2002 Letter from PERIGUEUX: Sunday morning marked the beginning of our third week in Europe. We drove into Perigueux (40 miles east and a little south of Bordeaux). Found a parking space, and saw a lot of people with empty baskets heading down the street. Show Ron this scene, and he can find a marche (market). And he did. It was a wonderful market – flowers, meat, fish, many vendors selling the local specialty, fois-gras, bakers and fruits and vegetables. Despite a bad case of eyes that were bigger than our stomachs, we managed to buy only a fraction of what was available. There were a lot of vendors selling foie-gras. And we even got to taste it. But the prices were so high that we decided to forego the pleasure. They ranged from $18 to $25 per 100 grams which is about 3 ounces. (Incidentally, we saw it in the supermarket later at better prices, but still decided against it.) Anyway, we put everything we had purchased into the RV and headed for the "Cite Romain".
The most obvious remnant of 1st century Roman Gaul was the "cella" – which had once been the holiest place in the temple. This was a round tower about 30 feet in diameter and 75 feet high made of brick with walls about two feet thick. Very impressive. Since part of one side was missing, you could see how it was constructed. Nearby was a very modern building made of glass. We looked inside and saw the ruins of a villa – a 4,000 square meter palace – which is being excavated in a controlled setting, i.e., the building they put up around it. You couldn’t get too close, but we could see the rooms.
2005 Letter:Our next destination was Perigueux. We got there late in the afternoon, and chilled out for a while in a beautiful campground right on the river. In the morning, we set out to visit this town again. Another exquisite medieval town where real people live and work. Several blocks away is the remains of a Gallo-Roman town. Perigueux also is the center of the area in France famous for creating and marketing foie gras as well as truffles, those black fungi that are almost as expensive as gold.
We had been here three years ago, and had seen an archeological dig that uncovered a huge Roman villa.
Almost next door is the ruin of an enormous cylindrical building which was identified as a "cella" – the most sacred part of the Temple of Vesunna (a goddess we’d never heard of before). There were models of both the villa and the temple in the new museum that the architect had sited right over the ruins of the villa. The size of the villa was astounding and so was the model. After that museum, we spent the day walking through the city (and checking out an internet site).
