Libourne and Saint-Emilion - Monday 4 September

This morning we visited Saint-Emilion, a beautiful hilltop town in the heart of the world-famous Bordeaux vineyards, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is located 35km north east of Bordeaux. It has a 2000 year history with the Romans having planted vineyards that long ago. The town dates back to the eighth century when Emilion, a Breton Monk, came to settle in a hermitage carved into the limestone rock which we saw as part of our visit. There remains 200km of underground galleries and the largest monolithic church in Europe which was quite amazing - a huge underground church, carved out of the limestone by hand by the monks. We were not allowed to take photos of this. The bell tower built later, sits over this underground church, and the church beneath is only able to be visited due to strengthening with metal structures against the older pillars. Limestone is everywhere and accounts for the soil that is exceptionally well suited to wine growing.

Next stop was the Les Cordeliers cellars, also with barrels stored underground within what the aforementioned passageways. Again, we heard about and saw some of the wine-making process for their specific wine. Directly above the underground galleries and ideal wine-ageing cellars was a picturesque vineyard. The wine is mostly pre-sold on the futures market and we had a tastingk of two red wines and also sampled a traditional macaron (different than the coloured ones in Paris, and a recipe handed down by nuns). After this we headed off on short tour of the town, seeing some great views over the lower town and surrounding area, and also walking through a lovely church and cloister (Église Collégiale). It had been drizzling in the morning and the cobblestones in the older areas of the town rounded and highly polished) were slippery and treacherous, especially on some of the steeper streets. But thankfully the weather had cleared up and we didn't need to return to the lower part of the town. Then it was back to the ship for lunch.







In the afternoon was a 1.5 hour walking tour of the older part of the town of Libourne, where we were docked. We had to dock across the river and cross a bridge to enter the town, the more regular docking area having been destroyed earlier this year when a Viking Cruises ship's captain had forgotten to undock and move to the centre of the river for the regular Mascaret (tidal bore) wave (a few centimetres high) that surges many kilometres upstream from the Gironde every few hours. Surfers are known to have fun with the bigger surges when they occur, and there are only 60 sites of these in the world. Our tour had to be completed by 4pm, if we were wanting to return to the ship, before it undocked for 45 minutes to await the surge. We just made it back in time after a fairly uninspiring tour of the town which, being a Monday, was mostly closed and deserted. We waited for the bore to occur, and although there was a definite surge, it wasn't as exciting as we'd hoped. We were to remain docked here overnight.



Dinner was at the Chef's Table degustation at the back of the boat (the booking we have made each week, with a different menu each week). Snails featured on the menu again, and David and I managed to swallow one each - no need to do so again in future!