Hi everyone:

We will be visiting SW France for 10 days in late April/early May. We will be flying into Bordeaux and plan to pick up a car right away and drive to (probably) Bergerac. It seems like a good base of operations for some of the things we want to do - vineyards (including as far west as Bordeaux itself), caves and pretty little towns. We plan to stay there for probably 6 nights ... before returning to Bordeaux for our remaining days.

Our preference is to stay right in town so that we don't have to drive to dinner and this is one of the reasons that we're looking at Bergerac as a base of operations - larger and therefore more restaurant choices.

What I'm looking for is information about hotels in Bergerac where people have stayed and also suggestions for other towns which would be relatively central and have enough variety of eating establishments for our purposes.

Thanks in advance!

SusanJM

Stay in Sarlat instead. Bergerac is not that neat. You will be much closer to the things you want to see in the Dordogne, by staying in/near Sarlat.

Click on my name and review many similar discussions about the SW. St Cirq has a second home in the Dordogne, so pay attention to her comments.

Stu Dudley

Hi Susan,

About one hour East of Bergerac is Sarlat-La-Caneda and all of the riches of the Perigord, Dordogne and Lot regions.

If you search for "Dordogne" on this forum you will find several threads that I think you will find useful.

If you want to see vineyards, base yourself in St-Emilion or thereabouts for a couple of nights and then move on to Sarlat or somewhere nearby.

Bergerac is boring compared to the beauty of the Dordogne, which is only another hour away, and it does not make a good base for visiting the caves and pretty little towns of the Périgord.

You will no doubt observe, as you drive from Bordeaux through Bergerac to Sarlat, that the scenery just keeps getting more and more beautiful as you proceed. By the time you get to Sarlat you will be thrilled you abandoned the idea of staying in Bergerac.

Thanks everyone for the input. We are having such a hard time deciding. The original trip was going to centre entirely on Bordeaux then we realized that we would need a car to get out to the vineyards but we didn't want to have to drive in and out of the city every day. Then we found out how close some of the wonderful caves with paintings were but they were definitely too far (for us) for a day trip out of Bordeaux. Then we started to check places out further east and realized how pretty the Dordogne valley was even further east ... sigh ... only 10 days and for us even staying in two different places on a 10 day trip is packing a lot in.

Anyway thanks everyone for the tips (and Stu for the detailed Dordogne file) and I'll try to provide an update once we decide.

Susan