June 4 - Medieval St. Emilion and the run for the train
This morning, since we were able to sleep in past 7 am, we got to enjoy the breakfast part of our bed and breakfast stay. I have to say, comparing to the B&B's I've tried in, say, Niagara-on-the-Lake - there's actually no comparison. This place was cute and all, and the host was nice, but Niagara-on-the-Lake rules. GO CANADA! [Doesn't really fit in here but oh well.] Breakfast was standard fare croissants, toast, orange juice, fruit cake, and pound cake. I ate plenty of pound cake cuz I really didn't feel like the other stuff, but that's not very healthy breakfast food. The only thing unique about the breakfast was the preserves/jams/sauces they had. Oh, and yogurt. I learned a neat trick from Min - pour honey in plain yogurt to make it yummy and sweet. Mmmm. The jams and chocolates were also yum but I didn't have much of them since they don't really go with pound cake. For the first time we also got to drink tea in France - in a really really big cup.
The best part of breakfast was the company. Coming in late and leaving early as we did, we had no idea who else was living there with us - although the small parking lot was full every night. So we got to meet our fellow guests that day. There were a couple of older ladies, and a funny family of 5. There was a really cute baby - less than a year old I think - side story, the mother breast-fed the baby right there at the breakfast table, EW!! The mother was French, originally from South Africa, so spoke perfect French and accented English. The father was Australian, and moved to France to study there and stayed because he met his wife. But get this, he was originally Canadian!!! The grandmother was Canadian by birth but married an Australian, so their son was born in Canada, moved to Australia when a child, grew up there, went to school in England I think, and finally settled in France with his South African wife!! So the baby was part Australian, Canadian, French, South African - and maybe even a little Scottish or something. Cool huh? It was really awesome to talk to them, partly because they spoke English (yay!) and partly because they were just cool. Min and I were thinking, Why can't we meet Canadian-Australian guys in France who move to another country to marry us?
Anyway, we finally lugged all our stuff out of the house, packed it into our tiny car - for the last time - sob - and drove directly over dog poop (dog belonged to B&B) to go to St. Emilion for the very little time we had before our train into Lille. We got a cheaper train into Lille by taking the late train, I think it was 6:30 pm or something - which we didn't originally want to do since we wouldn't be arriving in Lille until midnight that meant. However, good thing, because we had so much we wanted to do in St. Emilion!! The city itself was amazing, v. quaint and cute, much like all the other small medieval towns we saw on our way but more touristy. Apparently, this was on the way of a pilgrimmage path to see Santiago de Compostela in Spain (a very important pilgrimmage back in the day). The town itself was named after the monk Emilion, but as our city tour guide explained to us, that's something of a myth - no one knows if this alleged monk really existed or if it was just something made up to generate tourism for the pilgrims of Santiago de Compostela. It's certainly still plausible, because there are all these signs that might have indicated St. Emilion was there - but no one knows for sure. He allegedly became a hermit because everyone wanted a miracle from the saint, and he basically crawled into a cave to escape them.
Either way, the city was very pretty and the tour was cool. We climbed the clock tower in the morning and this is what we saw:
After the tower, we ate lunch in the square of the town. St. Emilion is situated on a hill, so we actually had to climb down a long flight of pretty steep steps to get to the square. But it was worth it, it was this cute outdoor patio place with good food. Here we are, enjoying the first good crepes I've had in France (the first one was a disaster!!)
After that we ran into a wine shop, with a very very nice shop owner who talked us through some wines. We only had time for Min to buy one bottle before we had to run all the way back up the stairs to the visitors' centre to meet for the guided tour - painful! Of course, the guided tour led us straight back down the same stairs to reach the Eglise Monolith, a church carved out of limestone where St. Emilion apparently lived. (The other Eglise Monoliths of the world are in Turkey and ...I can't remember. Not very prominent in Europe.) It was quite neat to see, especially the attached catacombs, which still had skeletons prominent visible in the small tombs!!! EWWW!!!!
After tour, another run back up the stairs to make it to our wine tasting class. We had bought tickets at the Maison du Vin to learn how to deguste our wine properly. The details of it are far too extensive to blog about...but it was a very good class, and we learned a lot, although only about red wine. You can really make an educated guess about the year of the wine by its colour, vividness, etc. The most important things I learned are:
1. Red wine must age. Don't drink the young wines - i.e. just out of the barrel, or even 2-3 years out. Wait like 5-6 years.
2. I like St. Emilion wines better than the prestigious Pauillac/Margaux wines because they are less bitter/tannic.
3. I don't like fancy wines because they are red and bitter/tannic. I like sweet white wines that nobody thinks are good.
4. I hate running for trains.
OK, that last one has nothing to do with the wine tasting class - or maybe it does, because half the class was late, which made us late...and then Min just had to run back down the stairs to buy more wine from the nice shopkeeper...and then we couldn't find the gas station...and still had to refund my expensive train ticket...and didn't know where to return the car...
So we ended up running for the train, which was late, and not refilling half a tank of gas, which cost us I have no idea how much...while carrying all our luggage plus like seven bottles of wine!!!! And then I almost got on the wrong train!!! But we made it, and got to sit in first class too, thanks to my powers of persuasion and looking like a cute lil azn girl.
