Roadtrip: St. Emillion and the rest of the trip

Last shot

Last day morning, we went to a local market. Suprisingly, no one had protest this suggestion. I wonder you guys will try to keep away from the market cause “only women go to market for bargain” But I was totally wrong.

Market

For me, personally I will go to the local market in every city. I think the market reflects the ways the local people living and it’s a best place to experience living as a local. So many people would try to keep away from majority of tourist and to find the original part of the city. Long stay is an option if you got lots of time, and visit market is the other way.

The market in Bordeaux was crowded and smelly, it’s the same in every market yet the way people talk to each other is kind of different than other cities. Yet the market is located near the arabic area so there were so many arabic selling things. (I wrote thie passage in the middle of the night so it seems nonsense)

I like this group shot so put it here again :P

After the market, we went to St. Emillion. It was a town recommended by the lady in tourist office, she said that the small town had many world heritage sites and we can do some wine taste over there. The best of all, it’s only the way we heading for Lyon.

A view from the tower

(If you’d like to see more photos, please go to my FB photos.)

Immature german guy tried to luck our mom and dad in the tower.

After St. Emillion, we head straight for Lyon. I found that Pascal was the guy who had drove ambulance before, so his driving was skillful and reliable. (It’s not to say that we like to sit in an ambulance…) He should of drive the car, so Kris would be so tired :P

I have to admit that these articles were written after I came back from London, which is almost 2 weeks after the roadtrip. I skipped sooo many interestinf details and stories just tried to make a quick memory of what happened those days.

Never thought of that I would had the chance to travel with so many interesting guys, and each of us had a strong character. Besides, speaking English all the way was kind of challenge to me since I ain’t a native speaket neither live in an English speaking environment for over a week. It’s quite hard for me to speak without grammar mistake or choose the wrong word. I think speak logically is my next goal of learning path.

Besides, by this tour I met people in different sides. There's a saying in Mandarin that Travel is a mirror of showing a person’s reality. (Actually I made the sentence LOL) I mean, get along with people is hard but when we stay in the dorm, we can still find a place alone and keep away from others. But to travel together is like totally different atmosphere, at least you have to stay together for so many days and don’t even allow to have a personal space since it’s the group thing. And some personal habbits or personality had no place to hide, that’s why so many couple divorced after their honeymoon. The thing is that we had experienced a wonderful trip and neither of us had a big fight and we still like to hang around each other, that’s a blessing ;)

Yes I have to admit that after the quite Saturday night in London, I’m kind of missing you guys yelling to each other and hit the bars in the midnight. For me, it’s not the bars or the clubs, but the people I like to get along.

Roadtrip: Congac, Bordeaux and world heritage

Parents and their adopted kid

Congac is a small town in France, but for most people understand the word, is a kind of wine, or in Mandarin, we called 干邑. Actually after I looked up wikipedia, congac belongs to Brandy 白蘭地. According to French Law, to bear the name Cognac, the production methods for the distilled brandy must meet defined legal requirements, ensuring strict conformity with a 300-year old production process.

As in Bordeaux, winery was one of must-go tour spot for us. We drove 1.5 hours long, finally achieve Congac at about 4pm (had a fast lunch in a local restaurant), just in time for the Hennessy tour.

What is Hennessy, if I told you that 軒尼士 or the brand VSOP, you might have something in mind. But actually the company is waaaaaay bigger than I expect.

Jas Hennessy & Co., or more simply Hennessy, is a prominent French cognac house and co-leader of the luxury goods company, LVMH. Hennessy specializes in the manufacture of cognac. Today, the company of Jas Hennessy & Co. sells about 50 million bottles a year worldwide, or more than 40 percent of the world’s Cognac.

The tour started at 4pm, and we had a retarded “river tour” on the first hand. (The river tour was taking the boat on a small canal, went 200 m back and forth, in order to arrive the cross side. Totally waste of gasoline and time also.)

After that, a lady guided us to the wine museum to see how they produce congac or XO, it took a long time to wait the grapes to grow and the quality of the wine depends heavily on the weather and other natural factors very much.

The most important of all, in order to produce the same quality of wine every year to serve the majority, they had to deploy wine produced in different year to make the same thing. For example, the wine every year had its “characteristic” so if we’d like to produce the wine in the same taste, we must find out which year allocate with whom will be the best.

Nischint was very serious.

I had a headache after the serious hammer and even I smelled the wine, I’d feel like to puke. So after I went to the world-class warehouse, I felt dizzy. But I think it is still a good place to visit since the oldest wine of the warehouse was made in 1800s.

