Blogs from Limousin, France, Europe - page 9

I woke up today to thunder and lightning and pouring rain! Luckily, it was 7 am LOL Strange to hear and see that first thing in the morning. Usually in Calgary we don't get thunder and lightning until 5 in the afternoon on a hot day! We had planned to go to Felletin for their Friday morning market and to check out the tapestry exhibits there and then head back over to Aubusson to see the tapestry museum. Felletin is about 25 km from Crocq and it took us about 50 minutes to get there after we left at 9 am. The market was wonderful :) Everything you'd expect a French market to be - many meat vendors, many cheese vendors, plenty of fresh produce and assorted other interesting wares. We walked around for a while ... read more

Today we met up with the Crocq butcher's beautiful daughter, Laura, and spent about 4 hours wandering around Aubusson. The weather was wonderful (a bit hot for me but it's typical for a Calgarian to complain about too hot weather!) - sunny and hot and very blue skies. Aubusson is a town famous for tapestries. It is in the confluence of 5 valleys. For 6 centuries it has been famous for tapestries that tell the stories of humanity. It has a very rich past and many beautiful old buildings such as houses with turrets, Tour de l'Horloge (a big clock tower on the hill), ruins of a chateau that was destroyed by Richelieu in the mid-1600's, an old, picturesque bridge that was built from the stones from the destroyed castle and the beautiful church Sainte-Croix. We ... read more

Today was a rather busy day. We saw many sights and ate a lot of food! LOL Well, of course we started with breakfast :) "I'll have the usual" :) At about 10 am we started our day trip to Guéret where Jean-François has a house he'd like to sell and so he had a "rendezvous" with an agent. Guéret is about 1 hour away and has about 14,000 people. But before we got there we had to stop in a town called Aubusson (more about this town on Wednesday night as we are going to spend the day there with the butcher's daughter). J-F had to take his car to the Volvo dealership to be checked for an engine problem. We took 2 cars so we could leave J-F's car in Aubusson to be fixed. ... read more

Today was a travel day in that we left Bordeaux to drive to Crocq (pronounced Cro). I forgot to mention yesterday that I had the pleasure of meeting Colette's daughter, Marine, and her 2 grandsons, Mathis and Oscar. J-F and Oscar baked a special type of cake from the Creuse region called le Creusois. It's a delicious cake made with hazelnuts! After breakfast, Jean-François and I went to the train station to pick up my rental car. It took us a while to find the agent because they are doing renovations around the station. We finally found the place and I got my car, a Renault Modus. I'll post a photo tomorrow of the car because I am doubtful it exists in North America. After we returned Chez Carrazé et Esperance, we took a drive around ... read more

First off, a public announcement. I regret to inform you that the 2008 Sponge Bath tour is being cut short due to creative differences (April ate too much Biscotti and became beligerent). I would like to give a big shout out to Paula, Aprils mom, for helping to sort out loose ends as british airways decided that there wasnt any conceivable reason to have their offices open on weekends. I mean nobody flies on weekends but philistines and blasphemers, do they? Anyhow our day in Castellane, a pretty little village town surrounded by mountains. At some point in the night I received a bug bite and thought nothing of it. It was an interesting little place and we did some shopping in the market the next morning, got a giant melange bag of olives for supercheap, ... read more