Kiwi Roaming

Saint-Émilion is a Unesco World Heritage village and it is the cutest place I think we have ever been in our travels. It is also a wine region of Bordeaux and the village is surrounded by chateau’s and paddocks of vines – making it all even more photogenic. The whole wine aspect is complicated, there is a whole accreditation process and Saint-Émilion wines have a pecking order along with their growing providence, basically it’s like Champagne regionally. Then there is a quality rating applied with Grand Cru as the highest. Long story short, it’s interesting but not what we are most interested in, we are just loving drinking a glass of wine in the sunshine looking at beautiful buildings at 7pm.

We have been away a month now and until leaving Porto had been with other people so 4 nights in chocolate box Saint-Émilion is the transition into our holiday by ourselves and it’s a perfect place for that. It is also hellishly expensive! There is one supermarket which is tiny and prices are double that of the supermarkets we have been to elsewhere in France. A glass of wine ranges from €5-€15 which is a step up from my €3 wines in Portugal. There are restaurants who charge over €50 for a main – we paid €40 for a cheese and charcuterie platter to share on our first day and have walked to the boloungarie (bakery) that is 800m out of the village (no footpath) to buy ourselves more reasonably priced lunches. But as our Australian neighbour said – we’re on holiday not here to be accountants.

We arrived on the train, it’s about 2km from the station up the hill to the village and such a slow walk with wow vistas to photograph at every turn. Our wee apartment is in a building with 4 x studios and is gorgeous. We collected our keys from one of the tens of wine shops – the owner grabbed our keys and walked out of his shop taking us up the road to show us around leaving the shop unattended, which is kinda the vibe of the place, very posh and very safe.

It was a Sunday and the place was packed with people. We dropped our bags and headed out to explore, in less than 15 mins of wandering the busy streets we heard a kiwi voice we recognised! crazy aye. Janaya lives in London and was here for a long weekend with friends, they had hired a villa out of the village and had come in to explore on their way home. We last saw her before Christmas when home after her father passed so lots to catchup on in 10 minutes standing on the side of the road while her friends waited. Such a small world.

The village is on a hill and it’s very steep from the base to the top, the wee narrow roads are mostly cobblestone but there are also walking only paths made from stones which are very challenging to navigate. Surprisingly there are cars in the village, not many, but enough to be slightly annoying at times. There is a mix of very very old and perfectly integrated newer buildings here. As I mentioned every second shop is a wine seller, there are also loads of art shops, a few clothing stores, lots of beautiful wine accessories. Little wine bars and restaurants with outdoor terraces are dotted around otherwise there are beautiful hotels and guest houses. Most people seem to come here for a day trip, either by the coachload or in their rental cars with a few catching the train. So it’s lovely and quiet in the evenings.

It’s been warm here too – no more rain. Both Steve and I have wonderful tans but our feet and ankles are white (where we wore socks on the camino) so we’ve been trying to get some sunshine on our feet by wearing sandals, which is tricky on the undulating and steep streets at times. We haven’t been wine tasting in a Chateau, it’s all very stuffy and we feel we have enjoyed great wine tasting both at the wine museum and visiting our landlord in his shop, and by buying different varieties in wee wine bars. We have walked around outside the village to see the lovely countryside and enjoyed walking along narrow country roads.

I’ve split this into two posts about Saint-Émilion the second part about our day trip to Libourne as well.