ORADOUR-SUR-GLANE

Saturday, November 4th, 2000 Sarlat, France

Breakfast in the hotel and then off to the Laundromat across the street from our hotel. By 11: 15 am we'd finished three loads of laundry which should last us for the rest of the trip if we're careful! Off to Oradour we stopped for gas. Dumb Jim (his words) gave the attendant two 200 francs that were stuck together. ..the attendant gave us back a 200 plus the change. Jim tried to give the 200 back to him lucky for us the French are very honest!

The weather today is overcast with intermittent sunshine! We saw a rainbow just as we arrived at Oradour-sur-Glane. This is a town about two hours north of our hotel. It is a memorial to WW II. The Germans SS chose this town as an example on June 10, 1944, and burned it to the ground including all of the people who were in the town that day. The French have left the town as it was on June 10th, 1944; a memorial to "REMEMBER" what the war was about! Very moving museum and walk through the town. There were 328 buildings burned and 700 people killed that day. The museum is all below ground so that the landscape remains the same as June 20th, 1944.

Afterwards we started to go to Rocamadour but decided on the way that it would be too late for us to go. We'd be driving lots of narrow, unlit roads after dark! And, it was getting stormy with light rain. The sky was beautiful, very dark clouds next to crystal blue sky! Very dramatic. Then we decided to drive to Beynac. A town not far from Sarlat, for dinner. As we drove it became darker and darker; the roads were very twisting and narrow! Finally we decided to just drive towards Sarlat and have dinner in our hotel again. We arrived at 6:30 pm and it really began to rain hard after we arrived. Good thing we changed our minds. As we were walking into the hotel there was a crash between a motor scooter and a car at our intersection. Jim said, let's get into the hotel. ..we don't want to become witness to something! Turns out that three of the five streets that intersect at this corner have a yield sign. ...so who's to tell who is to blame. The motor scooter driver seemed fine and he was our main concern! We enjoyed another wonderful dinner at our hotel. The waiter even took the label off the wine bottle for us and delivered it to our room after dinner! Another souvenir.