The most expensive wine was the allocation of 7 wines by 7 tester of 7 generations.

Wine taste was also included in the tour, for some of us, it is the most important part. We tasted 2 kinds of wine including a congac and VSOP. Deniz, Pascal and I had try their grape juice, personally, I think the juice fits me the most.

After the tour, we went back to Bordeaux for sightseeing its world heritages. I felt that Bordeaux was is a lucky city since after so many wars in France, it still preserve so many world heritage in town.

So in my opinion, Bordeaux will be my favorite city in France right now. Not only the historical buildings but the residents are so energetic and THERE WERE SO MANY PRETTY GIRLS.

She’s a bartender.

Roadtrip: Biarritz

There’s always some unexpected things happened on the road, a magical detour to the mountain road, fastfood everyday, or bumped into a beautiful beach. Biarritz stands for th last one. The reason we went there was word of mouth by Mathi’s parents, they said the seashore was great and we should of take a look at that place. (as far as I remember)

People still lingering on the beach

It was late autumn, the temperature became lower and lower and the chill wind started to invade Lyon, people in Biarritz still lingering on the beach, try to grasp the last summer sunshine here.

We reentered France again, and still miss the people and weather in Barcelona. It’s kind of sick, you can not miss a city too much so that you can have much more fun to explore a new one. But i guess BCN got its charm.

Nice weather

During our visit, we spent the most of the time walking along the seaside and chitchat about nonsense things. It’s the 5th day of the trip, everyone seems a little bit tired but the breezy sea wind woke us up. We tried to find something to eat here, but as all the tourist place, the food is not affordable for poor students.

Sunlight

Kris said that he can spend 2 weeks of his summer here, sleeping until noon and go to the beach in the afternoon. The best of all, is having a little summer affair. Come on, it’s EVERYONE’s dream, OK?

Group shot!

We left the sunny days and heading for the winery city, Bordeaux for the rest 3 days of the road trip. Bordeaux was our last stop.

Roadtrip: Pamplona and San Sebastian

It took 5-6 hours from Barcelona to our next destination, San Sebastian, so Jose recommend us stop by Pamplona to take a rest and go. Until I arrive Pamplona, I realize that the small town is famous for the San Fermín festival in every summer. Not even know the quite tiny town with a big cathedral was world-known, nor did I realize the bulls running in the narrow street and the crowd chasing them. (As I said in facebook, most of my history knowledge was from Age of Empire II, and the bull chasing was not even a battle.)

As seen on TV

See who’s treat the holy animal badly

We visited the town for one and half hour and hit the road again, but I think the one hour tour was worthy because the cathedral was sacred and we saw a ceremony was happening in the evening. Almost every audience was standing on the stage and talked about something. I asked my Catholic friends what were they doing, it’s kind of an event for small children and the speech was in praise of the god’s blessing.

We had the best steak for dinner, thanks to the toreo was quite popular here and usually the bulls were killed afterwards. Steak is kind of an alternative famous dish of Spain. Anyway the steak was out of question delicious even Mathi and Kris commented them as the best steak of their lives.

Suit up!?

Night out was necessary for us. As an observer of European party, people would wear the most attractive dress to clubbing. For example, shirts for men are undoubtful, remember to wear some perfume and use the hair gel for your fluffy hair. For girls, make up everything visible to others, and put something shiny as accessories, it will make you sparkle in the dark club. Please do wear paired underwear or at least same color in any cases.

Jose told us that there will be awesome parties in San Sebastian and the dudes were really looking forward to them. But it turned out to be staying a Jazz bar or a crappy local sports bar with the other 3 french dudes with ethnic clothes in the first night.

On the next day, we went sightseeing again. The best of San Sebastian is that they’ve got the mountains, the beaches and the mountain by the sea! (They’ve got everything!)

3 massagist waiting for customers

2 manwhore waiting for business

1 boring guy with his “top gun”

 

Right after the adorable sightseeing, we went to a local bar, looking for Tapas as lunch. Especially San Sebastian is prestigious for the Tapas.

Tapa is the name of a wide variety of appetizers, or snacks, in Spanish cuisine. They may be cold (such as mixed olives and cheese) or warm (such as chopitos, which are battered, fried baby squid). In select bars in Spain, as well as some parts of North America and the United Kingdom, tapas has evolved into an entire, and sometimes sophisticated, cuisine. In Spain, patrons of tapas can order many different tapas and combine them to make a full meal. In some Central American countries such snacks are known as bocas.

