![]() ![]() The next morning, after a glorious buffet breakfast that I would estimate at about 4,000 calories, we Ubered to the Austerlitz train station and hopped on a TGV express train to Brive, a relaxing four-hour sprint (average speed: 75 mph) through the unrelentingly interesting industrial and agricultural landscapes south of the capital. We instantly booked it, then reverse engineered the rest of the trip, beginning with a flight to Paris and a boutique apartment near the Place de la Republique for that first jet-lagged night. On our first click, we scored: a recently renovated apartment in a 500-year-old building dead in the center of the old town. Searching for a vacation destination suitably celebratory of our 30th anniversary, we thought of the magical moments on that long-ago day trip and put “apartments to rent in Sarlat” into Google. ![]() Tom Shroder, Special to The Washington PostA steep switchback road leads through the medieval village of La Roque Gageac, above the Dordogne.Īnd so did my wife and I. Our children, now far-flung and embarked on lives of their own, still remember that day 17 years later. For dinner, we found a traditional French restaurant whose dining room, to our delight, extended into a natural cavern. We bought wooden crusader swords for the kids and hand-spun earthenware pottery that my wife and I still treasure. The French government subsidized restoration of the dilapidated ancient structures, and the tastefully restored apartments (which half a millennium ago were the residences of wealthy noble families) began, slowly at first, to attract tourists.īack in 2000, we wandered the town center feeling like time travelers. City fathers had wakened one morning in the late 1950s to realize that, leaning above narrow and winding cobblestone streets and alleys, they had one of the largest collections of intact medieval architecture in Europe. On one of these excursions, we stumbled on the provincial city of Sarlat.Īn accident of history and several centuries of stagnant economy had left Sarlat’s center virtually unchanged architecturally since the days of siege engines and knights galloping over drawbridges. Each day, our son and daughter would say goodbye to the donkey that hung around our patio and we’d climb in the tiny rented Renault and drive somewhere in the fairy-tale beautiful Dordogne River region. When our children were 11 and 9, young enough to still be entirely inside the family circle but old enough to remember, we splurged on a “once in a lifetime vacation” and rented a small farmhouse in Southwestern France outside the village of Saint-Cyprien. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu
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