Do You Know the Way to St. Emilion? part II

So we have checked into our horse stable and if the guy had not told us so we really never would have known. It’s more like a ground floor garage apartment with a beautiful view of row after row of grape vines.

Our roommates show up the next day, following in our path. They flew to Barcelona and drove to Bordeaux. But, they didn’t need to stop at a truck stop and sleep like us. They found us with no problem. I am amazed that we can pull this off. You fly for about ten hours, then you have to drive for another three or four, from one country to another. Your in a place you have never been to before and with directions on paper you find a vineyard run by a man you can not communicate with and your friends do the same thing the next day with no problem.

So the rest of the group shows up later that night for dinner. We have moved the large dining table out to the court yard and have prepared a meal to share. I can’t remember all we had, but I do remember we prepared chickens with a stuffing made with the figs we bought the day before. We had a great time as you can imagine. There was about ten of us from different parts of the Southeast and here we were sitting across a dirt road from a field of grapevines having dinner. I remember we had trouble with the stove, it would not get as hot a needed to cook the bird in a timely fashion. No problem we had tons of good, fresh, local wines and no where to go any time soon.

The next day Stacey and I are on our own and we decide to drive to Saint Emilion. Saint Emilion is a very old city where the Romans planted grapes in 2 AD. It is about 40 miles from Bordeaux and is practically carved out of the limestone cliffs which surrounds the city. Saint Emilion is tiny and tight. Narrow roads and alleys and it all goes straight up, or down depending on where you park. Stacey and I spent the day just walking around and checking out the sights. The small city center is at the bottom edge of the cliffs. If you start at the top, like we did, you walk down and down and around and twist and turn and end up at the bottom of the city looking up at the huge church carved in the cliffs side. The city is really built on this cliff side and if you find the right place the views are great. Vineyards for as far as you can see.

That was all we did that day and that was enough, it is a special place in this world. We have plans to meet our friends back at our place to go to dinner. We were on our own that day because the couple we were staying with had to attend Vin Expo, as in, they had to work. So our plan was to meet about dark and find someplace really cool to have dinner.

Well Stacey and I got lost going home. It’s all small roads around these parts, no highways and not many signs. So after about thirty minutes of knowing we are lost Stacey is getting a little restless. I just laughed and said , yea were lost in Bordeaux, France. This did not suck.