france – Dale and Becca

Monday dawned nice and sunny. We all piled in Curby (our vehicle, a 7 person carvan), and headed out into the local neighbourhood.

We had a bit of trouble finding our first location, and zoomed on to the second. A lot of the roads are quite small, and kinda crazy, zipping through them in a large car-van. We found the second location, but they were closing for lunch – most vineyards seem to close for a period over lunch, perhaps for napping? While waiting, we decided to go to the supermarket and stock up on cheese and bread! We spent the rest of the day trying, drinking and buying wine. It was very interesting, many of the people didn’t speak much English, and we didn’t speak much French, so there was plenty of extrapolation, hand waving and charades, but we enjoyed it, nonetheless.

Someone else's house — Someone else’s house

Our last day was spent in a town called Cadillac, where they had various interesting points. There was a church, Chappelle d’Epernon.

There was also an old castle – Chateau de Cadillac, that was used for various things. It is apparently a good example of French Architecture, and was quite amazing inside, with massive rooms and fireplace. Each one was elaborately carved in marble and stone, with huge tapestries.

The town even had a proper wall, town gate, towers with arrow slits. It was pretty, lots of spring flowers around. We ate lunch at a little bakery, where I had to go back and buy apple pastry things, and eclairs, a couple of times, as they were very yummy.

The day we flew out, we spent a fair amount of time packing, and headed into Bordeaux early so we sort out extra bags. I think a couple of extra bags were bought by people for transporting wine home. We stopped at a massive mall, that had the most amazing fancy toilets I have seen in a while. We also bought more macaroons, and ate them. 🙂 Plane ride back was uneventful.

The best thing so far about Brighton, is the vast array of vegetarian options! This is very exciting for me. Many places have 1/4-1/3 of the menu vegetarian and there are many places that are fully vegetarian. So delishuz. I have had pasties, pies, platters. We went to a cafe called Chockywockydodah (not sure of spelling), where they make amazing cakes and chocolate items, and the cafe has 4 items on the menu (liquicd chocolate hot chocolate, cake, shake, sundae. All great.

We went to see the new Captain America, which was very similar to seeing a movie in NZ, but they have either sweet or salty popcorn, or a mix of both.

The beach is all small stones, but I don’t mind that, cause I’m not that keen on sand anyway. There is an amusement park at the end of the pier, with small rollercoasters and things like that.

We spent the end of Friday night packing our bags – can only take carry on with the cheap tickets we have with Easy Jet, but there is no weightlimit on your carry on, you simply have to be able to fit it in the overhead compartment, and be able to get it up there and down again yourself.

We arrived in France to overcast skies, but a decent temperature. Bordeaux is definitely a winemaking area, even the airport is surrounded by vines. We are staying in a house in the countryside, 40mins from Bordeaux. Is it super cute. All the buildings are sandstone brick, again, it all seems so like it should be. A bit surreal. There is a vast amount of grass here, much more than we saw in Canada.

Trying to work out gps. Alastair only looks a little scared

We bought lots of food from the local supermarket – mostly bread, cheese, wine, and meats. Most meals are composed of this. In this area, most people speak French, and many of the shopkeepers have only a very small amount of English. It is very interesting, trying to badly speak french, enough to buy things. I know how to ask for cheese, wine, bread, and where is the toilet? Also, chocolate, candy.

The BEST crepe I have ever had - caramelised apple with apple sorbet, amazing! — The BEST crepe I have ever had – caramelised apple with apple sorbet, amazing!

Macaroons are delishus, I bought a few, and promptly ate them all. We spent today wandering around Saint Emilion, which was very pretty, old bell tower, old (but still current) wine cellars, massive amounts of vineyards. Tiny town is fully of cobbled streets stretching up and down the hills, tiny alleyways and side streets, with decidedly french people lounging on the corners, wine for sale in every second shop, and many macaroons!

Tiny, steep cobbled streets. Stacey, Zoe, Henri

P1230485 — The wine has been there so long…

Sunday we visited a lot of vineyards, and did a lot of wine tasting. Lots of reds. Got shown around a few wineries, and enjoyed the lovely weather. We headed back in the afternoon, to sit outside in the warm afternoon sun, and drink wine, cider, and eat things.

P1230565 — Keith and Alastair taking with their cameras

My favourite thing from France was eating Raclette for dinner. Melted cheese on everything. So. Good. Raclette I think is originally swiss, a type of firm cheese that is mostly used for melting, you hold it towards the fire until it starts melting, then scrape the melty part off, and eat it with potatoes. In modern times, we have tiny pans, that are set on an element, and slices of cheese are laid in them, and gently melted, until bubbling, then you slide it out onto your plate, and voila!

We totally ate veges too

My next favourite part was seeing all the tiny towns filled with cute little stone houses and terracotta roof slates. Tiny towns with tiny little cobbled roads.

Also, I thoroughly enjoyed anything that required us to reference the fact that we were in France.

Macaroons! The only picture I managed to get before I inhaled them all. There were more in the bag, only seconds earlier.

Tag: france

Bordeaux Part 2

Brighton, France, Saint Emilion, Wine, Cheese