PS - the Bordeaux train station is in such a getto area!!! Do NOT stay in the train station area if you're ever in Bordeaux.
We made it into Lille around midnight, waited like 15 minutes for the slow taxi, had to share a taxi with some stupid impatient French guy (but did not get compensated)...and arrived in Min's home!! Even though we were tired we stayed up late chatting and complaining about how much packing there was left to do....Min had 2 days left to pack up her place and leave for good at that point. The countdown begins....
The best part of breakfast was the company. Coming in late and leaving early as we did, we had no idea who else was living there with us - although the small parking lot was full every night. So we got to meet our fellow guests that day. There were a couple of older ladies, and a funny family of 5. There was a really cute baby - less than a year old I think - side story, the mother breast-fed the baby right there at the breakfast table, EW!! The mother was French, originally from South Africa, so spoke perfect French and accented English. The father was Australian, and moved to France to study there and stayed because he met his wife. But get this, he was originally Canadian!!! The grandmother was Canadian by birth but married an Australian, so their son was born in Canada, moved to Australia when a child, grew up there, went to school in England I think, and finally settled in France with his South African wife!! So the baby was part Australian, Canadian, French, South African - and maybe even a little Scottish or something. Cool huh? It was really awesome to talk to them, partly because they spoke English (yay!) and partly because they were just cool. Min and I were thinking, Why can't we meet Canadian-Australian guys in France who move to another country to marry us?
Anyway, we finally lugged all our stuff out of the house, packed it into our tiny car - for the last time - sob - and drove directly over dog poop (dog belonged to B&B) to go to St. Emilion for the very little time we had before our train into Lille. We got a cheaper train into Lille by taking the late train, I think it was 6:30 pm or something - which we didn't originally want to do since we wouldn't be arriving in Lille until midnight that meant. However, good thing, because we had so much we wanted to do in St. Emilion!! The city itself was amazing, v. quaint and cute, much like all the other small medieval towns we saw on our way but more touristy. Apparently, this was on the way of a pilgrimmage path to see Santiago de Compostela in Spain (a very important pilgrimmage back in the day). The town itself was named after the monk Emilion, but as our city tour guide explained to us, that's something of a myth - no one knows if this alleged monk really existed or if it was just something made up to generate tourism for the pilgrims of Santiago de Compostela. It's certainly still plausible, because there are all these signs that might have indicated St. Emilion was there - but no one knows for sure. He allegedly became a hermit because everyone wanted a miracle from the saint, and he basically crawled into a cave to escape them.
Either way, the city was very pretty and the tour was cool. We climbed the clock tower in the morning and this is what we saw:
After the tower, we ate lunch in the square of the town. St. Emilion is situated on a hill, so we actually had to climb down a long flight of pretty steep steps to get to the square. But it was worth it, it was this cute outdoor patio place with good food. Here we are, enjoying the first good crepes I've had in France (the first one was a disaster!!)
After that we ran into a wine shop, with a very very nice shop owner who talked us through some wines. We only had time for Min to buy one bottle before we had to run all the way back up the stairs to the visitors' centre to meet for the guided tour - painful! Of course, the guided tour led us straight back down the same stairs to reach the Eglise Monolith, a church carved out of limestone where St. Emilion apparently lived. (The other Eglise Monoliths of the world are in Turkey and ...I can't remember. Not very prominent in Europe.) It was quite neat to see, especially the attached catacombs, which still had skeletons prominent visible in the small tombs!!! EWWW!!!!
After tour, another run back up the stairs to make it to our wine tasting class. We had bought tickets at the Maison du Vin to learn how to deguste our wine properly. The details of it are far too extensive to blog about...but it was a very good class, and we learned a lot, although only about red wine. You can really make an educated guess about the year of the wine by its colour, vividness, etc. The most important things I learned are:
1. Red wine must age. Don't drink the young wines - i.e. just out of the barrel, or even 2-3 years out. Wait like 5-6 years.
2. I like St. Emilion wines better than the prestigious Pauillac/Margaux wines because they are less bitter/tannic.
3. I don't like fancy wines because they are red and bitter/tannic. I like sweet white wines that nobody thinks are good.
4. I hate running for trains.
OK, that last one has nothing to do with the wine tasting class - or maybe it does, because half the class was late, which made us late...and then Min just had to run back down the stairs to buy more wine from the nice shopkeeper...and then we couldn't find the gas station...and still had to refund my expensive train ticket...and didn't know where to return the car...
So we ended up running for the train, which was late, and not refilling half a tank of gas, which cost us I have no idea how much...while carrying all our luggage plus like seven bottles of wine!!!! And then I almost got on the wrong train!!! But we made it, and got to sit in first class too, thanks to my powers of persuasion and looking like a cute lil azn girl.
PS - the Bordeaux train station is in such a getto area!!! Do NOT stay in the train station area if you're ever in Bordeaux.
We made it into Lille around midnight, waited like 15 minutes for the slow taxi, had to share a taxi with some stupid impatient French guy (but did not get compensated)...and arrived in Min's home!! Even though we were tired we stayed up late chatting and complaining about how much packing there was left to do....Min had 2 days left to pack up her place and leave for good at that point. The countdown begins....
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