We were refreshed by our night in Albi, even if it was hot, and that morning we were excited to start our next section of the trip. At this point, Dave took over as the main tourist. I had come to France to see the Cathar castles, Dave had come to drink the wines of Bordeaux. He is a big wine fan. for myself, I really can't tell the difference between wines, so I could care less. But I do like visiting places I've never been to before, and I do like seeing new things, so off we went.
It is about a three hour drive from Albi to Bordeaux, if you take the highway. The tour books say that you shouldn't take the highways in France because the tolls are too expensive. I didn't find that to be true at all. We paid about $5 USD in tolls, which is less than it costs to go over the George Washington Bridge into New York City. You can also go faster on the highways (130 kph) and you don't have to stop in every little town along the way like you have to do with the other roads. By this point Dave and I had had our fill of driving through quaint little French towns and wanted to get to our destination quickly.
We stopped for lunch in the city of Agen. Although it looks pretty big on the map, it wasn't mentioned in either of our tour books. The reason for this is that Agen isn't a very nice place. It is sort of run down, and sort of industrial. Lunch was fine though.
Click here to see some pictures of Agen.
We arrived in Bordeaux in the early afternoon. It was our intention to drive straight to the tourist bureau and sign up for the all day wine tour the next day. We found that getting to the tourist bureau was more difficult than we were hoping. In most of the other, smaller cities in France, we were able to get around by just driving about looking for signs, but Bordeaux is too big for that. It is a rather large city, there are no street signs at all, and the streets are windy, narrow and mostly one way. On the first try around we were stymied by the fact the major street on the map I was looking for (Rue Sainte Catherine) was actually a pedestrian walkway closed to traffic. We made it to the tourist bureau on the second try though.
To give you an idea of how confusing the streets in Bordeaux are, not even the people at the tourist bureau could help us find a hotel on the map! Most of the street names are only applicable for a block or two, so it is very hard to find anything on a map based on a street address. Dave demanded a hotel with air conditioning, no matter what the cost. The best they could do was give us a chain hotel (Amarys) near the train station, which was about 2 miles away from city center. We took it. As it turned out, it rained most of the time we were in Bordeaux, and the temperature dropped. It was about the coldest place we were in the entire vacation, so the air conditioner wasn't all that important after all.
We had come to Bordeaux that day because we wanted to take the wine tour, if it hadn't been for the wine tour, we would've been in no rush to get there and would've stayed in Albi a bit longer. As it turns out, the all day wine tour was sold out by the time we got to the tourist bureau. They had a half day tour for the day after (Thursday), so we signed up for that one. We also signed up for a walking tour of Bordeaux for the other half day. That left us with all day Wednesday free, as well as all of Tuesday night.
After getting to the hotel and getting cleaned up, we decided to go out on the town. There was a restaurant that we just had to go to called Baud-Millet. It is an all cheese restaurant! I think that they got their start as a wine store that started giving people some cheese to taste with their wine, but now cheese is the main attraction. They have a few dishes to try, but the main reason to go is to get the all-you-can-eat cheese buffet! They have over 200 varieties of cheese available to try in a special 'cheese cellar'. It wasn't that expensive, but it was rather gourmet, and I felt a little uncomfortable. They have all of these rules for how to cut a piece of cheese properly and all. There were a pair of French girls looking over at us giggling as we ate. We weren't sure if they just thought we were cute or if they were laughing at our lack of cheese cutting ability. Perhaps they were laughing at the massive pile of cheese we were attempting to eat. Let me tell you, cheese is more filling than it looks. We each took what we thought was a small portion, but we both walked out of there holding our stomachs, saying, "I'm never eating another bite of cheese again!" The girls tried to talk to us, but they didn't speak a word of English, so we had to rely on my poor French, which didn't get us all that far.
Click here to see some pictures of the cheese buffet.
We were determined to find some people who spoke English. They had to be somewhere in France. We thought that since more people are interested in wine than in castles, there should be more tourists and ex-pats in Bordeaux than Toulouse. The guidebook talked about an Australian-themed bar, but when we went there, it was all French speakers. We gave up and went to a few other places in the Place de la Victorie area, including a sports bar that was filled with college-type people dancing wildly (even on tables and the bar) but it was all French. We were tired so we went home.