Bar full of people.

the boss can speak 35 languages, even norwegen!

My order: Octopus, egg roll, shrimp sandwich and something I forget.

The second night out was OUT OF EXPECTATION. I drank a bottle of Cidre during dinner and tell Kris that I’m going to get hammered tonight, then we went to the Jazz bar again, I’ve ordered a glass of congac and at the other bar, I had a beer and 2 takila shots, then I couldn’t remember anything happened. But one thing for sure: I got hammered, and Mathias is the most kind guy.

Don’t ask, I won’t tell you what happened.

Roadtrip: Barcelona city tour

Joey and I had discussed about this issue before: What do foreigners do when they travel around? I mean we are from Asia country, France, Italy or Swiss seems so far away from our world, so sightseeing is our first priority. Spend a whole day visiting famous cathedrals or statues, seeing ancient ruins we had read in the text book. But what about people who lived in Europe? They might have been to this city for many times. What do they expect from revisit the city? Finding interesting bars? Most crowded clubbing place?

The fact is that, people of Europe, for example a french might not had the chance to visit so many places as I did in France. People are not as leisure as in our stereotype, travel or tossing around everywhere. Yes, there are some similarities but actually for them, visiting a foreign country is like to the world.

And the ways of travel depend on the personality. Somebody loves to walk around the city to collect every “spot” in town, or ramble on the anonymous street to see something unexpexted. Some likes to take breathe taking pictures even if he’s not following the team anyhow. And some would rather spend whole afternoon in a local cafe, just relax and observe the residents of the city.

Some loves to take jump-in-the-air photos everywhere…
@ Sagrada Familia 聖家堂

Barcelona fulfills everyone’s need.
We spent 2 days visiting the city of Barcelona, from the Guell Park to the beach. Especially the 2nd day in the city, it took us 7 hours of walking to see “some” of the prestigious Gaudi buildings. Our tour team consist of Mathias, the McDonald’s lover, Pascal, the stylish leather jacket with beach shorts, Deniz, the crazy paparazzi photographer and me, an amateur yet miss-guiding tour agent.

Which way?

The most famous and influencial guy in Barcelona is Mr. Gaudi.

Antoni Plàcid Guillem Gaudí i Cornet (Catalan pronunciation: [ənˈtɔni gəwˈði]; 25 June 1852 – 10 June 1926) was a Catalan^[3] architect who worked during the Modernisme (Art Nouveau) period but became famous for his unique and highly individualistic designs regarded as beyond the scope of Modernisme.

Major works:

• Casa Vicens (1884–1885)
• Palau Güell (1885–1889)
• College of the Teresianas (1888–1890)
• Crypt of the Church of Colònia Güell (1898–1916)
• Casa Calvet (1899–1904)
• Casa Batlló (1905–1907)
• Casa Milà (La Pedrera) (1905–1907)
• Park Güell (1900–1914)
• Sagrada Família Nativity façade and Crypt of the Sagrada Família church (1884 until his death in 1926, although still under construction as of 2010)

It’s quite hard for us to visit all of his work in one day, but luckily the most of them were built on the same street, so as we wander down the street, heading for the beach, we saw so many grotesque yet modern archetects. Even nowadays people would feel his work is fanatical and non-sense, imagine 100 years ago, in a conservative society, this kind of art often regard as abnormal or evil.

Besides that, Barcelona got more. This city is the most beautiful city I’ve ever visited. Just grab your camera and randomly take photos, we will find that you won’t be able to delete any of them.

Even if you pose like this.

There were some famous artist from Spain, for example Picasso or Dali. We spent 1.5 hour in the museum of Dali, and it was like a fantasy world. Just like the theme in his paintings.

 

The night was also awesome.
We spent the first night in clubbing, I mentioned in the last post. And the second night was having fruit wine in La Rambla street, seeing everyone walking here and there, sipping the most expensive wine I ever had(15E each). And we went home by foot, walked all around the city in the midnight.

 

The third night was leading by Jura, or Nurji. The couple was nice enough to wait us in the cold windy night and took us to a great local bar to grab our supper. I’ve always enjoy talking to both of them, can’t tell the specific reason, but in Chinese it will be “Serendipity.”

Then we tried to find a nice club, but failed. Since most of us got drunk on the street, after 2 hours of non-objective searching, we took a cab to home.

I remember I wanted to ride the Lion…