Bastide #5 was Cordes-Sur-Ciel. As with the other towns we visited, tourism is the main industry. The city was much more touristy than the other bastides. However, our accommodations here were probably the best of those outside Paris. We stayed at a delightful bed and breakfast called Le Secret du Chat. Alain and Marie are excellent hosts. Not only are they good cooks, they have a garden (the secret) that overlooks the valley. Our breakfast companions were a lively mix of French, Irish, Swiss, and Polish people. We also had a very pleasant home-cooked dinner with Alain and Marie. Unfortunately, we missed the Cordes Cookbook Festival, which was scheduled for the week after we left. (Zut alors!)
Our B&B in Cordes-sur-Ciel.
Our final town on this stretch of the trip was Albi. It doesn’t qualify as a bastide, although there are some nearby. It’s famous for two landmarks, the Cathedral of Sainte-Cecile (St. Cecilia) and the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum. Sainte-Cecile is the largest brick cathedral in the world. Parts of it are under renovation, but the parts that have been renovated are stunning. The ceilings are painted with the saints, and the altar table is a marble and mosaic masterpiece. Toulouse-Lautrec was from Albi, and the museum holds a large collection of his works, from his childhood doodles inside a French-Latin dictionary to paintings to the posters for which he’s best known. Another landmark for us was the Marché Couvert, an assortment of bakeries, butchers, and fish shops.
If you want to visit the bastides for yourself, you will need a car. Most of these villages don’t have rail service. (The tourist choo-choo trains don’t count.) You also need a bit of daring (and a strong undercarriage on your car) to negotiate some of the roads leading to the bastides. Make hotel reservations well in advance of your trip, as accommodations are limited. Most of the bastides can be done in a day, so you can set up in Beynac (for example) and visit Domme, Roque-Gageac, and other bastides on the Dordogne from there. Cordes and Albi are near each other, so you can set up in either town. St. Cirq-Lapopie is pretty isolated from the others, and we would argue that it deserves two days.
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