L'ile de re

Our last adventure took us to the west coast and the Atlantic ocean. We spent a weekend at the Ile de re. It is connected to the mainland via France's longest bridge. We spent Saturday exploring the island.


L'ile de re has 10 communities on it and they each had their own personality. I really liked Saint Martin De Re. There was a 12 century ruins of an abbey that was interesting. Our dog, Lady, tried to get acquainted with several chickens there, but they weren't interested in meeting her. It was pretty funny watching her try to catch up with them though.


Larry climbed to the top of this church in St. Martin De Re and got some pretty amazing photos. Dogs weren't allowed, so Lady and I stayed on the ground and avoided the 170+ very narrow steps. Near the top, the stairs got so narrow that there was only one way traffic. The picture below is of the stop light directing traffic inside the stairwell.

Some of the interesting things about this island are the salt fields and the donkeys. Donkeys apparently are the island's basic mode of transportation for every day work activities. They even have them wear pantalons (pants) to protect them while they are working in the fields. Since it was the weekend, we didn't see any donkeys dressed and working, but they certainly were well represented in the gift shops. I have to wonder how long it takes for each of those salt fields to experience enough evaporation to accumulate the salt.

On the more protected side of the island, we watched kiteboarders and para-sailors. The weather was a bit cool, so there weren't too many people on the plages (beaches) but it was fun to see the sailboards catch air.

This is the light house on the far end of the island. Larry also climbed the many stairs of this for another amazing photo opportunity.

On Sunday we went to the port city of La Rochelle at the other end of the bridge. Watch for its own blog entry soon.

St.-Emilion wine

When we went to the Bordeaux area, Nick advised us that his favorite Bordeaux wines came from St.-Emilion. Thus, our stay there rather than Bordeaux. As it turned out, it was an interesting medieval city as well.


I was struck with how vast the fields of vines were. It reminded me of the never ending fields of corn in Iowa. It was only about 3 weeks to harvest so the grapes were gorgeous hanging on the vines.

St.-Emilion has 4 distinctions of wine. The lowest (or common wine) just carries the name St.-Emilion on the label. The next level up is called, grand cru (which means vintage) the next higher level is grand cru classe. The highest distinction is premier grand cru with an A and B subcategory. There are over 900 vineyards that carry the label St.-Emilion and only 2 labels are Premier grand cru A, and 13 with Premier grand cru B. Just to give you an idea of how important these labels are, Nick said he saw a bottle of a Premier grand cru A at Haskell's and it was over $600 for the bottle.

Anyway, we took a tour of a grand cru classe vineyard which was very interesting and we sampled several different wines. It should surprise no one that we even shipped some home for the future (though sadly, not premier wines). The 2007 vintage is newly bottled and the 2008's are in barrels for 12-18 months in the limestone caves. They are saying that if the weather holds through havest, 2009 could be an excellent vintage.

Camping near St.-Emilion

This past weekend we traveled to one of the most storied wine regions in the world, Bordeaux. The Bordeaux wine area is divided into two regions, separated by the Garonne river with the towns of Bordeaux on one side of the river and St.-Emilion on the other. St.-Emilion is the smaller of the two towns with an interesting medieval monolithic church. Monolithic means carved out of one rock. This area has limestone as its base, and there are many natural caves (similar to St. Paul). This church was hand carved out of the rock and is supposedly one of the best preserved in Europe. Like most medieval villages, St.-Emilion is built on a hill and the streets were steep traveling indeed.


I found this campground when I was google searching for accommodations. They offered Caribbean Beach cabana tents, 3 room tents with two bedrooms, refrigerator, gas stove and cooking utensils. One of Larry's French coworkers called it luxury camping. It was literally surrounded by vineyards.


Being the RV'er that we are, we find the European versions of RV's very interesting. They are small and they must be extremely light as they are pulled by the afore mentioned "go-karts." One morning, Larry heard what he thought was a golf cart, but when he looked, it was a man hitching up his trailer. He had a remote control and literally "walked" the trailer out of the site, around and up to the car to hitch.

There is much more to tell about wine, but I'll put that in a separate entry. A bientôt!

Glorified Go-Karts

That's what Larry calls the vehicles the French drive. We have had reason to drive 5 different cars here in TOULOUSE. We drove a large Citroen sedan in March when we were house hunting (top photo). Large is relative here, I'd say that car was the size of a Chevy Impala.


Then we had 3 different rental cars during our first weeks here until our lease was available. The first rental that we picked up at the airport was what I refer to as the French mini-van, a Citroen C4 Picasso (next photo). When we see it on the road next to an actual Dodge mini-van it is really much smaller.


Then we had an Volvo sportscar (expensive, we only had it a couple of days). It was fast. Larry liked the way it cornered the round-abouts (photo above). Next we had a gas version of our lease car, a Peugeot 207 (photo below). That was expensive to drive as gas is more expensive than diesel and doesn't get as far per mile.


Our lease car is a Peugeot 207 Style, a diesel, which is small but gets good gas mileage (last photo). It supposedly seats 4, so we'll see when visitors start to arrive. For the 2 of us, it's perfect and more than once Larry has been able to park in places that a bigger car would not have been able to (notice the car between the trees and how Larry towers over it).

Marciac and Armagnac

Last weekend we went to the Marciac Jazz Festival. It was the last day of the multi-week international music fest. This final day was free, no tickets required. We heard a couple of groups, both French and they were pretty good. Earlier in the festival Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra performed amongst other well known groups.

Speaking of Wynton, they appear to "love" him there. You'll notice the picture of the statue, that's Wynton. It was a carnival atmosphere, with vendors of all persuasion selling their wares. Lady went with us as usual, and the pictures show you how she enjoyed the music. Anyway, we spent a couple of hours on a hot Sunday afternoon enjoying the music and people watching.

The day before we toured a vineyard and Armegnac producer. Armegnac is similar to Cognac, except for the region where it's produced. Armagnac is made by distilling wine. They also have a beverage called floc, which is distilled grape juice. The Armagnac was too strong for me, but I did rather like the red floc.

It's been very hot here (around 100°) and the locals drink a lot of rose when it's hot. I like the rose here, it's not sweet like what I remember back home.

Les Baux

When we were in Provence most of the country side was green with fields of sunflowers growing amongst the hills and river valleys. We spent one afternoon visiting Les Baux, which was a very different landscape indeed.



Les Baux is a medieval town built (yet again) on top of a hill. However, the landscape is, as Rick Steve's puts it "much like a moonscape." It was a tourist town, the 35 residents make their livelihood on the tourist season. Larry referred to it as the Renaissance Festival without the costumes.



The Chateau (castle) Des Baux has been renovated and is supposedly one of Provence's most visited attractions. Supposedly the descendants of the Magi, Balthazar, were the inhabitants of the castle.

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the Pyrenees

Last weekend we drove into the Pyrenees. It was overcast here in TOULOUSE (which should have informed our trip). We literally drove into the clouds as we went into the Pyrenees. By the time we neared the top, we were in the middle of rain clouds. We drove across the tops of a couple of mountains, had a nice lunch and decided that we'd have to do it all over again when the sun is shining and we can actually see the sights below us. I'm sure the views will be gorgeous. We took a few pictures of interesting buildings and of the mountains in the mist. I thought that house with all the greenery on it was picturesque. Hope you enjoy the pictures.