Weekend in Dordogne

Since a picture is worth a thousand words and all that, I will send you first to my Flickr page to look at pictures. But I still get a few words, since some of them require elaboration/there are things I didn't get pictures of. The itinerary for the weekend was:

• Friday
• bumming around Bordeaux with the other Poitevines (cathedral, wandering around carnival, pizza)
  
• Saturday
• Grotte de Rouffignac (really ancient cave art)
• lunch in Eyzies-de-Tayac (salad! duck! tomato encrusted in spices and cheese! pie!)
• Musée national de préhistoire (ancient bones and tools and all the things we learned about in 9th grade anthropology)
• Lascaux II (facsimile of really ancient cave art, more famous than Rouffignac but not as cool, in my humble opinion)
• Chateau de Beynac (with gorgeous views and hot air balloons and sunset on the ramparts - one of those "wow, I'm really in Europe" moments)
• dinner in Sarlat (more duck! weird soup with meringue! chocolate fondant and lemon sorbet!)
• Sunday
• 2-hour tour of Sarlat with a history prof (we were very well-informed)
• bumming around Sarlat (paninis, ice cream, antique fair)

I think that's most of the high points. One of the cool things at Rouffignac (apart from the whoa-really-ancient mammoth drawings and cave bear claw marks on the walls) was all the really old graffiti from before people really figured out there was prehistoric art - written on the ceiling in candle smoke and dating from the 1700s. Elizabeth found the IHS symbol (first three letters of Jesus in Greek, common in church decorations) on the ceiling of one of the caves. There were several priests who signed their names. Holy graffiti, anyone?

In any case, it was an excellent weekend. Now I'm going to be late for class because I've been typing this on an infernal French keyboard and it's taken me far longer than it ought.