This is part 2. Before these 10 days in the Dordogne region of France we spent 10 days in Portugal. That report is here; https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/trip-report-part-1-hills-and-castles-portugal. Unlike part 1 with friends, this leg was just me and my wife Carla.
SW France including the Dordogne was our original plan until our friends invited us to meet them in Portugal. It wasn’t the most convenient side trip to combine the two countries, but we’d been wanting to come back since a 2-day stay in Sarlat on an RS tour in 2019 where I fell in love with Beynac. Also, during that tour, we visited the Lascaux and Rouffignac Caves which were so memorable that I wanted to see more caves. Add that to my love for castles, and the Valley of 1001 castles was calling us back and we didn’t want to postpone this leg of the trip for additional time in Portugal.
The logistics were somewhat challenging; if you were to visit Portugal and France where would your flight from home be to? Probably not Spain, but that’s what we did. It wasn’t the first pick, but our airline of choice-WestJet has direct flights to Barcelona, and we could easily fly from there to Lisbon, and from Bordeaux, so it made sense. It wasn’t the most efficient use of valuable vacation time, but since we weren’t willing to sacrifice either country it made sense for us. And as luck would have it, it was the right choice. Our original thought was a flight to Lisbon with a connection though Toronto. But days before departure the Air Canada pilots were threatening to go on strike. They did settle before the strike started but we didn’t need that added stress of wondering if we’d make it.
Besides flight logistics, the trip was everything we hoped it would be.