Poitiers (not Sidney) and Limoges

After farewelling Chantelle we set off for Limoges a few hundred kilometres away via Poitiers. With Liz navigating  (Thank God!) It was a delightful drive over some of the faster roads as the back roads would have been too slow. Although the view from the main roads was still beautiful as it is a more forested area and even has some larger hills, all lined with wind turbines.

Young wheat - who knew?!

I have come to the conclusion that having some agricultural knowledge would be an asset when traversing the back roads of France. There is often a discussion along the lines of "What do you think that crop is?" and then a series of uninformed guesses in answer. It turns out that the bright yellow fields we had been admiring was not canola, but rapeseed. And the very lush green 'grass' we had been seeing endlessly was, in fact, wheat a long way from summer  harvest. Oh well. we tried and we are 'townies' as country folk would say!

Poitiers proved to be a beautiful old town with many lovely medieval buildings and we actually visited THREE cathedrals/churches - but again they were all different. After seeing so many cathedrals with stark grey pillars and decor it was wonderful to see two of these with painted pillars as they would have been many centuries ago, including some very old frescoes.

Poitiers had lots of interesting old buildings

The facade of the Notre Dame Cathedral

I'm not sure who approved it but this gaudy pink churros stall was front and centre of the beautiful Notre Dame Cathedral! I resisted twmptation!

An old palace that is now the Law courts

The medieval dining room with three enormous fireplaces at one end.
 Now used for the Law Courts waiting area

The colours and geometric design was very different to anything we had seen

the feature of the Radegonde Church was these beautiful frescoes and pillars around the altar

In this photo you can see the stairs underneath
 the altar which led to the tomb of Radegonde, afte
r whom the church was named

These original 1 th century frescoes were
 in the process of being restored

Sorry these photos are all mixed up but I hope you get the idea! Sometimes it takes ages to insert photos into the blog , but today the WiFi is on super fast and so I am just downloading lots of photos!

After a couple of hours of driving, and avoiding some major accident on one of the roads we arrived at the Art Hotel (booking.com) in Limoges, home of porcelain and enameling in France.
One of the not-so-great joys of travelling is arriving in a place and not having the faintest idea where the best places to eat are - despite Lonely Planet suggestions and Google maps information. We walked around the old town and found a very nice very French restaurant, actually recommended by LP, called Chez Alphonse. It served very traditional French dishes some of which we had great difficulty translating into English.The staff were a bit surly but the food was delicious. We avoided ordering horse or liver or tripe, Liz and I had veal escalopes/steak with loads of mashed potatoes and eschallot sauce. Absolutely delightful, so we followed it with Creme Brulee: superb. Ewan had veal and tagliatelle, and the cheese plate. We noticed that if you ordered the chocolate mousse or the terrine they were served in huge white dishes and you served yourself, which looked good to us! With some nice white wine, and Ewan managing to get a real Portuguese port, we went home (having spent a considerable amount!) very satisfied and better informed about authentic French food. The place was full of the local French rather than tourists like us, so it obviously has a great reputation.

We had a chuckle when we had arrived as the Art Hotel has every room decorated with a different theme and we had no idea which room we would be allocated. Guess which room we had?! The Bali room: very funny as it looked nothing like the Bali I know: a few Buddhas and a piece of material draped over one bed was the sum total really. Nice and clean and comfortable though (and no ladders or stairs to negotiate in the middle of the night if nature calls!).

A good nights sleep was needed especially for navigator and driver as we had covered a few kilometres and three churches: not a bad day's effort.

your happy and even more blessed correspondent

Dianne