Périgord Noir

The journey opens in Paris. Land, settle, and let the city hold you for one evening — a walk, a glass, a first dinner together — before the run south in the morning. Tonight there is no agenda but arrival.

The morning train south to Brive, then the drive on to Sarlat — arriving on market day. We walk straight into the Wednesday marché to provision the week's kitchen: the golden-stone lanes, the stalls, the lantern of the dead, a first taste of the Périgord. Then we settle into the residences — keys, rooms, a first glass, and a welcome table where strangers begin to become a group.

A morning drive to Château des Milandes for the 11:15 falconry show — the season's finale on Armistice Day — and the château's remarkable story: Josephine Baker, the Rainbow Tribe, the Resistance years, the gardens after. Lunch in the valley, then the hanging gardens of Marqueyssac — a hundred thousand hand-clipped boxwoods on a cliff above the river, looking straight across at Castelnaud — and home to rest before the week's one great table: dinner at Le 1862, Les Glycines — one Michelin star, Chef Pascal Lombard.

The spine of the week: two of the greatest Paleolithic sites on earth, one river valley, 17,000 years side by side. A morning at Font-de-Gaume — one of the last caves with original polychrome paintings open to the public — a gourmet lunch in Montignac, and an afternoon at Lascaux IV, the complete facsimile and international center of cave art.

Sarlat's legendary Saturday market at the opening of truffle season — truffle vendors, foie gras, walnut, the whole terroir, steps from the house. Choose the ingredients together, carry home the black diamond, and cook the week's centerpiece meal as a group. Afternoon free — a fortress at Beynac or Castelnaud for the restless, or cocoon.

East into the Lot — the opposite way from the valley châteaux, which is exactly why it gets a day of its own. Rocamadour is a medieval pilgrimage city built vertically into a limestone cliff above the Alzou gorge: chapels stacked on chapels, the Black Madonna in her sanctuary, and a view from the top that stops you where you stand. Loveliest in the quiet of a November Sunday morning; lunch in the old city, then the slow road home through the causse. (Padirac sleeps for winter — so Rocamadour stands alone, as it prefers.) Home by evening for the farewell table in Sarlat — glasses raised to the week.

Checkout from both houses, and the train north — carrying a week of the Périgord home.