Cobblestones and wine

Click for full-size images.

Yesterday I literally spent the whole fucking day on Facebook, because everyone and their mom, myself included, decided to put up photos from Bordeaux, and I needed to be supervigilant as bar-dancing pictures were uploaded and I had to protect my pristine reputation. 

The reason all the pictures went up yesterday is because we spent a beautiful Saturday at Saint-Emilion, a small town near Bordeaux famous for its wine. 

The town was lovely. I'm really glad we got to go during the off season because the streets were nearly empty, and my host mom told me later that during the summer there are people everywhere. The town was the definition of a quaint European village, with towering church spires and cobblestone roads laid during the 12th century. Extremely steep and potentially death-inducing cobblestone roads. We took a tour through the church's catacombs - it's the deepest underground church in Europe (or something equally impressive) and carved out of the side of a mountain. It was also cold as hell inside the buildings. I'm far from a fan of Romanesque architecture (too heavy and depressing), but it's hard not be be impressed by the sheer size of the buildings and the intricate paths underground. The day had been a bit gloomy, which was making for shitty photographs, but then the sun finally came out and it was glorious glorious glorious. 

After a historical tour of the city, we hopped back on the bus and drove to a winery not far away. I was a little surprised because it was extremely modern and indistrial, and not at all what you'd picture a traditional winery to be - no barefoot men stomping grapes (thank god) or dark stone caverns. Everything was steel and shiny. There were, however, barrels and barrels of wine at the end of the tour. 

You could smell it all around you, which no one was complaining about. At the end, we had an informal tasting of two wines. I would have felt pretentious but for all of us scarfing the stuff down like alcoholic and uncultured American college students. Oh wait, that's exactly what we are. At the end of the tour almost everyone bought some wine for themselves and their host families. I had no idea what I was doing, but I liked the second wine we tried so I picked up a bottle of that for my host mom. She promised to break it out for the next big meal.

--

A cafe in front of the church bell tower in St. Em. I love this photo for some reason. It just screams Europe to me. Sometimes after a day spent speaking English with fellow Californians, I forget that I'm here, but suddenly I'll be surrounded by waves of French on the tram or I'll see something like this, and then I feel so lucky to be in this place where everything is beautiful.