Evasions: Another Outing

On Sunday, we had another outing with Evasions. This time, we knew how long it takes to get to the Esplanade d'Europa, the meeting place where the Lez meets the Antigone. We walked there a bit more leisurely. I wasn't feeling too leisurely, though, because I only had two 10 euro notes. When we were almost there, there was a post office and I tried their ATM. No luck. Then I tried the ATM of another bank. Again no luck. Yikes. I tried my credit card. Whew! It worked, but now I have a cash advance $300 collecting interest at some ungodly amount. Yikes. It isn't even posted yet. Oh well, it was the weekend. Anyway, cash in hand, we headed to the Nike of Samothrace and there was nobody there. Nobody at all. Elena told me to check down stairs where all the restaurants are and voila! About a dozen men and women, and even a little boy--probably about the same age as the boy in Cormac McCarthy's "The Road".

We had a coffee and hit the road in three cars. Our destination, as much as I can piece it together by remembering what I remember, and using google maps, was a small town called Crespian near another small town (that doesn't show up as a name on Google Maps) called Cannes/Clairent or something like that (I'll correct it later if I learn it).

Our objective was to taste wine and honey. And, fortunately for Elena, go on a little hike. We made it to the place where they have the wine tasting, but they weren't exactly open yet. Even so, there were a ton of cars in the land they use as a parking lot. I didn't see any dogs around. It seems like if you're going to do this:

it typically means your long term plan is to always have a mean dog around. But nope! Maybe they bring it out at night when all the tourists are gone.

Though we had just parked, we immediately unparked and headed to a restaurant in Quillac called La Baraka. We sat outside in the nice temperature. Elena got a salmon salad and I had a chicken pasta. We got carafes of red and rose wine. The total bill for all of us was 99,80 euros or $150. Not bad. We put in 22 euros. Of course half the people overpaid because they were dealing in 10 euro notes, so there was some left over. When we were set, we loaded up into the cars and headed out.

We drove to the miellerie or what we might call and apiary. I didn't see any bees there, but they had all sorts of honey. We got some coffee. It was the first good coffee I had in France. Christine declared the coffee to be bad. LOL! That's why we haven't seen Starbucks in Montpellier--the 8th largest city and chock full of students. The French and Americans simply don't see eye to eye about what constitutes a good cup of coffee. I like a coffee I can hold in my hand without pinching a tiny little ceramic handle. They like their coffee in shot glass sized cups.

Christine told us that it was our last chance to make purchases. Elena got a honey sampler with 4 honeys and a jar of nuts preserved in honey. I can't wait to try them. :-) Then onto the hike. We weren't really sure where we were going. Elena had the impression that we'd do a loop, and I had the impression that a few people not going on the hike would drive to the wine tasting place, but that we would walk there.

There were six of us on the hike. We went by vinyards--currently not growing anything, just T shaped bare shrubs about a meter high and all held in line with tight wires strung across the rows of vines. The vine plants were probably about 4 feet apart and there were probably about 6 or 8 feet between rows. Roughly--I didn't think about it at the time, so these estimates are from memory.

We went through mountains, and villages. The villages are really old--stone building everywhere--probably hundreds of years old. The street names are really practical--"Street of the X" where X is the landmark that's on the street--church, forge, etc. There aren't many streets in these tiny hamlets, so no need to dip into the names of historical figures, artists, Greek/Roman gods, etc. I'm not sure what this particular street refers to, but it struck me as funny for whatever reason:


We got lost briefly, but a guy near the Cooperative of Cannes? (la Italique, la Italique, la Italique) put us on the right path. And off we were.

Here are a couple of pictures at a little bridge:



When we were getting further along we looked back and saw a group of people on the trail. It was a close packed train of about 200 hundred people all hiking a parallel trail. Yikes! That's a lot of hiking tourists!

It took at little doing--cutting through vineyards, and crossing a highway, but we made it to our destination--the wine tasting place. Ha ha! I was right! ;-) Christine and the guy with his kid and the others who didn't hike were there. The kid was really excited because the wine tasting place had a chocolate fountain. I went into the 20'x20' room and got through about 2 items in the chocolate fountain and was about to try some wine, when that huge train of tourists entered--they just kept streaming through the door. I was trapped for a while, being near the chocolate fountain, but I managed to escape. It took Elena and the kid a while to get out. When they came out, the kid was covered in chocolate and Elena was smiling and talking about how much she ate at the chocolate fountain.



And that capped off our outing. We got back in the cars and headed back to the Esplanade d'Europa. We had a great time, and Elena finally got to do a little walking!