Saint Emilion, Cannelés and Palermo (15/9)

St Emilion grapes

We had done most of our packing the night before, so it was really having breakfast and bidding our landlady good-bye before setting off for Saint Emilion on our way to the airport in Bordeaux. As we approached our destination, the fields of sunflowers and corn and ploughed wheat fields gave way to vineyards as far as the eye could see. This is one of the prime wine-making regions of the Bordeaux region. It would be interesting to see a map of the boundaries of each vineyard. We suspect some are actually quite small. 

The grapes were still to be harvested, and the yield varied substantially from vineyard to vineyard. Don't know why - it could be type, age of vine, type of soil they are grown on. Saint Emilion is definitely on the tourist trail. We hadn't seen a tourist bus for some days, and we soon found out where they were!! We followed the trail of people into them centre of the village and poked our noses into a church which still has its cloisters intact. These were part of an Augustinian monastery started in the 12th century and which was finally broken up during the Revolution. 

From the tower in St Emilion -
Grapevines as far as you can see.

This lead us into Tourist Information where Jill queued up for a map. Whilst waiting, Allan wandered about and found that you could climb the bell tower for a 360 degree view of Saint Emilion and the surrounding countryside. We found the bell tower, and then found you had to get the key from TI, so back to join the queue (thankfully not as long this time). It is a good way of controlling the numbers of people up the bell tower at any one time. That and the 196 steps straight up which most of the folks on the tourist buses would never be able to negotiate. The view was worth the climb. There were grape vines as far as the eye could see, and you could see most of the points of interest in the village. 

There is a huge keep which was built in the 13th century, but no one knows who ordered its construction. Two other prominent structures could be seen from here, the "great wall", three massive arches which is all that remains of a Dominican convent erected in the 13th century, and several walls of a cardinal's palace, also built in the 12th century. One wonders how all these monastic complexes fitted on the hill, and how they all got on together. It was the monks who planted the first vines in the area, beginning an industry that has survived the upheavals that saw the demise of all the religious institutions in the village except for some of the churches. The bell tower actually sits over another subterranean church carved out of rock but we didn't visit this one – nothing could beat the previous one. From the bell tower we made our way up to some more cloisters from a monastery founded in the 14th century by Franciscan monks, after their first one had been destroyed, and then wandered some of the streets before deciding to push on for the airport.

Our cannelés - Yum!!

We also wanted to visit at least one of the makers of cannelés that Gaëlle had tracked down for us. We found La Toque Cuivrée (The Copper Cap?), and when we explained ourselves the lady was thrilled that we had searched her out. She had never had Australians in the shop, and offered us a taste before we bought. Cannelés can be cooked for different lengths of time and this gives a different amount of caramelisation to the outer shell. We decided to be greedy and asked for six small and six medium cannelés. She gave us a mix of caramelisation so that we could decide how we liked them. 

We were well ahead of time, so decided to buy some lunch and look for a park to eat in. We finally found a boulangerie, but finding a park was not easy. We headed for a Parque Naturelle and couldn't actually get into it because of road works. We ate our panini on the side of the road, then looked for somewhere nicer to spend an hour before dropping off the car. Jill had the Via Michelin map up on the ipad with lots of green bits on it, but these proved to be a cemetery, a golf course, and part of an airforce base! We eventually found a little park in a village which is about to be swallowed up by the industrial section of Bordeaux and stayed for about an hour then headed into the airport.

Our French transport.

The drop off went smoothly and Allan will be pleased to not be driving the Renault Clio any more. He is too tall for it! He had to duck his head to be able to see around the rear vision mirror, and couldn't adjust the seat to improve his line of sight. We are hoping for a Golf in Sicily. We were in plenty of time for check in, and after watching people frantically weighing, redistributing stuff between suitcases and re-weighing, we decided to check our luggage. The big case was 2 kg over the limit, so we also did some rearranging. But we were in for a rude shock at check-in. Because we had no access to a printer we hadn't printed boarding passes, and for the sum of €30 EACH, Volotea deigned to print them out for us. "It is company policy" was all the sympathy we got, but we were given forward seats, so we wondered if the checking lady did have some sympathy for us after all. With steam coming out of our ears, we headed for customs and at least got through that without too much hassle. We then went to our gate to await boarding. 

The flight had a few bumpy patches, and it was dark by the time we touched down in Palermo. We caught the shuttle bus into Palermo (the airport is 40km from town) and the bus driver told us where we would have to get off. When we got off he said that the hotel was to the left. We walked for some way, and tried to ask one guy if the hotel was this way and he didn't want to help. Then I heard English accents behind us, asked, and they said about 100 m, but follow us because we are going there anyway!  We found ourselves in a comfortable room, left our bags and went downstairs to ask about possible places to eat. They directed us to a pizza restaurant not far from the hotel so off we went. The pizzas were quite reasonable, especially at 10.00pm after a long day.