Things have gone super-smoothly so far.  No flight delays, no missed trains, no misplaced reservations, no car problems, no poor weather.  Even when things haven’t gone according to plan, the alternate has turned out to be better.

Case in point: I had intended that we do a winery tour in St. Emilion, on our way from Bordeaux to Sarlat on Saturday.  I had failed, however, to read all the fine print on the winery’s website — in particular the line “booking is advisable.”  So, it wasn’t until we arrived at Chateau Villemaurine in St. Emilion that I learned all the English-speaking tours of the winery were booked up for the next several hours.

No matter.  We saw a little trolley train parked in front of the tourist office and decided to take a tour of the village instead.  A very nice outing, much better than spending that time in a cellar admiring barrels.  Then we had a little lunch, and it was off to Sarlat, to the east.

The drive to Sarlat took at least 30 minutes longer than it should have, even considering our side-trip to an antiquités shop (I prefer to call them junktiques).  The problem with using GPS in France is égalité — according to the GPS, all roads are created equal.  As a result, that winding one-and-a-half lane road through farms and villages is more likely to be chosen by the GPS than a better-paved, more drivable route that is a fraction of a kilometer longer.  (I did check to make sure our GPS was set to “fastest time” rather than “arbitrary detours.”)  While this feature can be charming at times, offering scenes and vistas that you would otherwise miss, it is a pain when you simply want to get somewhere.  Lesson learned: know where you’re going ahead of time and do what the directional signs tell you.

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We are in Sarlat now — this medieval village is our base to explore the Dordogne valley.  Safe to say that Sarlat restaurants have more duck-related items on their menus than anywhere else in the world.  Tonight we ate at a restaurant, Le Clos du Perigord, that had exactly one item (excluding desserts) on its four-page menu that did not feature duck.  And who knows, maybe that lonely little salmon was force-fed duck too.

OK, I skipped a blog day already, only three days into the trip.  To my readers (yes, I see all four of you crouching behind your screens, so sit up and take your fingers off your mouse), please be mindful that jet lag is a real phenomenon and that having fun takes time.  I can see that posting something not daily but every few days is a more realistic goal, especially considering the quality of our available internet connections.

Now for a quick update.  We spent two nights in Bordeaux for the express purpose of recovering from our plane and train travel.  It turned out to be a wonderful, fun start to our trip.  We threw the originally-planned museum visit out the window and decided to eat, drink and shop instead.

With respect to the eating and drinking: both evenings in Bordeaux, we had before-dinner drinks at a pub on Place Gambetta.  At the pub’s sidewalk tables, we saw no one eating but nearly everyone (mostly under 30) smoking.  Many things have changed in France since my last visit but here are two things that have not: French people smoke as if the cigarettes were made of air, and French restaurants hoard ice as if the cubes were made of gold.

We have found that asking for “ice water” in any French restaurant produces that same astonished look you would get in the USA if you sat down and asked for a plate of eels.  “Ice water?  Ise?  Eiz?  I do not understand. You want it with the drink?”  When your server finally does understand, your iced drink is sure to arrive with exactly three already half-melted cubes.  I think that the quantity is regulated by the Ministère de l’ice.

Nonetheless, we had several delicious lunches and dinners, as these photos will attest.

While Sue was taking an afternoon nap, I wandered around with my camera and got vaguely-lost in the maze of streets that is the pedestrian shopping area of Bordeaux.

We left Bordeaux on Saturday morning and drove to Sarlat-la-Canéda via the wine village St. Emilion.  I will describe those places in my next post, but for now I must mention that we were finally able to get a couple of iced drinks while on the road to Sarlat.  Yes, folks, we stopped at McDonald’s.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will be sharing some moments from our 40th anniversary travels in France, as they happen.  I hope to provide a short update every day and will try hard not to put you to sleep.  If you start to nod, have an espresso with me.

Le voyage was uneventful for the most part.  We thought for a moment that our plane might be diverted to Newfoundland when a passenger became ill and attendants started to run through the aisles calling for a doctor on board.  Luckily, the passenger recovered.

Several World War II veterans were on board, heading to Normandy for the D-Day commemorations today.  My father was a D-Day veteran himself — I don’t recall which beach he landed on.  He rarely talked about the war.  He would have been 98 this year.

We stood in the customs line at the Paris airport for about ten minutes.  Once we reached the booth, our passports were stamped and we were on our way in ten seconds.  This is faster than entering Canada.

We picked up a couple of delicious baguette sandwiches at the train station and ate our lunches on the high-speed train to Bordeaux.  It was a quiet, pleasant ride through the French countryside, dotted with a surprising number of wind-turbines.  We tried to sleep but had little luck until we got to our hotel, twenty-one hours after we walked into the Asheville airport.

Here are a few photos from our Day One in France.  More to come in my next post.