Dordogne Valley, France: vacation and tree house


the tree house - 


Friday April 22
Alex's birthday always falls nicely during the 2 week Spring school vacation in France.  We decided to celebrate his birthday in a luxury treehouse in the Dordogne valley of France.  We took the TGV to Bordeaux (3 h 20 min) but alas, we experienced for the first time bad luck on the train in France.  A train broke down in front of us causing a 2 hour delay.  But they gave us a refund immediately and food, so it could have been worse.  We rented a car and drove the 90 minutes to the treehouse Chateaux dans les Arbres.  Really cool!  We ate in the tiny town Chez Edith for dinner (foie gras, escargots, duck, good wine) and retired to the tree house.  There is actually a tree trunk inside the house and we woke up to find something had been scratching at the tree bark.  Nature!

Those yellow fields are "colza", or canola.  Beautiful almost neon yellow in April.

Saturday April 23 - Alex's 10th birthday
Breakfast delivered in a picnic basket you have to use a pulley to bring up to the footbridge.  Very cool.

Vincent was sick so we headed into the town Villereal to see a doctor and get some meds.  It was fortuitous since it was a really cool small town with an awesome Saturday market and cheese store and restaurant where we had lunch.  There are a hundreds of small, formerly walled towns (bastides) in this area that was fought over by England and France during the 100 years war.  Alex is learning all about it in school.  Also, as we found out, the area is full of British expats, to the point where you hear more British English than French!  We read they jokingly call the area "Dordogneshire" it is so full of British folks.  We can understand why.  It was so quintessentially French it felt like a movie set.

Of course JD met the nice local cheese man who actually lives right near the tree house we are staying in.  He pointed us to an excellent restaurant for lunch.  It was so good we decided to eat there again for dinner.

JD's camera birthday and treehouse

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