Cadillac

Since we were in the area we couldn't resist going to Cadillac either - a tiny French town which is by mysterious ways the namesake of one of our time's most famous pieces of Americana. Cadillac is in fact so small that you can't even take the train there - but you can take the train to Cérons and in good weather it's certainly doable to walk the approximately 2 km to Cadillac. Arriving that way the last thing you do before arriving in Cadillac is crossing the Garonne river.


The central town is surrounded by the old city walls and in the largest gate there is a list over the worst floods of the river through the latest couple of centuries (given in meters over the normal water level) - for those who weren't there we can report that very few people will be able to keep the head over the surface of the water standing in the gate already when the level reaches 10 meters (which apparently happened last on December 16th 1981).


Apart from the name itself the town is perhaps most widely known for the castle, Château de Cadillac, which over the course of it's 400 years has been the home of French noblemen, a women's prison, psychiatric hospital, and now open to the public for an entrance fee. It was nice to see, but we are a bit sceptical regarding the description of the castle as 'impressive' in our Danish guidebook to Mid-France.^[1] Likewise, we are puzzled about the claim of 'innumerable small, cosy restaurants ' from the same book - we had a splendid lunch by the town square, but we didn't exactly spend hours deciding which restaurant to choose...


^[1] (C) Politikens Forlag A/S, 2007