Boring Bordeaux? No way!

After a great nights sleep in our very quiet farm room, we wandered to the breakfast room to find our Dallas friends enjoying a wonderful array of croissants, baguettes, yogurt, fruit and most of all...coffee. Martine, like the night before put out a great meal and it was a nice way to start the day.

Unfortunately it was time to pack up and hit the road to St Emillion, which was about 3.5 hours away. With the handy gps, we were quickly back on A10 and cruising at 130kph (81mph). Our first stop was at Cognac, which is a pretty little town on the river and home to

all the big Cognac makers, such as Hennessy and Remy Martin.

We chose to visit Otard, which is the oldest Cognac maker and goes under a different name in the name in the US...D'Usse (Otard wasn't resonating). They took us into the caves and through the old castle, which was built around the 10th century and has been destroyed,/rebuilt/destroyed/rebuilt over the centuries. At the end we got to taste some quite good Cognac, but refrained from purchasing any!

Then it was another 1.5 hours to our AirBnb in a vineyard in St Emillion, part of the Bordeaux region. After exiting A10, we were in the midst of beautiful rolling hills of grapes, farm houses and narrow winding roads. We arrived to the Noble Vineyards, with Maria our host ready to show us our room and take a tour of the property.

https://www.chateaulenoble.com/home

We climbed the narrow staircase above the main office and found a wonderful apartment, with a kitchen, excellent shower and comfy bed. Maria and her husband, Thomas have been renovating the entire property over the past nine years and have done an amazing job. We learned about their winemaking process, saw the vines, vats and the best part....tasted some incredible wines. The only downside? They don't ship to the US!! Maria also brought us some local eggs, that were going to be perfect for breakfast!

Instead of going out for dinner, we decided it was another pizza night, and walked up to the small village of St Germain du Puch, stocked up on some breakfast stuff and got pizza/salad to go from the local bistro. Back at the vineyard, we enjoyed some of Maria/Thomas's wine with the salad/pizza....surrounded by beautiful scenery and the

only sound being the happy birds...a wonderful way to end the day.