Sarlat

We arrived in Sarlat last evening. Checked into the hotel. Comfortable place, but amazingly small when you put all of us in the room together. We don't appreciate how much space Sophie requires to exist until were in this situation. And she's impossible to sleep with. Regardless of the size of the bed, she somehow manages to sleep inches away from you and sideways. Makes for long nights.

Anyway, today we toured the countryside around Sarlat visiting La Roque-Gageac, a fortress-like chateau named Castelnaud and the tidy little town of Baynac before retiring to Sarlat for dinner and a brief walking tour of the medieval town center. The weather has been crap for most of the trip thus far. Record cold weather as an arctic front has pushed into the whole of France. It's been off and on rain and temperatures around 20 degrees colder than normal since we landed almost a week ago. It stinks. It really steals from the experience overall as so much enjoyment and relaxation comes from strolling, especially in the early evenings. Tonight we had to blast through the walking tour because it started to rain on us, again, and it felt like the temperature was dropping precipitously. We'd had a mix of sun and clouds during the day and it seems like we had sun when it counted most. Don't let these pictures fool you. I've just done a decent job taking pictures when the sun has shone. Today was probably our best mid-day weather day yet. We're actually leaving Sarlat early and then leaving our next town early too in order to buy ourselves a couple of extra days in Provence and the HOPE that the weather improves the further south we go.