an impromptu day trip (or the start of something good)

Sunday morning I went to the market as usual, but by myself. The weather was awful enough to keep Stephanie and Colin in, and as soon as I entered that steady drizzle I wished I'd done the same. I met Gudrun, an Icelandic friend from my classes, at ten. She and I were both horribly underdressed for the bitter wind and rain. We stopped by the stand of Julien, a French friend I met at Monika's apartment last weekend (Monika is Norwegian and shares classes with Gudrun and I). Julien's family sells wine at the Sunday market. Normally it's his parents at the stand, but they're out of town currently and so he manned the booth himself. Unable to stand the cold, Gudrun and I took a cup of coffee in a nearby brasserie but returned to the market in the same low spirits as when we first arrived. Julien told us that he had to return the unsold wine to his parents' house near Saint-Emilion in the early afternoon; would we like to join him? We were both interested in getting out of the city for the day, but we had time to kill before he'd be ready. 

Gudrun's feet were soaking wet and my boots, my favorite, loyal boots of two years were leaking. Water. A significant amount. (After having analyzed the problem, I'm sure that if it's reparable, I'll pay as much to repair them as to replace them. Alors, I'm in the market.) In our soggy state we were a two-woman mission to find soup. Gudrun took me to Karl, a cafe in the Place du Parlement where Alex, a Romanian from our classes, works. The atmosphere was perfect -- really casual and cozy. We ordered two bowls of soup (pumpkin for me and tomato basil for Gudrun), each of which was accompanied by slices of baguette, an olive loaf, tiny bowls of crème fraiche, dry prosciutto, croutons, and a couple of other things I can't remember. It was perfect. Then we walked to Gudrun's apartment, where she changed her clothes, lent me a coat and a pair of wool socks, and we each had a cup of tea. Then we skipped off to Virgin to meet Julien.

It was about a 45-minute drive to his parents' house, which is surrounded by vineyards. I took a few pictures of the outside, but the inside was even more stunning and Gudrun snapped away in the cave. 

Julien's parents own a chateau about 50 kilometers from their house, whose wine Julien was selling at the market. His father is a former architect and his mother paints as a hobby, so the inside of the house was very carefully decorated and full of interesting antiques and old books. We drank a bit of cidre and had a little snack after out tour and then headed back to the car for a driving tour of the area. Julien took us into Saint-Emilion and parked so we could get out and take a few pictures. We stopped into the tourism office to pick up free maps and bought the macarons (almond cookies) that Saint-Emilion is famous for. The whole time I was trying to remember the name of the chateau whose wine Vintner Select, my father's company, imports.

We drove back to the city in the early evening, but not before stopping again so Julien could show us his favorite picnic spot, which has a breathtaking panoramic view of the countryside. We picked fresh figs off of a tree and ate them straightaway.

I'm going to make a grand effort to write all the captions for the photos in my Picasa account (link at the left of this blog). Check back soon to look at my pictures and hopefully I'll have that finished so you know what you're looking at.