We had the entire next day free, so Dave looked at his wine map and decided to go to a region known as St. Emilion, which apparently is famous for wines. We drove out there in the morning, and things didn't start off all that well. It was cold and drizzling, and getting out of Bordeaux proved to be almost as hard as getting in. We got lost a few times before we made it out to the road to St. Emilion. The St. Emilion region is about a 45 minute drive east of Bordeaux.
I'll admit, I wasn't too excited about visiting St. Emilion. I didn't like the idea of just 'wandering around' looking for places to taste wines. I'd heard that a lot of places required reservations and some places didn't like tourists. I was also hoping that Dave wasn't relying on my French to hold complex discussions about wines with local growers. But I was wrong, we had a great time in St. Emilion.
The first thing that struck me was that the town had a lot of character. It was first settled by Emilion (the future Saint) in the 5th century, and there were a lot of old buildings, cobblestone streets, and quaint restaurants. We found the tourist bureau and Dave went in to see about looking at vineyards. I waited outside for a few minutes and looked across the street at what seemed like an old church. It started raining, so I went back inside. I was waiting around for Dave when I spotted a poster on the wall that said that the church I had been looking at (The Hermitage of St. Emilion) was a World Heritage Site! I was much more interested in seeing a World Heritage Site than a vineyard. Dave was able to get us a half day tour that went to two vineyards. That left the morning open. Luckily there was a morning tour of the Hermitage. Woo-hoo!
The tour included the Hermitage (the Saint's House), the catacombs where monks buried people, small chapel (Chapelle de la Trinite), and the Eglise Monolith. The Eglise Monolith is a church that monks carved out of a giant rock, so the whole thing is like a big cave. It was pretty cool.
Click Here to see pictures from the Tour.
After the tour was over, we had an hour or so to eat (not much time). We got a sandwich and a croissant (plus coffee for Dave), and wandered around the town. It was really a nice place. If we hadn't already had the room in Bordeaux, we might have stayed in St. Emilion that night.
click here to see some pictures of St. Emilion.
After wandering around (and getting wet in the rain), we boarded the bus for the winery tour. Most of the people on the tour were French speakers, but they gave the tour in English and French. The first stop was a very small vineyard (7 acres) called Chateau La Rose Trimoulet. The guy giving the tour was the owner, and you could tell that he made the wine personally. his hands were dirty and he looked as if he'd just come out of the field. He gave us a small tour of his facilities and he explained all of the steps in making wine. Then we got to try some. I figured that they would really push us to buy, but they didn't. Dave bought a bottle though.
Click here to see some pictures of the Rose Trimoulet Vineyard.
That tour lasted an hour or so. Then we got back on the bus and went to another vineyard, The Chateau Milon. Chateau Milon has a 'Grad Cru' appleation, which means that it is supposed to be pretty good. This vineyard was a little bigger, (about 30 acres), and the owner who took us around didn't look like she had just come out of the fields. She showed us all of the equipment, and basically said the same story as the guy from Rose Trimoulet about how wine was made. We tasted some wine and again, Dave bought some.
Click here to see some pictures of Chateau Milon.
One of the things that we had been hoping for with the wine tour was to meet some fun people to hang out with in Bordeaux, but we really didn't talk to anybody on the tour. But on the bus back to the town we were talking about driving back to the hotel, and these two girls sitting in the seat next to us asked if they could get a ride back to Bordeaux with us. They had taken the bus to St. Emilion, but had to get back to Bordeaux quickly because they had a train to catch. Since our hotel was right across the street from the train station, we said no problem. A Canadian guy started talking to Dave and also wanted a ride to Bordeaux, but we couldn't fit him in the car, so he had to take the bus. I felt a little bad about that, but what could we do?
The two girls were travelling around France from England, but neither was English. One, Miwako, was from Japan and was living in England with her husband. Her friend, Alemba, was From Egypt, but was a French citizen. Alemba was from Bordeaux, so she told us things to see while we drove back to town. They were very thankful for the ride, and when we got back, they suggested dinner, since they had an hour to kill before the train. We were happy to go, both because Alemba spoke French and because Dave and I were tired of talking to each other all the time. We went to a reasonably fast place near the train station. When the bill came, Alemba spoke to the waiter in rapid-fire French and then told us that he was going to split it. Then they gave him a credit card for their half and ran of to catch the train. After they let, the waiter said that they had paid the entire bill because we were nice enough to drive them home! It was a nice gesture, although not necessary.
