A Triple Threat

Today we had three amazingly diverse experiences. Due to yesterday's dreary and rainy conditions, we headed back this morning to the foot of Le Puy en Dome, for a train ride up the volcano.

The electric train operates on a cog or, as they call it here, rack system and takes fifteen minutes to make it to the summit. On a good day, the volcano should look like this.

Today, when we got to the top, our view from the observation deck looked like this.

We knew we were in for low visibility when we set out, but this was our last chance to view the 2nd century remains of the Temple of Mercury.

C'est la vie! It was still a fun thing to do. We were not alone in this thought. Along came a group with vintage cars who headed for the top as well. Even the guys in the high end new Jaguars, ended up seeing nothing.

From here, we headed to the town of Thiers, famous for their knife makers. This ended up being a cliffside town with some half timbered houses and other fabulous buildings.

They still make high end knives and even though it was Sunday, the knife shops were open for the tourists. The one we went into, shown below, featured an extremely helpful and informative gentleman who guided us though the history of knife making in the town.

Thanks to this gentleman, we headed up an alley to a hole in the wall restaurant called the Chaudron. Here we had a great lunch and admired the owner's dog at the front door.

From Thiers we headed to our lodgings for tonight, the Michelin five star Chateau de Codignat with it's one star restaurant. This place is really remote and dates back to the 11th century as a defence outpost. What a spot!

The place is decorated in period pieces. The next pictures show the entrance to our room - doors on left - and the bedroom and bath.

We had arranged a wine tasting and thanks to an extremely knowledgeable and funny sommelier, we had a great time experiencing three new wines with some accompanying snacks.

Following a short break from that, we had a quick game of cards before heading down for dinner. We have had some pretty amazing meals in France over the years, but this one easily ranks right up there. The meal was part of a room package we purchased and had three or four choices of each of the four courses with wine once again selected by our sommelier for each course. I've restrained myself and have only included photos of the three main courses - lobster for Brigitte, lamb for Dawn and beef for me. Presentation of all courses was extraordinary and the flavours and wine pairings were perfect!!

What a day!