Canoeing + Sarlat

I find it fascinating that this is as far as I got with my Paris blog, because this year in my French 362 class I was assigned a project on a French region- Bordeaux/Perigord. Perigord entails all of the Dordogne river and it's bordering cities including Bergerac and Sarlat. It just happens to be the prettiest of all regions, the home of foie gras, contains all of the castles filmed in Ever After, and truly captured my heart.

This the river Dordogne on which we went canoeing.

The restaurant on the Dordogne where Albert, the bus driver, took Fred, Emily and I to lunch after we canoed. Quel mec!

More of the Dordogne

The remains of an old Jewish town on the way to Limoges.

The public water closets were a little more 'public' for the men. :)

Hiking towards Domme after canoeing all morning; Rachel was tired.

The Sarlat market, the morning of our departure.

I look back on Sarlat very fondly because of the great experiences that we had there as a study abroad group and individually. We were nearing the end of our Study Abroad and thus our FHE, the first night in Sarlat, was all of the students sharing the life changing and memorable events that happened during the trip. Afterwards the Rachels passed out slips of paper for people to write love notes to each other on. It was wonderful to hear and tell everyone how much they had meant to us.
The next day was our canoeing trip. We took our time cruising along and really soaked in the countryside. Most people in our group weren't avid canoers so they didn't have as much fun as Rachel and I. I would steer us to the shore where the branches were just feet from the water. Rachel and I would lay back and watch the branches fly just above our faces. It was gorgeous. Fred, Rachel, Emily, and I were the only ones to brave the waters . . . which I probably did too much of. I jumped in to swim over and splash Becky and the professor at one point just to land on a sharp rock that cut the whole under side of my foot, and later on I found a deep diving spot, but came up in a shallow area skinning my whole knee. Like my father, I AM indeed accident prone.
You will all be proud to know that I was the only one in the SA group who did not get sun burned that day. They were all miserable that night (in our same hotel in Sarlat) while I was out meandering the streets of this preserved medieval town. In running through the center of town I ran into some construction which directed me down some smaller streets. I happened upon what I would deem as- Heavenly music. From a 3rd story window there was a ccappella music being sung by an octet or more of elderly French people. I sat below the window sill to listen a while longer. A French man walked past me and commented on how lucky we were to have this sort of soundtrack mixed in to our daily lives. How is it, again, that people despise the French?