Quiet day in Limoges

Started with a good breakfast at our interesting guest house. Two other couples - from Belgium and England. There are 3 guest rooms in this house, which now that we have studied it from various angles, is quite weird architecturally…the original old house has been added on, with an upstairs wooden structure where the rooms are, but nothing looking quite straight - rather like an illustration in a children’s book! (Not sure that it would pass council regulations in Oz!). But we think it’s probably a work of our hostess’s artist husband. When we first arrived yesterday she said something about he had “quitté” and we weren’t sure if he had left her, or died…or what details we may have missed. But his work is everywhere and I googled him and found that he was quite a well known artist and ceramicist and indeed did die fairly recently aged 74 (she is quite a lot younger I think), and she was his “last” wife, and he has 5 daughters and 2 sons, so maybe a couple of marriages before? So now we know the background - the article I read was in French and only got the basic facts.

So after breakfast we set off exploring, with umbrellas, but it never rained, just cloudy, so hope it holds off tomorrow…it was meant to rain today, and clear up Tuesday. We walked along the river, under the new big bridge with roads, to another old stone bridge. Very pretty. Then walked into the old centre, wanted to go to the markets but of course closed Monday, so we went to a Carrefour to get supplies for lunch tomorrow…important as not all small towns have a supérette. Next we went to the Resistance Museum which was interesting and well presented. And after that we walked to the Art Deco railway station and rather hoped that there’d be a cafe there to snack for lunch, but nothing - only food out of machines.

So we searched for a patisserie, or cafe and had trouble finding any…when you don’t need anything you seem to pass them all the time. Finally had success and found a restaurant, not too formal, that did lunch, and let us have just one course of their menu, very friendly waiter, and a perfect solution. We knew we were getting veal in some form, and it turned out to be slices of meat on a circle of mash with a yum gravy!

This afternoon we went to the porcelain museum which was interesting with all the old equipment they used to use, and photos, and it is attached to a huge shop with plates, tea sets, everything you could imagine that you could buy. Sadly a Limoges tea set is not compatible with our walking programme, so we weren’t tempted!

Now about to go for dinner, but just light having had our veal and mash at a late lunchtime…Read more