A Pretty French Village

Thanks to the light-blocking metal blinds on our hotel windows, Bill and I slept in until a decadent 8:45! That is seriously late for us, but I think we needed it after our long drive. We ate breakfast at the hotel, which included café au lait. I think café au lait is one of the best things about France. They let us make our own, using the hot milk that they keep in a pot right next to the hot, strong coffee. I make mine about half and half; Bill puts more coffee than milk. It’s delicious.

We went back to our room and did a couple of things we needed to do on the computer. Then we got in our car and drove to the little village of Saint Emilion, about 40 minutes from Bordeaux and still in the Bordeaux region.

Our guidebook told us that while Saint Emilion wine sales only account for about 5 percent of the total Bordeaux wine, Americans buy 40 percent of that wine. Because of this, the book assured us, the town is very friendly to Americans and everyone speaks English.

The drive was very pretty, through fields of grapes. The town was even prettier than I had imagined. There was, of course, a Notre Dame Church (I guess every city/town in France has one), and this one was quite lovely. The streets were all cobbled and wound around like a plate of spaghetti. We refrained from buying any bottles of wine. We were tempted, but knew we could get the same wine cheaper at the grocery market.

We stopped at a restaurant in the Place Marche for lunch. Though we had been promised English, the menu was entirely in French and our waiter spoke little, if any, English. We just took the plunge. I ordered the menu du jour, which included gazpacho (a name I recognized), and a main course and dessert about which I was entirely clueless. Bill pretty much did the same, ordering the plat du jour and frites, having no idea what they were (well, he knew about frites but not the main course).

We were quite lucky, because they brought Bill beef and vegetables on skewers with his wonderful hot frites. Mine ended up being sausage and frites. I was somewhat skeptical about the sausage, having been burned on French sausage before. I am happy to report that this sausage was very delicious, and covered with a wonderful sauce. The dessert, which we shared, was a dollop of meringue floating in a bowl of yummy runny custard. Heavenly.

While we didn’t buy any wine, we did buy some of the macaroons for which the area is famous. They were melt-in-your-mouth delicious. We had them for dessert with our evening picnic.

Thursday we leave for Brittany.