Perouges

Doug again. Catching up on the last few days of our big trip. On Sunday morning (10/28) it looked like Susan was feeling better. But it was a false alarm. By noon she'd relapsed and was sick again. She and Matt stayed back at the house while the rest of us drove to Perouges -- a small village northeast of Lyon. Perouges has been preserved to be more-or-less exactly as it would have been in the middle ages. But people still live and work there. They just bury the power and telephone lines and refuse to widen the roads and do everything they can to keep the village looking like it did 700 years ago or so. It's a popular place on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. There were hundreds of people there wandering the streets, sitting at the outdoor cafes, buying things in the shops. They sell an interesting flat cake -- Galette de Perouges. It's basically a pizza crust (although the French would call it Brioche I think) with sugar and lemon on it. They sell them to take home and bake, but we bought one and just ate it raw. Bad manners I suppose but we were hungry and it still tasted really good.

By the time we got home, Matt was much much better. His antibiotics had finally kicked in. Hooray! Yannick and Kris cooked another fantastic meal. This time confit de cunard (duck, with beans, sausage, and other goodies). This was Matt's first real dinner in France. He loved it, and was a good fearless eater as we'd expected. After the duck, he even tried all the cheeses -- even the good and stinky ones. We finished with barbarian figs (possibly otherwise known as prickly pears) for dessert. Both Matt and I ended up with tiny-but-annoying stickers in our fingers, but it was worth it since the fruit was soooooo good. Taina ate about seven.