In Spain and most of Western Europe, Good Friday and Easter Monday are official holidays. Many schools close for the entire week for "Semana Santa" (week of saints), basically it is their Spring Break. We decided to go somewhere for the 4 day weekend. How did J and I decide where to go? I hopped on the discount airline site and plugged in the dates, then searched every city from Amsterdam to Zurich. We ended up with Bordeaux (so much time wasted after B!!), a very famous wine region in the southwest of France, along with St Emilion. Since the biggest appeal is the wine, we booked a "chateau" in the middle of the vineyards.
Fortunately, I did my homework and saw that the chateau was hard to find, so I used our trusty friend, the GPS, with coordinates. Even with that, we got lost a few times, but we eventually got there. Once there, we found out that of the couple that owned the house, only the wife spoke english, and she was away taking care of a sick family member. It made for quite the game of charades, trying to get a map of the town, and ideas of where to go.
They say French, Italian, and Spanish are all related, but J and I found French very difficult, both written and spoken. We could guess at Italian, but were bad at French. The other observation we had was that very few people spoke English, and almost nobody spoke Spanish. So we did a lot of pointing and guessing, along with chopped speech. J and I have noticed that no matter what foreign country we are in, our first instinct is to speak Spanish. I suppose it comes from the idea that if the people dont speak our language, then we switch to "foreign" mode, which = Spanish.
The town of Saint Emilion is a famous wine producer, but it is also a medieval city, built totally of stone on a hillside. From what we saw, it only contained restaurants and wine shops. It was still a pretty town, and we were able to find an English speaking shop owner that spent a good amount of time with us.
We also had a very nice dinner at a small little restaurant, and were able to enjoy a little bit of champagne.
And finally, our barometer for any new country we go to... McDonalds. In Greece there was a Spankopita like dish, in Italy, there were fried, stuffed olives, and prawns, and here in France was the ever famous "Royale with Cheese".
Fortunately, I did my homework and saw that the chateau was hard to find, so I used our trusty friend, the GPS, with coordinates. Even with that, we got lost a few times, but we eventually got there. Once there, we found out that of the couple that owned the house, only the wife spoke english, and she was away taking care of a sick family member. It made for quite the game of charades, trying to get a map of the town, and ideas of where to go.
They say French, Italian, and Spanish are all related, but J and I found French very difficult, both written and spoken. We could guess at Italian, but were bad at French. The other observation we had was that very few people spoke English, and almost nobody spoke Spanish. So we did a lot of pointing and guessing, along with chopped speech. J and I have noticed that no matter what foreign country we are in, our first instinct is to speak Spanish. I suppose it comes from the idea that if the people dont speak our language, then we switch to "foreign" mode, which = Spanish.
The town of Saint Emilion is a famous wine producer, but it is also a medieval city, built totally of stone on a hillside. From what we saw, it only contained restaurants and wine shops. It was still a pretty town, and we were able to find an English speaking shop owner that spent a good amount of time with us.
We were also able to visit 6 chateau vineyards. Sadly, the vines were just starting to grow branches, so they werent as pretty as they would be later this summer. I still really enjoyed walking through the vineyards.
The wine of Bordeaux and St Emilion all has about the same composition: 80% merlot, 20% sauvignon franc. One interesting tidbit about cabernet sauvignon, it takes a few extra weeks before it is ready to harvest, but in that region, those weeks have very unpredictable weather, so the risk of rain is too high to grow a lot of it for the wines. So if you ever have a Bordeaux wine, that is why there isnt much Cab. Sauv.
What post would be complete without the mention of food! The highlight was definitely the breakfast. The chateau had an included breakfast spread. I dont know where they got the croissants from, but they were delicious! Also included were homemade breads, and several types of delicious jams. The owner was incredibly nice, and we definitely understood "te" and "cafe".
We spent a little bit of time in the city of Bordeaux as well. The city is an interesting mix of Victorian "cohesion" along the waterfront, with a gothic cathedral that stands above everything.
The city was specially designed to look similar to cities like Venice and Amsterdam from the water, It was a big port before dams made the river too small upstream, even though it is ~100km to the ocean. But just off the river, there is a cluster of gothic building and plazas, that were quite enjoyable to walk around. 
Sorry everyone for the long delay between the trip and the post, I'd like to pretend I will post more often, but history has shown I am not so good at that.
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