Le vin et la gastronomie!
Despite David having done battle in the middle of the night with a mosquito, our sleep was largely restful. Check-out was set for 11 am, so we took our time getting our things in order to be stored by the hotel. We snacked on bread and cheese we’d purchased the evening before (although the cheese was smelly enough to have really permeated the room and the little fridge with a rather unpleasant odour). Sunglasses firmly affixed, we checked-out and headed out for a quick morning stop at Paul, the nearby boulangerie, for pain au chocolat. The sun was out in full force, unsheathed from any cloud cover, and by 11 am, we already knew it was going to be a scorcher of a day. We made our way down to the water to check out Bordeaux Fete de Vin, which lined probably a mile of the boardwalk.
We spent relatively little time on actual wine tastings, and focused our attention on the Pavilion Gourmand (gastronomy pavilions). Our first foray was a delicious plate of charcuterie (cured meat, sausage, ham) and foïe gras with a hunk of fresh bread. Next, we moved down the boardwalk to obtain some oysters, fresh from Arcachon, especially for David, which were, as he phrased it, like having the ocean in his mouth. As we made our way up and down the walk, we could feel our skin broiling under the full force of the sun. The heat, which we later learned was around 30 degrees, was not too oppressive, thanks to a stout breeze off the water. Two necessary scoops of ice cream later, and we were back on our way down to the end of the boardwalk. Given that it was still in the middle of a workday, the festival was actually not too packed full of visitors, and we were able to move about with relative ease. There were delightful little roving music groups playing at the various gastronomy pavilions, which kept the mood light and lively. In front of the Place de la Bourse, there is an expansive area filled with a shallow fountain that keeps a constant supply of ankle-deep water for people to frolic through. D and I were quick to cool off our overheated feet, shuffling about in the deliciously cool water.
Having baked ourselves enough and stuffed ourselves full with more foïe gras and bread, we made our way back to the hotel. After a brief stop for coffee and Orangina, we called ourselves a taxi to take us to the train station. Being late in the afternoon, the station was aflutter with activity. I bashed my head against the self-dispensing ticket kiosk before it grudgingly gave us our tickets for St Emilion. Thankfully for D, we discovered that some railway-related union was striking today which consequently screwed up the train schedules quite substantially. After some investigating, D discovered that we would now be taking a bus instead of a train. We shuffled our stuff out to the back of the station and hopped on a (mercifully) air-conditioned bus. We both dozed off fairly quickly and awoke the town before our stop. Much to our chagrin, upon being dropped at the St Emilion train station, we discovered it to be rather deserted. My information gathering on how to get from the train station into the village had not been particularly fruitful, and we had operated under the assumption that we’d be able to get a cab from the station. We thankfully had our cell phone, so we called up our hotel to ask for advice. Several phone calls later, the hotel ultimately arranged to have a cab come pick us up from the town before St Emilion. Apparently people should normally book their trains to Libourne and take a cab from there, as opposed to going directly to the St Emilion train station (because it’s such a tiny station perhaps). In any case, after a fretful half hour of hoping someone would come (as the alternative would be walking uphill for about a mile with all our stuff), the taxi arrived and took us to our hotel.
We decided to go on a quick jaunt around town, just to check out the immediate area and grab a bite to eat. St Emilion is a pretty medieval town, with cobblestone streets and beautiful old churches and a massive clock tower. We had our dinner (tasty gourmet pizza) out beneath the clock tower in a large square as the light faded. Sore and sunburnt, we turned in for the evening soon after.
