Wandering Through Saint Emilion

Day One: Wandering through Saint Emilion

After a brief layover in Paris, with an intense maze of customs screening and passport control, we hopped our connection to Bordeaux.

After waiting through an exceptionally lengthy rental car line that clearly wasn't built on a sense of urgency (not sure if that's cultural, or simply a lack of staffing?), we set off for Saint Emilion, a small town forty five minutes from Bordeaux known for its wines.

Made up of stone houses and impressive ancient buildings set around steep cobblestone streets and encompassed by a world of vineyards that came up to the town’s edge, Saint Emilion was far from what I imagined.

We wandered into a wine cellar to taste a glass and promptly missed our wine tasting class because we mixed up ‘Maison de Vin’ with ‘Maison des Vines’, which for my lack of French, I believe is quite understandable. We weren’t phased though, as we’d already tasted plenty of wine for our liking. Is it sacrilege to admit that we prefer white wine (while the region is known for its reds)?

Since we had to wait until 5 to check into our Airbnb, we wandered the streets a little more until we reached the cloister, where we got drinks and took a nap in the grass.

Afterwards, we walked through one of the vineyards and explored the local cemetery. 

Finally reaching the Airbnb, which was a beautifully decorated, small, two story apartment right in the center of town, we stopped to rest before heading off to dinner.

Walking through town and down a steep cobblestone path to the restaurant, we took our shoes off so we wouldn’t slip. This prompted several discussions about how you’d have to plan a trip like this when traveling with the elderly. Mostly on this trip, we’ve walked around with no true inkling of how far we were planning to go or what terrains would greet us, and as neither mom nor me has mobility limitations, we never have to worry about booking an Airbnb with steep steps or getting lost and walking too far or coming upon a hill we couldn’t climb. It really put it in perspective how different traveling would be when older. Motivates you to want to do and see as much as you can while you’re young.  For dinner, we had a salad, foie gras with fig, and fish, served in an elegant courtyard. Too full for dessert, we headed back to the Airbnb and slept soundly, exhausted after a long day.