Sarlat de Caneda; so ancient ...

These late starts are getting easier; it will be difficult to get back into the work routine after this. But who cares for now?  Another day trip was to Sarlat de Caneda, or simply Sarlat is one of the most representative towns of the 14th century you can find. It's town centre built around it's medieval cathedral that started life as a Benedictine Abbey. There is a covered Market and Street Market 2 days a week but its the covered Market that took me by surprise. It is a converted church that has maintained all of its size and imposing position on the Town centre.  The end Wall of the church has been replaced with gigantic doors that would look more likely to be part of an A380 airplane hangar. They are enormous.

Can you get the scale if these doors? Those are people standing in the doorway. 

More perspective; that is Edward and Betsy in front of the doors. Huge!!

We are there on market day and it was also the first day if the Christmas Market. Christmas Markets are very big in these parts and they are taken very seriously. Whole towns are decorated and they're not bits if tinsel chucked on a tree either.

The rest if the market though was very standard and we ended up buying a whole stack of vegetables for dinner to roast with our confit de canard that we found in the supermarche on special. Albeit tinned confit we thought it worth a crack.

Cheese, anyone?

A walk around Sarlat we soon realised the history of the place and more to the point, its authenticity.

The back if what was the old Abbey. 

Flying buttresses aplenty!

Shame about the washing. But it does demonstrate that people still live in this museum of a city

We found a real doer upper!!

Brilliant sunshine up top but cold and dark down at Street level in these narrow little lanes of streets.