Napoleon’s trees, more beaches, and Bordeaux vineyards.

Day 6 France 2012

We left Niort and headed to St. Emilion.  There are lots of tree lined roads in this area.  Supposedly Napoleon had many of these trees planted so that his soldiers could be shaded as they marched along.  Interesting that he assumed he would be in power long enough for the trees to grow large enough to shade the road.

Leon said I should tell you that Helen’s full name is Helen Garmin.  She continues to entertain us by saying Ree instead of Rue and Rue instead of Route.  Then, of course, Avenue is Af-nee.  She is wonderful at those roundabouts, though, telling us which exit to take instead of just saying to “go straight” like I do.  Sometimes we miscount the exits and take the wrong one, and she has to “recalculate” and get us back on the correct road.

We noticed that French cars seem to be larger than they used to be when we first drove in France 13 years ago.  The highways are better marked now, and each one is really nice to drive on.  French truck drivers do not drive as fast as cars, stay in the right lane, are polite to car drivers, and we don’t think they are on the roads on Sunday because we did not see a single truck on our drive from the airport to Honfleur on Sunday.

We decided to drive by the coastal areas of La Rochelle, Rochefort and Royan.  La Rochelle was a walled city and has a wonderful series of bike trails, parks, and public beaches.  We stopped and walked around the beach area, then went to a little beach-side café for something to drink and to enjoy the beach view.  A Coke was about $5.00 American, but it was worth it.  As usual, it had the required two ice cubes in it. The downtown (centre-ville) area was really pretty, too.

Most of the beach towns in France are so different from the little rural villages we are used to.  Royan could have been Panama City with little shops selling blow-up mattresses, toys, and beach balls.  Most of the buildings are painted white stucco with red tile roofs.  They seem to be fairly new, too, so the Atlantic beaches are gaining in popularity for tourists.  It was warm and sunny, probably near 90 degrees. There were some pretty fabulous houses just across the street from the beach down a little from the really touristy hotel areas.  Now, I wouldn’t have minded one of those.

The soil is different here than in Brittany and Normandy.  The soil here is a chalky color (limestone) and has lots of rocks in it.  I suppose that makes good wine.  The closer we got to Bordeaux and St. Emilion, the more the agriculture turned to vineyards.  There would be a few acres of wheat, and once we saw fields that had something planted under domes of clear plastic.  We stopped to get a closer look, and it really looked like geraniums.  We saw a big sign that said fleurs.  Just about every house has some red geraniums planted in the yard or a window box or pots, so we wondered if this is where they are grown.  Red poppies grow on the sides of roads all over France.  I am sure that the farmers hate them, but they are beautiful to look at as we drive along.  Soon there were only fields of grape vines covering every square inch of arable soil.  Even the little villages would have front yards and little triangles of land planted in grapes.  

We are staying in Chateau Meylet that has only 4 rooms for rent, and it is surrounded by vineyards.  We do not have internet access here, so I will compose this and post it another day.  The furniture in our room is all antique, and the bathroom fixtures, towels, and even toilet paper are pink.

We noticed that many of the vineyards have red roses planted at the ends of the rows.  It is really pretty, but I don’t know the significance of it.  We will have to Google it to see.  St. Emilion is the Napa valley of Bordeaux country.  The property is tres expensive because it grows such great wine grapes (60% of them are merlot grapes).  It appears that each of the large vineyards is named Chateau something or the other, and back in the middle of the vineyard is a fabulous Chateau.  Rick Steves says that there is a great English investment in this wine area, so it is popular with English speaking visitors.  He says that Americans make up only 15% of the visitors, but we buy 40% of the wine!

We drove down to the town to check it out.  It is on two levels.  The town is carved like an amphitheater out of a limestone hill.  The church and abbey and several restaurants are on the top level, with part of the town on the lower level, but there are several miles of caves dug back into the hillside that are used to store and age the wine.  There is even an underground church carved into the hillside.  We came back to the Chateau and put our feet up, and Leon took his nap while I blogged a little bit, and then we went back to town for dinner.  We wanted to buy a few bottles of St. Emilion wine to have when Dave and Caroline join us next week, so we stopped by a wine shop in town and had the conseil en vins, Maximo, choose 4 bottles for us.  I asked for reasonably priced wines, and got bottles from 30 - 50 Euros.  Oh, well, it’s vacation, right?

We chose a little restaurant recommended in Rick Steve’s book.  It had an open air terrace that overlooked the lower part of the town and the clock tower.  There was a fig tree growing in the flower bed right behind Leon.  We think that we can usually at least read the menu in a French restaurant, but we couldn’t decipher this one at all.  We figured out the hot Camembert appetizer (with cherries), but were at a loss for the plats (what Americans call the entrée).  The waitress was patient and helped us and so I ordered grilled pork with morel mushrooms, and Leon had the tuna.  We ordered a carafe of wine.  Even cheap wine is good here!  Both of our meals were really delicious but almost more than we could eat.  I was hoping for room for cream brulee, but had no room after the Camembert and the pork.

We are back at the Chateau now, cooling off…really warm out there tonight.  We will drive east of Carcassonne (the great walled city) tomorrow and to the house we have rented.  This will be a first for us since we have never done this before.