Advertisement
Published: July 17th 2005
Edit Blog Post
Turning Up the Charm
I would have had no trouble spending another day, or two in St.Emilion. They say all's well that ends well. That's a pretty accurate description of today. The day certainly didn't start well. I had decided to visit St. Emilion (35km south-east of Bordeaux) last night, and booked tickets for a 10:46 train. The train station in Bordeaux is actually quite a ways from the city centre, and getting there took a bit longer than expected. I still got there with about 15 minutes to spare however. That margin didn't last long when I discovered that the automatic ticket machines not only required the purchasing credit card to retrieve an E-ticket (expected), but didn't take mine due to the lack of a smart card chip (quite unexpected). To add injury to insult, on the second try, the machine decided to keep my credit card. Suffice it to say that by the time had tracked someone down and recovered my card, the train was long gone.
It was 11:30am by the time I had made my way through the line for a human teller and managed to retrieve my tickets. The lady was very helpful though, and assured me that my student-fare (hence non-exchangable) outbound ticket would be fine on the next train at
Regional Sports
Thinking about it, in a region dominated by wine, it really shouldn't be much of a surprise that barrels figure into things. 1:40pm. Hence, with a 6:38 return train, I arrived in St. Emilion at 2:30 with nigh four hours to explore. That dropped even further upon the unpleasant surprise that the St. Emilion train stop was about a kilometre from the town. All it would have taken was a single line in the guidebook to inform everyone of this tidbit.
St. Emilion itself was adorable. If I was doing this all over again, I'd forget Bordeaux and stay in St. Emilion. The place is charming, overflowing with both food and wine shops, and surrounded my some extremely accessible wineries. In fact, if I had more time, I could easily have reached two dozen wineries on foot. The wine shops there are far more reasonable as well. Of course, reasonable has to be taken in perspective, since out of all the wines I found special enough to be worth the trouble to import back to Canada, none was labeled at under €35. Tag on shipping at just over €10 per bottle, and thing's get pricey. In the end, I left without a prestigious start to my Toronto wine collection. No matter how tempting, I simply can't afford to spend that kind
Monolithic Church
Why build up when you can spend mroe effort carving a place out of solid rock? of money right now. Now that I have my bearings though, I may just delve into LCBO's premium catalogue. I may not be able to afford importing whole cases, but I definitely could do with a bottle's splurge or two.
That's actually the best takeaway from Bordeaux - tasting wines from two of the most sought-after wine regions in the world - Medoc and St. Emilion. Today was actually quite an experience wine-wise. All wines from the St. Emilion appellation are Merlot-dominated at around 80%. I'm used to Canadian and Australian Merlot's however, that are relatively light and fruity, hence the wines I sampled today came as quite a shock. There's a lot of salt and mineral taste in the wines, as well as a meatyness I've never associated with Merlot. Overall, these wines were quite strong, heavy and bold, but in a very good way. There won't be anymore Canadian Merlot when I get back; just St. Emilion (if I can find it) on my rack.
Being forewarned that the 6:38pm train was the last one, and that if I missed it, I "sleep in St. Emilion", I limited my touristy activities to just a tour of
Picture Perfect
This is the Bordeaux region at its most charming. the Eglise Monolithique (monolithic church). Being in a church carved out of solid rock was amazing. It was a pity though that none of the interior frescoes remain (they scraped the walls for saltpeter during the French Revolution).
Back in Bordeaux, I rounded out my experience in Place de Parlement by hitting the third and last proper restaurant in the square. Duck favoured heavily in the menu tonight, wtih a frois gras appetizer and Magret du Canard au Miel (duck breast in honey) being the main course. I've never had duck and honey together, but they work exceptionally well actually. I figured I'd go French all the way and round out the meal with Crème Brulée for desert.
All in all, my time in Bordeaux was alright. An alright place provides contrast and perspective however, and helps one truly appreciate the really nice places (i.e. St. Emilion). I now have to think forward and make some difficult choices about which chateaux's (real castles this time) I'm going to visit in the Loire Valley once I get to Tours tomorrow. There's the small matter of getting on the 8am bus tomorrow first though...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.086s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0516s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
im beautiful
non-member comment
wow your amazing
omg thank you sooooooo much you have helped me like soooooo much!!!! thanks to you i aced my french report!!!!!!!!