The next day there were some more celebrations and a parade route of some kind set up (We think that the team was coming back to Barcelona), but we needed to get to the train station so Becky could take the metro to the airport before the trains stopped running. Becky and I said our goodbyes and she went to wait out the next few hours at the airport before her early flight, and I returned for some sleep before catching a morning train back to France.
So my plan for the time when Becky was home was to go do some wine touring, lay on the beach, and maybe go somewhere else exciting. With the first goal in mind, I had booked a train back to Bordeaux, France. In turned out that the train booking service in Barcelona was far and away ahead of any of the French services we had used. After a bit of figuring out which counter we needed to be at, we asked the right person how to get from Barcelona to Bordeaux and he pulled out a fancy little pamphlet with the various connections, which days they run, which type of train they are, and whether they require reservations and just highlighted where to make transfers and told us which train we needed to reserve at the next counter over. We followed his directions and 1.50€ later, I was able to get to Bordeaux. Compare that to the French system of only looking up the fast direct trains, and then charging 22 euro booking fees, and you’ll see how much better this is. The pamphlet also had return journeys planed out, so I knew how to get back, at least from any town near the train route between Bordeaux and Barcelona.
I got to Bordeaux the next day, and checked into my overpriced hotel (I thought traveling solo would be cheaper!) and planned to go to the tourism office first thing the next morning to figure out what I could do and see. There, I realized that while there were lots of things to do in Bordeaux city, there wasn’t much in the way of chateaux tours, which is what I was looking for. So I found an information clerk who spoke English and she explained that there was a medieval village called Saint Emilion just down the train line that had lots of wine touring options available and was even hosting a philosophy festival that weekend. I hustled back to the train station and caught the next train out.
Saint Emilion was very cool. At the center of the Saint Emilion wine appellation, the town was a medieval fort with many buildings carved out of solid rock and large open caverns all throughout the city. I wandered around and toured the cellar of one winery in the town which was more cave than cellar with moss growing overhead and many creepy corners for things to be hiding. I eventually found the tourism office and booked a spot on a bus tour of the wine region with a stop at a chateau with wine tasting. I continued exploring for the next couple hours and tried to understand some of the philosophical presentations going on (something about globalization and distinct cultures, and whether these are good/bad/opposing things), and then got on the bus with a French couple, an Indian-American couple and our multilingual tour guide. The tour proceeded in both French and English, which was cool, because I could compare my understanding of the French version with the English version (my French skills are not up to snuff…). We learned all about the various soil types, quality rankings, grapes grown, and history of St Emilion. We saw the chateau owned by the late Mr. Bic (of pen fame) and some other famous wineries that restrict their visits to professionals. Eventually we made our way to Chateau Lavallade, a chateau in the upper tier of quality, St Emilion Grand Cru. There, we met the owner who gave us a tour of the vineyard, cellar, wine-making facility, and tasting room. It was very interesting to get a bit of insight from a real winemaker on how the environmental conditions interact with the grapes to inform decisions to which grapes to use, and how much of each variety, etc. We concluded the tour with a tasting of three of the their four wines, two red wines made with the traditional mix of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes from different quality vines and soils, and one rosé that was made from a byproduct of the red wine production that is siphoned off to provide a more concentrated final product. All of them were pretty tasty (that’s official wine talk).
Going home with a couple bottles of wine, I made vacation talk with the Americans and got invited to go to University of Chicago if I ever want a business degree. The woman was a professor there who had gone to Cornell, so we compared France and upstate New York notes. I caught the train back to Bordeaux, made a picnic dinner and watched English CNN news to make for a day.
It turns out that I should have gone out drinking instead, because that night, Bordeaux was playing soccer for the French title, which they won. The next day, there was a big celebration downtown and lots of people out and about. A bit wined-out from the previous day, I explored Bordeaux and found a cool public market (anyone need some socks? – I’ve got a hook up for 2 pairs/euro!) where I tried dried kumquats (not very tasty) and some other dried fruit like kiwis and mangos (very tasty). I also frantically had to figure out where to stay that day, because the campsite I was planning to call did not have a connected number and I didn’t have a back up. So I looked around online and found a campsite in Arcachon, a quiet beach town near the Atlantic, west of Bordeaux. I called them and they said that they had plenty of spots, so I decided to go there in the afternoon.
I arrived in Arcachon, google maps directions from the train station to the campsite in hand, and realized when the last street on my directions did not exist that I was once again lost. I backtracked to where I had seen camping signs before, and followed the car route in a big circle ending up not too far from where I got lost. Apparently, google maps have a road connect through a forest that it actually doesn’t connect to at all, so that was helpful. Anyway, I made my reservation for three days in French and found a nice little tent spot. The next few days were quite relaxing, as most of the time was spent on the beach, browsing the small shops, looking for internet, doing laundry, etc. And that’s where I am right now. I just extended my stay by two days, and have a train reservation back to Toulouse on Friday with the plan of attending an alternative electronic music festival there before taking the train back the rest of the way to Barcelona on Sunday.
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