Today after a lovely country breakfast (yep baguette or pain au chocolat) in the morning sun, we went to some really spankin’ awesome caves called Gouffre de Padirac in—you guessed it: Padirac. It was almost as fun as Kango Caves, you start out climbing down a massive staircase and then queue for a bit then get to be rowed along in a boat in the subterranean river to the main tour of the caves. The caves look like a mixture of a slot canyon/ Kango and were incredible! The tour guide had been told that we were learning French and so he kindly spoke slow French to us the entire time. I have to say that I probably only understood about 50% of it, partially because I don’t know very many scientific/ geology terms en Francais.
Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take pictures, but here’s a link. I like caves! We even saw a bat! Then we got to climb all the way back up the stairs!
We then had a group lunch starting with some duck giblets avec salade… I had no idea what giblets were until I looked them up right now…and kind of wished I hadn’t. They were a very tender, flavorful dark meat that was nice and flaky…and here’s the definition of what a giblet is: giblets |ˈjiblits|plural noun
the liver, heart, gizzard, and neck of a chicken or other fowl, usually removed before the bird is cooked, and often used to make gravy, stuffing, or soup…yeag, I probably wouldn’t have eaten them if I had known, I’m not super into eating filtering organs of any animal. Then just to be adventuresome I tried some fois gras-- which is a goose liver pate-- it was actually pretty good. Kind of like meat flavored butter spread—super rich though! Then we had mooore duck, and finished off with a walnut tart (pie sort of thing), which was super yummy! So after that I was definitely not wanting to eat any more duck…or anything—j’ai bien mangé! (I have eaten well/I’m full)
Then we drove to the city of Figeac and went to the Musee Champollion (the guy who translated the Rosetta Stone) which is all about the development of written language. It was very interesting, but all of the explanatory signs were in French, and like I said, I don’t know very many technical terms in French, and consequently didn’t understand much. We had little translator devices, but the recordings really only told about the history of certain items instead of presenting the full story of the translation of the Rosetta stone…so I’ll be lookin’ that up shortly.
Afterwards we headed to our hotel, relaxed, and then went to go and feed at the amazing La Puce a L’Oreille. I thought that I would be violently ill if I ate again after such a massive lunch, but the food was so excellent I had quite forgotten the part where I wasn’t hungry when the first course arrived. We started out with a carrot mousse with some pate:
then had a puff pastry with tomato, goat cheese, and olive paste:
then for the main course we had some sort of white fish with a veggie puree and a bit of cheese quiche and steamed veggies...
...that was so yummy I finished it before I had thought to take a picture...
the grand finale was a raspberry mousse with a almond wafer. Wow, it was fantastic, and I am probably going to be charged at the airport for all of the extra weight I gain when I come back…but it was so lovely!
Then we disrupted the sleeping town with loud American voices and incessant giggles on our way to the hotel. Disrupted the other hotel guests with much stomping up the stairs, more giggling, and went to bed with very full tummies. P.S. I’m trying to blend in with the local night-life and not be super American (culturally—tis a good country that I feel patriotically about) but with everyone else being so noisy one quiet person doesn’t make a difference…so I think I’m going to have to give that up to avoid being angry at everyone and having them not want to be with such a high-strung-bossy-pants, so here’s to being a tourist * cheers *
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