cro-magnon cave reservations- HELP!

You might have the staff at the hotel or b&b for help with the reservation. Also depending on the time of year and where you are going, you can show up early and buy your ticket. We visited in Nov. and had no problem the day we went to LCII.

I had some luck if you want to call it that, but there are no reservations available. We will be there Oct. 24-28. Do we need to be at the sight at 9 to make the reservation, or can we show up later?
Thanks

FdG: [email protected]. You can submit your request in english. Spell out the month or you might screw up with numbers (3/5/13 is May 3, not March 5). Stick in the day of the week (e. g., 'friday') as a clarity cross-check. PM: reservation on form here: http://www.pechmerle.com/english/introduction.html L II: beats me. Only there once ( enough ! ) and went in fairly quickly. Just as important as the caves in the National Prehistory Museum at Les Eyzies. It's up the hill toward what looks like a castle behind the Cafe de la Mairie. Excellent museum, poorly signed from the street. No english tours, but plenty of multi-lingual leaflets scattered around.

Thanks to everyone. I got a reservation at Pech Merle; I was informed via email that I would not need a reservation at Grottes de Cougnac; alas all reservations at Font de Gaume are filled til the end of the year, so we will get there an hour before opening and hope for the best. Pech Merle is an hour and a half drive from Sarlat, so we may skip it. We only have 3 full days in the Dordogne.
Thanks again for all of your help!

Info, take it for what it's worth. You're off on your timing, Sarlat to Pech Merle is closer to an hour. Use everwhat that straight line road is instead of the freeway. The numbers change constantly, but the only place it slows down is after you pass under the freeway and get past Sabadel. Before that the road is narrow, but has little traffic and lots of passing opportunites. Font de Gaume is handy but over-rated - - it's dinky with faded drawings. Gougnac is even smaller, with fewer drawings, but they show up better. Pech Merle is the last big, good cave still open to the public. It ranks with Lascaux I which is long-closed, and Altamira, Spain, (also closed). If you really want to see paintings, that's the place to go. What would make a pretty good day trip with well less than four hours of driving is to make an elevnish reservation at Pech Merle, swing through Domme enroute (read up on bastide towns), see Pech Merle (it takes about an hour) and then go to Rocamadour before heading back to Sarlat. One caveat - - you're going to have to watch your timing coming out of Rocamadour. It gets dark six seconds after sundown in those valleys and the sun will disappear a good hour before pure latitudinal astronomical data projects. The D39(?)is a royal bitch: one lane with no center or side stripes for the first thirty miles. It gets workable after Saint Projet. You'll get a preview on the way into Rocamadour on the D32, take heed. If you screw up, disregard your gps and use the D673 toward through Payrac which is at least two laned and center-striped.

Thanks Ed!! I used via michelin for the driving times. Our reservation is for 11:30 (hooray!?) Sounds like we should keep it.

So, other than Pech Merele, what other cave should we not miss? I find the whole Cor-magnum thing fascinating. Maybe it's not worth standing in line for Font de Gaume at the crack of dawn???

Quite honestly, after Pech Merle,everything else is a let-down to the point that you'd consider it a waste of time. I'd shift to something else in the Dordogne/Lot, mostly working the border between the two and not going much further west than Les Eyzies and not much further east than Rocamadour in the time that you have. What I wouldn't do is waste a second on the stupid canoe rides that everybody thinks is so nifty just because they showed up in a tv show. As far as the caves go: I've been in them all including Altamira several times before it closed, and Lasaux before it closed as well as once afterwards on a research project. I'd rank Altamira, Pech Merle, and Lasaux as one, two, three and wouldn't start numbering again until ten or twelve - - there's that much of a difference. I take people to Font de Gaume if they just want to say they've seen a cave painting since it's generally handy and I can slip over and get a same- or next-day slot while they're still getting organized for the day (I mostly travel off-peak). The only really good thing I can say about it is that they have the best t-shirts. If you really want to see more, I guess it'd have to be Lasaux II. It's well-done and pretty accurate as far as I can tell, but I've never seen I and II in the same month, so who knows. I just can't mentally get past the fact that it's a stinking reporduction. I think you'd get more out of the museum at Les Eyzies. I can't remember the name of the gal that wrote the series of books, but 'Clan of the Cave Bears', etc., were set in the region since it was just south of the southern boundry of the last ice age and would make pretty good fictional background.

Do NOT skip Peche Merle. We stayed in Sarlat to and it crossed my mind to skip it because it was so far. (It did take us 90 minutes to get there but I make no claim to be as good as Ed on the roads.) Thank heavens we did not. It was that good. I would not get up early and wait in line for Font du Gaume. We liked it but only because we saw it first. Also we had a reservation. I think your time would be better spent in the little villages. We loved the castle at castelnaud. The one at Beynac is nice too. I'm with Ed on the canoe ride - you can skip it.

When did Peche Merle get so popular it required reservations? We went there 13 years ago when we stayed in the Lot Valley in June, and just showed up and almost no one was there. I guess a lot of people figured out how great it was.

Don't cancel Pech Merle. When my husband went ten years ago, the reservations were all filled and people were waiting stand-by.

Oh! thanks so much! I will get the book for the fictional background and quite honestly am relieved to hear we don't have to see so many caves, as fascinated as I am by the subject. All that being tied down to reservations is too much. We will go to Pech Merle; our reservation is for 11:30. We will go to the museum. We will probably go to Lascaux 11 and will skip Font de Gaume. Now, on the drive back to Paris on Sunday, any suggestions on a quick stop. We will be driving down to D. on Wed. when we will visit Oradour. We are not big on fancy houses, so the chateaux in the Loire don't interest us so much. We are inclined to just get to Paris. We plan on dropping our car at Orly. Any better suggestions? Thanks so much for all of your help.
And by the way, Ed, thanks for the comment about the stupid canoe trip which my husband might be inclined to want to do.

Sarlat to Paris is a five-hour hump with only a quick rest/gas stop. Orly is as good a place as any to drop the car, but figure it's going to take you a good hour to ditch it and get into centre ville. The drive is as unscenic as you can get. I'd be tempted to leave early and get it over with, grabbing a sandwich at one of the rest plazas along the freeway, BUT (and I seldom recommend hotels or restaurants), L' Escalier Restaurant in Chateauroux is at about the midpoint. It's one of a couple dozen places in the world that I jiggle my schedule just to get some of their grub. I think the mid-day hours are eleven to two, maybe three. You ca make a good lunch out of a bunch of appetizers - - if you go the full monty, you'll go to sleep and die a half hour up the road.

Good move dropping the car at Orly because getting back into Paris on a Sunday night can be bumper-to-bumper.

so should we expect bumper to bumper from Sarlat to Orly?