Gites de France

During the two big trips we took during the kids' April vacation and while Sandy was visiting us, we spent three nights in the Dordogne region (i.e., the caves) and two nights near Mont Saint Michel.

Instead of reserving hotel rooms, Cricket found us a couple of "gites," which are basically houses that people rent out. For groups of more than a couple -- we were five -- these gites are fantastic. They are not only economical, costing about what a single hotel room would, but they offer much more living space and sometimes are in more interesting places than a hotel would be. Also, they have kitchen facilities, which means saving money on restaurants by cooking for ourselves -- and not having to submit completely to local eating schedules. In Dordogne, for example, we had two bedrooms and a spacious kitchen / dining room. Furthermore, that paricular gite was in an amazing location in a converted old chateau (at the end of a long tree-lined driveway/orchard/vineyard; see picture). It was right next to the Vézère River outside the little town of Limeuil, and we spent some time walking in the field next to the river.

Near Mont Saint Michel, we stayed in the tiny town of la Boussac in an old house with a swing set and a sheep pasture in the back yard. There was a sign on the gate that said "bélier méchant" -- "bad ram" -- but we saw no evidence of him. We did see lots of little lambs chasing each other, butting heads, and generally being children. Except when they were playing springbok and pronking -- heads down, backs arched, legs straight, and rocket up in the air off all four feet at once. They didn't actually say BOING! when they did it, but you could tell they wanted to. We did.

We're definitely looking forward to finding more gites in interesting places. The best known website for the purpose, Gites de France, can be one of those Internet-era gifts to travelers that you wonder how anyone ever did without. Alternatively, it can explain sudden balding and intense irritability. It all seems to depend on where you want to go, the density of the gites in that area, and how well you can specify what you want from your gite to narrow down your results. Most importantly, it seems that you can't reliably re-find a gite on the site using its ID number, or name, or anything else we could think of. But we know that now. Subsequent gite searches have involved taking very good pen-and-paper notes every step of the way. The result of Cricket's intense and frequent gite-muttering and wild gesticulating back at the beginning of her learning curve is that Dave continues to be very explicitly thankful for any and all gite finds. She's not complaining, but it's nice that it's no longer necessary!