France Trip Day 3 - March 13

After breakfast downstairs we finally got Wifi to work. For the first time since we left home I was able to check my e-mails. I wasn't happy about what I received. Briggs was sick and sad and it broke my heart. Being away from my baby is one thing, but being gone when he's sick and someone else has to deal with his crying and fussiness and diarrhea is a totally different thing. But there really wasn't much I could do from that far away except pray extra hard for Carmin and Briggs both.

We went to Montignac to visit Lascoux 2, which are really neat caves with prehistoric paintings. The first one was actually closed down because after it was discovered in 1940 there was no monitoring of anything and so it just got totally overrun with millions of people coming in and out at their own discretion to see it. Well thanks to the air and temperature changes and all the stuff they were bringing in on their shoes and what not, it started to deteriorate really quickly and got totally ruined. But they have gone to great lengths and completely re-done the whole cave exactly as it was, even using the same painting materials and methods that they would've used. That's why it's Lascoux 2, not the exact original but still pretty dang cool to see. The coolest part of that visit though was that my sister Steph translated the whole tour for everyone! The poor tour guide was having a really hard time translating, and we could tell she wasn't always saying the same things, or at least not all of it. Once she recognized that we could understand her she started asking Steph for help with words. Then Steph asked her if she just wanted her to translate everything and of course she was so grateful for the help. So were all the other tourists visiting there! It was awesome. I was so impressed with her skills. There were some animals and art words and methods things that I would've never known and she just did it so well. We weren't allowed to take pictures in there, but it was just a cool place to visit.

Afterwards we happened upon La Roque Saint-Christophe in Dordogne. We weren't planning on stopping there because we hadn't known about it. But when you see a prehistoric city halfway up a dang cliff in the side of the mountain you just have to stop and check it out. It was really fascinating learning about how people would live in these caves, literally just sitting in the side of a cliff.  They think they had begun living in them in prehistoric times. But in the medieval period is when they really built actual buildings into them and left real evidence of actual communities there.

 Funny thing about this picture is we didn't see the sign that said "wet paint". well it didn't really say that, it was in French. But anyway Kenny stained his sweater and it still has green paint on it to this day. What a souvenir huh? ;)

We kept making jokes about how if your kid trips and falls, it's to his death. What about the babies who crawled, or toddlers who are a bit clumsy and stumble a lot? This would have been a very dangerous place for them to live. Talk about stressful motherhood! haha. I really wonder about those kinds of things while I'm touring. This was real life for them. I think about the moms bringing water in every day to clean their homes and dishes and clothes, cooking for their families, etc. Such a different lifestyle than what I have today.

We had a yummy lunch (I think in Domme?), then drove to Chateau de Beynac, a medieval fortress. Dang those things are so big and foreboding. Incredible views from every direction, which obviously makes sense if they were always worried about being attacked.
Every time we'd go to anything medieval on our trip Kenny would say, "Tyler would love this!!"

 From there we went to La Roque Gageac in Dordogne. Such a neat little village right on the Dordogne River. Really steep cliffs behind all the houses and stuff. So beautiful. Everything is just SO OLD!! I absolutely love it. such incredible history in Europe. Way older than anything we have here in America.

This is where they found the first Cro-Magnon man and obviously named the hotel after it!

Then we went to the town of Sarlat to finish off the day. We walked around the town, mostly the medieval part of the town. So much stone!! Oh and we found a candy store that had so much candy from my childhood there I just had to get a bunch of it to show Kenny :). It was yummy!! We ate dinner there in Sarlat too. When we got back home we tried to face time with our kids. It only worked for a minute before the connection was lost but it was so good to see their cute faces.

 This is just classic Kenny. He has to be a weirdo for pictures, he just can't help himself. :)