Aurillac

As usual, we spent the first day exploring the town we were based in. Aurillac, the capital of the Cantal department, is known for various things, such as being the Historic umbrella capital of France (half of the umbrellas produced in 1999 were made there), and its Cheese Center,  but we found the old town quite unimpressive, and honestly rather dirty. Also, many businesses were closed for good — nothing unexceptional in these times, though. So, after climbing to Chateau Saint-Étienne, it did not take us long to cover the whole pedestrian center, and a bit more.

After the tour, we had lunch at an Asian restaurant Kim Thanh; actually they claimed to be Vietnamese, but while being quite good, their food was more like westernized Chinese. It was Sunday and they were open for carry-out only, but  after explaining the host that we were quite far from our apartment and it would be difficult to take the food there (we were actually on our way to a supermarket), he allowed us to dine in. Now that I think of it, this was the only time we ate out during the two weeks.

Puy Courny (761m)

On the second day we did not leave very far from the town either. We started the hike (9.7K in 3h 30 mins, D+/D- 277m) directly from the apartment, and climbed to the small volcano above the town. It was a relaxed hike on the top of a ridge with views to the river valleys of Jordanne and Mamou — no splendid views but those usually come with more challenging terrain. The only challenge we met were the numerous times we had to climb over or crawl under (electric) barbed wire fences.