Rock-a-my-world (aka Rocamadour)

I'm going to warn you now.  If you have never read Lord of the Rings, then just skip this post.  You are not qualified to view what you are about to see.  If you have not read the books, but you have seen the movie, then you may proceed, but please, really, do yourself a favor and stop laughing at cats on the interwebs and get thee to a library or half-price book store and find a sunny spot and read until your eyes are blurry.

As we left Carcassonne and headed up north to Sarlat, we decided to take a side-trip to Rocamadour.  We had no idea what it was, we simply heard it was worth the drive from another guest at Le Jardin.  We didn't have a wifi connection to check it out ahead of time, so we plugged it into Garmina and went.  Garmina of course got us off the highway early and led us on an amazing twisty road that wound through deserted hills that grew into a gorge as we went on.  

Geographically, we are in the Dordogne/Aquitane region.  Rugged, hilly and lush with trees and greenery.  It's in this region that they have found the oldest cave drawings made by man - about 14.000 years old.  That coincidentally, is old enough for the French to have re-created the cave drawing in another cave for people to see - you can't see the actual cave or the actual drawings anymore - bummer.

So, how would we know when we got to Rocamadour?  Here's how.  We turn a corner and rising up before us is this:

Holy shit.  I might have said that out loud.  I whipped my head around to make sure the armies of Sauron weren't behind us, because I was pretty sure Denethor was going to be running off the end of the rampart while in flames.  So Rocamadour plus Mont Saint Michel:

Gives us bloody Minas Tirith.  This will require a return visit.  We climbed out of the valley and took another shot.  The rest of the day was spent (comparatively uneventfully) exploring our way up to Sarlat.  It was super hot, and each place we stopped was really crowded with other Europeans who were used to standing in long lines in the blazing sun, apparently.  We bailed on those and beat feet through the animal torture part of France (sorry geese, but foie gras is yummy, yummy!) to our apartment in the next medieval city.