CHAPTER 16. SOUTH WEST FRANCE CONT.

In Souillac we find the Aubergue de Puits, a very charming small restaurant hotel on a pretty plaza. We had read about in an International Travel News article, and have an excellent 4 course menu lunch. We look at a room available there but it is up a flight of stairs and would be too much for Betty. The very helpful woman running the restaurant and hotel suggests the Belle Vue Hotel because it has an elevator. There we get a large but sparsely furnished room, again with a very helpful and friendly couple running the hotel. We take a short ride down the north side of the Dordogne River to Rouffillac and come back on the other side.

After breakfast we drive south to Payrac then east through pretty green country with rock outcrops. We go by the Cougnaguet Mill, a very pretty site with still water reflecting trees and cliffs, and on to l’Hospalet where there are views of Rocamadour clinging to an almost vertical rock cliff. We drive through Rocamadour, seeing many tourists and tour busses, and beyond for more spectacular views back toward the town.

Then we go to Alvignac and the Grand Hotel Palladium restaurant when we see a red R (good value for the money) rating for it in the Michelin Red Guide. We are the only guests til the end of our meal, when two women come in. Our corner table overlooks a flower filled meadow with green rolling tree dotted country beyond. We have a five course menu with excellent food and service from three young boys (one being trained by the other two) in white coats and a maitre’d in a tux. We think Michelin should upgrade the restaurant with a star! It is sunny and warm late in May, but we are told by the restaurant people that they had two inches of snow two weeks earlier.

After lunch at the Palladium we stop at the Gouffre de Padirac where Betty again waits in the car while Glenn goes down in the elevator to the underground river flowing thru caves to a lake in large underground chambers. Water is dripping everywhere and there are great shaped stalactites.

We go north along the Bave River and see up on a hill, but obscured by the late afternoon haze, the great red brick Castlenau overlooking the Dordogne Valley. Then we drive down the river back to Souillac.

The continental breakfast at the Belle Vue is in a room downstairs and is notable because the cups are HOT, there is plenty of HOT cafe au lait, HOT croissants, and HOT toasted french bread.