just read through her entire blog all at once.
The blogging tool does not allow me to have links open in new windows or tabs. Therefore you should open the links by using the Right mouse key and selecting either new window or new tab.
As mentioned in Day 8 of our Paris Blog, we had a long Sunday of traveling before ending up at the cozy residence (Les Rosiers) of Steve and Judie the proprietors of the Caves and Castles tour.
To read about Megan's trip to France, read these pages of her blog : 1 , 2, 3, and 4 . (Or you can just read her blog starting from page 1 at your pace).
Upon waking up on Monday morning, I snuck out to see if there were any birds about. I was able to spot some collared doves, which are quite common. These birds are now spreading across North America and competing with our Mourning Doves.
After a wonderful breakfast we headed out and started with a visit to the nearby village of Montignac. I left my camera in the car, but got some shots of the village later in the week.
Next up was a visit to the Lascaux II caves. The Lascaux caves were discovered in 1940 by four teenagers, who had lost their dog. The caves were kept secret until after the war and eventually opened up to tourists. However, they were closed again in 1963 as the millions of tourists were damaging the paintings with their CO2 exhalations.
The French Government decided to replicate the caves and their art and Lascaux II was opened in the 70's. As mentioned, no photos were allowed, but you can link to the official site here: www.lascaux.culture.fr/ . The Wikipedia entry for the caves is here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux
Megan's sketches of the village and cave are here .
After Lascaux were returned to Les Rosiers for lunch and then spent the afternoon exploring the National Museum of Prehistory in Les Eyzies, which is a stunningly picturesque village carved out of a curved cliff face.
Most of the photos I took on day 1 are of the village and the museum. Megan's sketches of Les Eyzies are here .
We finished with an authentic French meal at a restaurant in Turzac called La Source, owned by a very interesting dutch couple. The food pictures in the photo album are compliments of Megan, as I did not take my camera to the restaurant (duh). The restaurants website is here: www.restaurant-la-source.fr/
Here is the link to my photo album of Day 1.
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