Voila!

We have a little joke amongst ourselves about having to go to the office. It simply means we’re going to the little cabana between the tourist office and the river where there is town-supplied wifi. After breakfast I headed on down to catch up on email and maybe write a post while everyone else was getting ready for the day. As I walked through the stone arch into the town garden, five beautiful white swans took flight off the river. That little moment turned out to be a good omen. After cleaning out email, I decided to try to transfer my photos to the computer one last time and, voilà, I now have over three hundred images of this magical place on my Mac Air! Still more to go but I’m on the way. Yeehah!

Yesterday as we made a nice loop through the countryside village-hopping, we managed to take in an open-air market, the high gothic cloister of Cadouin, several bastide towns and romanesque churches, not to mention an incredible lunch which included tourin, a local specialty of garlic soup. I think it’s the Pèrigord’s answer to Chinese egg drop soup, a creamy garlic soup with egg whites stirred in. returning to home base, I gave a painting demo at the river as the sun began to set before heading back to the kitchen to cook up fresh fare for our candlelight dinner on the terrace. Whatever problems the garlic didn’t cure the abandoned laughing must have, sending us all to a glorious night’s rest.