Another UNESCO World Heritage Site or You Can't Spit Without Hitting a Chateaux

The area around Bordeaux produces many well known wines. Through the guide's thick accent I believe she said the red area on the map is for red wine, the yellow for white wine, and the other colors for bad wine. Maybe I misheard her.

Typical St. Emilion vineyard 

Theme Park St. Emilion

St. Emilion is on a hillside. That got them extra credit with UNESCO.

Bring on the tourists, the brie is running

Modest chateaux

Many of the vineyards are worked by hand. Note the guy outstanding in his field.

The St. Emilion street had a number of the macaroon shops for which St. Emilion is also famous. Really. 

We came across this work site in front of a church

Quelle surprise when we discovered they were digging up human remains with that backhoe. 

Historic wine museum along the Bordeaux wharves

Side street in Bordeaux

Silver Whisper at its Garonne River berth 70 miles from the North Sea

The ever changing view on our porch as we sailed out of Bordeaux

Doesn't everyone have foie gras appetizers in France?

A modest dairy free dessert

Brand new lift bridge, uh lifted, so we could sail out of Bordeaux

Tuesday - 13 May 2014 - St. Emilion and Bordeaux

After a night at the pier in downtown Bordeaux we decided to spend down our surprise on-board credit on a ship's excursion to St. Emilion, some hour away from downtown and not readily accessible by public transit. The tour's guide pointed out on a map the various wine producing areas around Bordeaux. Medoc and Pomerol are but two of these. I think she said that St. Emilion is famous for producing grapes that are somehow a blend of Cabernet and Merlot. Maybe I got that wrong as I was distracted by counting the familiar "chateaux" as we passed by them. Of course, in France the world chateaux means any building that serves as the headquarters for a wineyard. So some chateaux were made of cement blocks. 

You can see instantly why St. Emilion is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. There's old medieval lookout towers, narrow streets that go up and down the hillside that the town is built on, and the surrounding vineyards look like they are just for show. (With the market for French wines on a decided downturn and many of the wine magazines talking French wines down, for a while some might be.) We walked for miles in and around St. Emilion and the nearby countryside and returned to Bordeaux too early to do some wine tasting at the wineyards, our only regret. 

As sailing was not until 6 pm, Barbara and I couldn't resist walking more around downtown Bordeaux. This time we explored some lovely (and oddly enough very French looking) side streets. We even visited the Bordeaux Wine Museum. This basement (they call it cellar, of course) display area is in a former "chateaux" as all the wineries were really downtown adjacent to the wharves, not in the fields as now. We learned about the rich history and currently the not so rich business of French wine making, but actually we had come for the wine tasting at the museum which was included in the price of admission. The former was better than we expected, and the latter was adequate. Guess we've been spoiled by most of the wines on Silversea.

We took another longish walk on the Garonne waterfront and returned to Silver Whisper to enjoy the sail out under the very new center lift bridge. The ever changing view on the 5 hour transit to the sea from our suite's ledge was most enjoyable. At dinner we enjoyed small (?) foie gras appetizers, and I ended the meal with some very serious dark chocolate somethingorother the chef had prepared. He was in a very good mood as being from Bordeaux he was able to see his family earlier in the day. Can't say I remember the rest of the meal.

Bordeaux is another "can return without problem" destination. After a sea day tomorrow, we would stop at the last port call on this cruise--but not where we had originally planned.