Sauternes

Wake up at 7:15, it’s still difficult to get up in the morning even though I got 8 hours of sleep. Go to baker shop to get breakfast and lunch then catch the 8:17 train to Bordeaux. Wait two hours, then catch the 10:38 train to Langon. The train was standing room only. Arrive in Langon 20 minutes later. Carry our luggage to the centre of town and find the tourist info centre. We phone various different hotels and end up at the 3 star hotel Claude Darroze for 75 euros/night. Find local internet café and check e-mail. Then go back to train station to get schedule to Toulouse and book the 10:30 train for the next morning. Go by Europcar and see about renting a car for the afternoon. This time the price is lower at 59 euros but the problem is that it’s currently 14:00 and they close at 17:30 and they don’t have an after hours key drop and they are closed the next day. Clearly this won’t work, so we do the only other option remaining to us and walk the 12 kms to Sauternes. We arrive in a small but pretty town. I go to the Maison du Sauternes which sells local wines and makes money by receiving 1% of the wine from each vineyard and mixing it all together to make their own wine. We taste the mix and it is quite good, but I end up buying a bottle of Cru Claviere which is more aged and has more body to it. It is always a bit embarrassing to be buying just 1 bottle of wine when they ask how many cases you would like, but since I only have my 2 pannier bags as luggage, it’s not like I can carry too much. We go back to Langon by a different route passing by some humongous chateaus including Chateau LaFaurie-Peyraguey. In total we did around 24 kms of walking. Go back to the hotel to shower and have dinner at 20:00, I have lasagna with salmon and dad has pork brochette.