After dinner, we again went out in Bordeaux. Alemba said that the area around the train station was the 'hip' part of town that the cool local people went to, so we went there (it was also only a few blocks from our hotel). We had dessert and a few beers. Nothing particularly interesting happened.
The next morning we woke up early for our walking tour of Bordeaux. It was a bit of a long walk to get back to city center, so we didn't have time to get real French coffee. Instead Dave stopped at a McDonalds for some American coffee. It hit the spot I guess. I thought that it was interesting that the McDonalds had pamphlets all over the place about how their beef is safe from Mad Cow and Foot and Mouth Diseases. We made it in time for the tour to begin. Again, it was given in French and English, but most of the tourists were French. The tour went through 'old' Bordeaux, which is the region near the tourist office, it wasn't all that exciting.
Click here to see some pictures of Bordeaux.
After the tour was over, we had some time, so we walked down St. Catherine Street, which is a big pedestrian shopping center. I thought that Bordeaux looked a little run down and dirty compared to Toulouse and some of the other places we had been to. It really had that 'big city' feel to it. We had some crepes for lunch and then went back to the tourist office to board the bus for our winery tour.
This winery tour was the first and only time that we really felt like tourists. Most of the people on the tour were English speakers, and they were almost all very young college kids who were spending the summer travelling through Europe. They seemed less interested in history and culture and winemaking as they did drinking.
This tour was to the Medoc region, which is on the other side of Bordeaux from St. Emilion. It is a more industrial version of wine making. The wineries in this area were much larger, and they were run like factories. The place didn't have the hand-made feel that St. Emilion had. The first winery we stopped at was Chaeau Labegorce in Margaux. Like many of the wineries in the region, it produces hundreds of thousands of bottles of wine each year and has a mansion on-premises. As it turns out, a lot of the wineries in this region are owned by corporations (eg Microsoft). and they use the mansion to hold business retreats. The tour guide took us through the winery and showed us the equipment, and then explained in detail all of the steps in how to make wine. Then we tasted some wine. Dave didn't like it too much, so we didn't buy any. I really couldn't tell the difference.
After Chateau Labegorce, we drove around the fields for a while, seeing all of the famous wineries and associate mansions from the bus. It got a little tiresome after a while. Eventually we wound up at our second tour, the Chateau Croizet-Bages in Pauillac. Again, it was giant operation with a tremendous amount of wine. They gave the same speil about the steps in the wine making process (I was really tired of that same speech by this point), and we tried some more wine. Again, Dave didn't think that it was worth buying and carrying all the way back to the US.
Click here to see some pictures of the Medoc region.
While we were standing around tasting our wine at Croizet-Bages, I got to talking to this girl named Kiki who was from Thailand, but was actually a Swedish citizen. It turned out that she was travelling by herself, so I invited her to come to dinner with us. We also picked up another girl travelling by herself, Sabrina, who was French Canadian.
We all went home after the tour to change (we were wet from the rain). When we met later for dinner, they had brought a third girl (whose name I can't remember) who was from Korea but studying in England. We all went to a Greek Restaurant just off St. Catherine Street where we had a very interesting conversation, since our backgrounds were all so varied. After dinner, the girls went back to the youth hostel to get some sleep before early morning train rides. Dave and I went back to the Australian bar, but it was still filled with French speakers.
We weren't sure about what to do the next day. We had to be in Toulouse for a 6am flight on the day following. We actually did a lot more than either of us had planned or imagined possible, most of which involved the Basque region of France, on the Atlantic Coast near Spain.
On to the next section, Chris Goes to Basque France
If you are thinking of going to Peru instead of France, see my Peru Page.
If for some reason you think that I'm a great writer, and you like scary, conspiracy-laden, psychological thrillers, you can read my novel, City of Pillars, published by The Invisible College Press. It has nothing to do with France though. PS: I use my middle name as my nom de plume, but it's still me.