Wine improves with age – the older I get the more I like it

Salutations de Saint-Émillion.

I may have found my spiritual home! Maybe Trap & I were both French in another life????  We’re having a fab-u-lous time here. The weather is good, food, alcohol and fuel is cheaper and the camping grounds are nicely laid out and have pools – a necessity in these temps! Most of them have bars/restaurants and you can often put a fresh bread/croissant order in for the next morning!  I like it. Also my French is much better than my Spanish (6 years of high school French is coming back to me) making it easier to communicate and read signs/instructions etc. Trap, not so much!!!

 

Last time I wrote, we were in Paris and heading into town for my b’day celebration at Paradis Latin. What a great show – I can’t show you any pics or videos as they weren’t allowed, but we could take some of the dinner entertainment, so you can get a bit of a taster. My three-course meal of two types of pate followed by chicken and some kind of tarty/moussey/spongy thing for dessert. Trap indulged in salmon for his entrée and main and loved it. The dessert looked too good to eat, so Trap gave it a kiss instead!!!  

After getting home about 1am, we were back up bright and early for a day catching the sights of Paris. It’s been years since I was last here and I had forgotten just how magnificent the city is. And it wasn’t too busy with tourists – good time of year to come, I think. From the Arc de Triomphe to the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dam and the Louvre, everywhere you look there’s something to see and they definitely had a love affair with gold when they built their statues!!

 

Leaving Paris, we headed south to Saint Sur in Sancerre – a very cute wee town. Staying on the banks of the river, you could walk or cycle easily to the restaurants down the road. Getting out wasn’t quite so easy as the roads are pretty narrow, but as we started cursing google maps for sending us this way a truck came through the same road, so we figured if they could fit, we could - breathe in everyone!

From there we headed to Beaumont Saint Cyr – another lovely site on the banks of the lake with a bar/restaurant and pool. It was pretty hot, so we made lots of use of our outdoor shower. There was also a really nice cycle track around the lake, so we decided getting some fold-up electric bikes was back on the shopping list and by complete coincidence, we called into a caravan shop to get some more hose and they had a couple of bikes there on special so we snapped them up and are LOVING them. Where we are staying seems to be largely flat areas with shops/villages/services a 10-15 min cycle down the road, so very handy.

We’re currently in Saint-Émillion and I think this site tops the list – a three pool/waterslide/jacuzzi set up with a bar, restaurant, pizzeria, wine tasting on site (which we did last night and purchased 4 bottles of wine!), live band on the weekend, free shuttle into Saint-Émillion town itself (5 min drive away) and with one vineyard about 500m away and another 1 km down the road – both open for tastings and tours!! What more could you ask for. We had a nice four night stop here to rest and recuperate. And although we thought it was hot in Paris and Saint Cyr, nothing compared to here – 36-38 degrees with not a breath of wind. In town (which was absolutely gorgeous), we kept sitting right in front of the fans, trying to cool down and I went for 3 swims plus 2 cold showers yesterday! Today has been a bit cloudy, so the temp is only early 30’s – whew. We’ve done a few little cycles on the new bikes and they are working perfectly.

 

We’re continuing to head southeast tomorrow into the Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occitanie regions  of France heading towards Avignon then the Riviera.

 

Jusqu'à la prochaine fois (until next time)…

J&T xx