Les Eyzies

We spent nearly all of our first full day in the Dordogne region in or near the town of Les Eyzies (lay - zayzee), on the Vézère river. The afternoon was largely taken up by our trip to the Font de Gaume cave just outside of town. However, in the morning we visited a terrific archaeological museum called the Musée National de Préhistoire.

The museum is actually built into a cliff above the town. The steps in the foreground of the picture to the left lead from the center of town down to the riverbank; the museum itself is to the upper right and in the cliff in the center. The architects and exhibit designers made full use of the setting, repeating the views of the striated cliff faces with sometimes two-story tall rock samples taken from other caves in the area and from other world prehistory sites, showing the striations from different eras. Plus, it was just downright beautiful. As you walk through the museum you progress upward through time (of course!), and at the end of the exhibits, you are let out into this cliff-and-museum-enclosed courtyard and stairwell (at right) so you can survey the Vézère valley on your way to the true exit.

The museum was a great thing to have done prior to visiting cave dwellings, because the displays and accompanying video explanations of how prehistoric tools were made (as far as anyone knows) dispel the popular notion of cave dwellers as bumbling Geico commercial extras and set the stage for appreciating the accomplishments of the folks who created the cave art so long ago. Plus, who can resist a little recreated taxidermy-like Megaceros for some prehistory ambiance on the way in to the cool tools and videos?

The museum website is all in French, but this one little page is of their postcards, which gives you a little sense of what we saw. Also, if you just keep reloading their homepage, you'll see a bunch of different artifacts.


For lunch we brought a picnic and found a terrific picnic area just next to the Vézère. We met a family from Seattle and the 5 kids let off some steam at the nearby playground -- always a good way to store up some positive child-karma for use later in the afternoon.

Finally, in the credit-where-credit-is-due department, we include this shot of Sandy at the picnic site striking a familiar pose. Many of the pictures on the blog in this and nearby posts were taken by Sandy. She loves taking pictures, so we were happy to delegate to her much of the responsibility of photo-documentation. It was nice to have someone else dealing with this!