The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
Crawling In the Cave

The question of the day is always, "What does everyone want to do today?" Sometimes we have an answer, more often we don't. The eventual answer today was to go see the caves.

This part of France is riddled with caves. Some were used for shelter and others appear to be more like pre-historic art galleries. The most highly-regarded of these is Lascaux for the variety and quality of its 17,000-year-old cave paintings.

The cave was accidently discovered by teenagers back in 1934 when their dog fell into a hole in the woods. When they went down to get the dog back, they were stunned to see these fantasticly realistic paintings on the roof of the cave. The rest is history.

The original cave had to be closed about 40 years ago due to problems created by too many people -- not grafitti or vandalism as many Americans might expect, but molds and moisture that were destroying paintings that had endured for eons. But Lascaux was a world treasure, far too valuable to be lost entirely, so the French government decided to build an exact replica of two caverns that held the greatest art.

This is now known as Lascaux II. It is so well done that we quickly forgot we were not looking at the original paintings.

Once again the urban picnic dominated most of the evening, highlighted by a duck soup that Heidi has put together from leftovers -- perhaps the best I have ever had! The evening continued around the patio table until after dark (It stays light until after 10pm here!) At that point we decided the thing to do was to see the old town at night.

Good choice!


Out and About

Sarlat by Night


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