Perigueux Day 1

Will and I left quite early again this morning, which is my least favorite part of this trip. At 7:50, we pulled out of the station in Tours, and headed to Perigueux, which is south from Tours and about an hour east from Bordeaux. Once we arrived, we checked into our hotel which was once again conveniently across the street from the train station. We stowed our things, and then headed over to the Medieval part of town. So I completely spoke too soon about Tours being the quintessential French town, because Perigueux is such the perfect French countryside town. With narrow winding streets, shutter lined homes, and cobblestone streets, Will and I got lost in the beauty of the town today.







Perigueux is beside a large river, and the town lies on the hills beside it. We can tell that we are moving south, because the style of architecture has a much more Mediterranean feel to it, especially with the roof tiles changing to clay instead of slate. We walked all around the town for a bit and then got some lunch at a great cafe. Unfortunately, Sundays are a bit slow here, I mean it is only a town of about 64,000, so a lot of businesses are not open. After we ate, we went to a patisserie and I got an enormous meringue for dessert. I have been loving the meringues here because they are enormous, and amazing...much better than when I have attempted to make them.

I had already eaten half of the meringue when this was taken..that is how big it was!

We then followed the map to take us to all the sites in town. From the cathedral..which was very interesting, very simple and not decorated at all. Clearly before the Gothic age, where more light and color was brought into cathedrals. In fact to be perfectly honest, I found it to be a bit ugly and creepy because it was so dark.

View of front of the cathedral

View of back of cathedral, and its several domes

We then came back to the hotel for a bit to rest our feet. Perigueux is a bit more hilly than the other towns we have been in, so we were a bit more tired! We went back out for dinner, only to realize that most places that had been open for lunch on a Sunday, were definitely not open for dinner, so we bought paninis from a small shop that was luckily still open, and brought them back to the hotel to eat. It was probably for the better, since we needed to catch up with our photos and blog. We headed to bed, after attempting to watch French TV, which is really not very good. Mostly it is just old, bad American shows and movies that have been dubbed over with French. Not very exciting. We are pretty excited because we don't have to wake up to the alarm tomorrow, so we can finally sleep in!

Carrie and Will