From 4-21-10

Today I am exhausted. I was on the river almost all day – 6 hrs, 25km from Carsac to Beynac. And unfortunately have the T-shirt and watch tan to prove it (I hope to remedy this at least in Mexico). It was a fantastic kayak ride. I took over 100 pictures along the way, of the beautiful scenery and castles along the way. I know that this is the river along which a great deal of hundred year war took place but really, how many castles can be built during 100 years? The first castle I passed was Montfort which apparently is now the private residency of some prince of Kuwait. I thought – gee, I could really use a private castle too. I stopped in the “cutest in France” town of La Roque-Gageac for lunch and ate my favorite salad (gizzards and foie gras) while enjoying river views from my terrace. It made me wonder if I would have been happier staying in the riverview room in La Roque instead of on my farm but I realized that my farm is a totally awesome experience – more later. There is a strong current along the entire river so for most of it you can just glide, or spin around as I did for the 360 panorama view. When I finally reached the destination point, I agreed with another kayaker that we could have used a couple more hours still.

After the kayak ride, I needed to something that was very low-key. Well, I ended up deciding on visiting a goose farm where they make foie gras. I took the farm tour and saw their walnut trees (over 7000 – the nuts are cracked by old people :P), saw their free-range geese, saw their baby geese, and saw them force-feed some geese. These geese get raised free-range and then at the age of 2 are force fed for 3 weeks – corn mixed with water, fed 4 times a day, about 450g corn each time I think. They go from 3.7-4.1 kg to 7-9 kg during this time and are then killed and sold as foie gras, meat, fat, and feathers – very efficiently used. Only the blood and some bones get wasted. Not for the squeamish – they stick a tube down the goose’s throat and use either a manual machine or an automatic machine to force feed. When this is done by hand, the person massages the corn down the goose’s throat so it does not choke on it. Kinda gross, but foie gras is so yummy.

Dinner tonight was foie gras of duck, duck breast with baked potato and green beans, and peach and meringue pie. Oh, I forgot to mention that there is always a house special aperitif with every meal. Today was a cherry liquor – very yummy. So the cool thing about my farm – we all sit at big tables like a big family for dinner. I’ve been sitting with this family of 5 since my arrival and it works out that we’re here for the same number of days. I’ve gotten to know them very well and we seem to enjoy each other’s company. Today, they bought a bottle of wine and invited me. How nice! Then when the kids went upstairs to sleep they came and kissed me good-night too – cute!

Tired, one more day in lovely Dordogne. Great place, really beautiful, but driving here is crazy – so many crazy turns and my GPS likes to seek out the tiniest streets ever (though really, without my GPS I would never have made it, the signs don’t correlate with the streets I’m looking for, ever).