Caves and Castles Day 3 - Sept 23, 2009

Day 3 began with another brief visit to Montignac, this time I took my camera. The highlight of this brief stop was an old dog who was loitering outside a grocery store. When I entered, the dog scooted in behind me. His master was inside and was not too popular with the proprietor.

Wednesday is public market day in the medieval village of Sarlat. We spent the morning shopping for souvenirs and ended up with three bottles of wine, two of which made it back home. There was one public washroom in marketplace, with three self-cleaning toilets. Unfortunately, they were unisex, and the cleaning cycle took 90 seconds in between uses. The end result was incredibly long line-ups. How typically French.

In the afternoon, we visited the caves of Cougnac. The first cave we toured had no paintings, but was interesting geologically with awesome collections of stalactites and stalagmites. We were allowed to take photos.

Megan's first blog of the day is here.

Our guide in the caves was a young woman named Isabelle (shown below). She conducted both French and English tours simultaneously, speaking a million miles an hour in both languages.

The second cave contained a number of paintings and markings, dating back 14 - 15,000 years. They are more subtle than the other caves we saw, but impressive nonetheless.

Megan's blog for the second cave is here.

The link for the Grottes de Cougnac is only available in French (the first flag at the bottom).

My photo album for the day is here.