Fast Tour of 5 cities

It,s been a few days since we were last able to update this site. We have been busy exploring France through many provinces or Departmentes and finding an I cafe in some smaller areas has proved to be too difficult.

Since we last updated we had just arrived in La Rochelle a sea side town on the west coast of France on the Atlantic Ocean. We found accommodation for two nights in the Centre Ville close to where the tourist sights were and the night life as well. So having decided to rest for a few days we set about discovering this port town. Firstly as with most places we have visited the town had a long and tumultuous history of conflict, invasion as well as pirates just to spice it up a bit. It also had a beautiful natural harbour and a reputation for so many cafes and bistrots that you could eat out for 365 days and never eat in the same place, so as you can imagine we were spoiled for choice.

We began by visiting the towers La Rochelle has 3, the Chaine Tour, the Lanterne Tour and the St Nicholas Tour. We went into the last one because not only did it have amazing views over the town and surrounding area but it also had fully preserved graffiti from the past 400 years during which it held various prisoners. Privateers or pirates, soldiers that had been captured and also the Hugenots.

This town has a long history of Resistance and during the time when France was controlled by the monarchy and the church the town was home to a large protestant community who resisted the rule of the crown and the Catholic church and refused to pay taxes. Eventually the towns people were starved into submission with the population going from over 20000 to just 1500 in 15 months. Anyway enough with the history lesson, the tower was amazing and contained fully preserved writings and sculptors 500 separate pieces in total. It was fascinating and we have the pictures of the scenery to bore you with on our return......

After La Rochelle we travelled SE to Bordeaux, I had been keen to sample the local produce of the grape variety from as many parts of France as possible.

We started by going to a small village out of Bordeaux called Saint Emilion, again this town has an amazing history and we were fortunate enough to go on an english speaking tour of the main sites. The town is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site so we knew we were in for some serious stuff. Again another climb up the bell tower this time 199 steps each way but the view was wonderful and before you wonder we have still more photos..... I won,t describe what we saw on out tour only to say it dates back over 800 to 1000 years and was gob smackingly good.

Mind you dont stop for lunch in this town because an omelet, a couple of lamb chops and a glass of vin rouge each cost the equivalent of $130NZ. After checking out local accommodation and prices we decided to head back to Bordeaux for the night, but you know what they say about the best laid plans and after stopping and having a beer in Bordeaux we discovered that due to a large congress in town there were no rooms to be had! So at 6pm we hit the road again and headed fro Toulouse. That,s the next update though. We are having an amazing time it is by far exceeding any expectations that either of us had before setting out.