Here in Bordeaux, we went to the Museum of Aquitaine, which tells the v-e-r-y l-o-n-g story of the history of Bordeaux from prehistoric times until now. There was a lot of information about Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of France from 1137 to 1152 who seems memorialized for being an outspoken, beautiful and complicated woman at a time when women were really not allowed those attributes. She even demanded the right to accompany her husband off on his crusades to the Holy Land and then had an affair en route, which could not have been good for the King’s battle self esteem. Ultimately finding her husband (King of France!) dull and boring, she demanded an annulment and moved on to a new husband only 6 weeks later.
It’s really quite a nice museum but it was mostly a reminder that I have a very small reservoir for information and so all you get is Eleanor.
I’m just looking for something else in a museum. Bear with me because here’s one of my ideas: the Museum of Crackers. I’d put it together in a smallish building and I’d separate the displays by century. For Bordeaux, we could look at and then hopefully taste the prehistoric crackers and then move on to the medieval crackers. We could see the what they snacked on during the French Revolution and compare it to the rations during World War II, and, in that way, I could gain a better grasp of French history. To be flexible, I could glean similar information from the Museum of Butter and Cheese or maybe a combination of the two museums so I have something to put on my crackers (Musee des Craquelins et du Beurre et Fromage, for you French speakers).
We also drove out into the countryside to tour a winery (nothing further to say about that) and then see the adorable town of St. Emilion, pictured above.
Wait – I do have a comment about the wine. We were doing a tasting after the tour and we were given a sample of a bottle that retails for 29 Euros (34 dollars) and Ron told our entire tour group that it was the most expensive wine we’ve ever tasted, which is true, but not what you want to tell a bunch of wine aficionados. I thought the wine tasted like Cherry NyQuil, but I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut.
St. Emilion is a town of 2000 people with 40 wine shops, dating from the 8th century. It also has a 12th century monolithic church, built completely underground. It was dug out of the limestone rock from the 9th century through the 13th century and still sits there completely intact. It is truly fantastic to stand in there but no pictures are allowed. Hopefully this link will give you an idea: https://www.travelblog.org/Photos/6079185.
What I will remember most about St. Emilion, though, is my walk down this little street to get to the Road Scholar included lunch. At the time, it was pouring rain onto these small, uneven stones and, if you look closely, you will see that the totally crucial handrail disappears intermittently. There are 5 of us in this group of 19 who walk with a cane and I wish I could send you all a little video of the non-cane Road Scholars trying to get the cane Road Scholars down this little pathway. It was a real group bonding experience! Later on, I was able to ask our Road Scholar leader, Tom, how he felt as he watched us all death grip our way down that street and he allowed that he was pretty nervous and that Road Scholar has never booked that restaurant before. I wish I knew Tom better so that I could ask him what kind of feedback Road Scholar got for that choice.
The lunch was worth the effort, though! It was the first meal where I was served a plate of (apparently)French food and actually enjoyed it and Ron was extremely jealous due to the non-vegetarian dark meat duck offering he was served. Dinner tally for you: two meals at McDonald’s, one Chipotle, one Indian place, one Thai place and five meals at Italian restaurants. It’s funny to me that two of the countries that have RAVE food reviews – Japan and France – are the two countries where I have struggled the most.
Here’s another shot of St. Emilion with the Bell Tower of the Monolithic church in the background:
And then I’ll leave you with this pic of Sam and Kris. We’ve got one more day in the Bordeaux area (touring TWO more wineries!) and then we head out to Sarlat for a few days.
Travels with Valerie 