Friday we decided to "chillax" and do some wine tasting because we are intimidated by French wine. First we had to go into Uzes to get our camera battery charged (poor Ryan left the charger at home so we paid 7 euros to have the camera shop charge the battery) and stopped off at the little shop for me to buy another pair of warm knee socks. Then we headed off to drink wine. We hit one winery right in the town and then headed out before realizing that it was now noon and everything is closed until 1400. So, we went back to Mas Laurent, had some wine and lunch and watched some Sopranos (we are making our way through the final season).
After picking up the camera battery we headed out into the countryside to sample some Duchy D'Uzes wine (a special region surrounding Uzes). The production and labeling of wine in France is very complicated. In this region the white wines are chardonnay or viognier and the rose and red are blends of syrah, grenache, cab sav, cab franc, merlot. They are mostly very light on the tannins which we enjoyed. The best part of the whole thing was the chance to speak a little French in a relaxed atmosphere and I actually did pretty well. There was one winery in particular where the lady had very good enunciation - she spoke very quickly but I was able to understand her. It was a good time. We ended up buying 8 bottles of wine because they were only like 3-6 euros each (you know how Ryan loves a bargain) and Ryan even bought a magnum because it was only 19 euors ($24).
That night it was simple pizza for dinner with more wine and then more Sopranos before tuck in. Saturday was another travel day. Our GPS decided to stop working (that sucks) so we got lost trying to get back to the train station in Nimes. I was so worried that we would miss our train. Turning the car in was a breeze so we made it in time only to discover that the strike had delayed our train by 30 minutes. We were also the last stop on the line before Paris so the train was packed. I forced Ryan to find our assigned seats and there was already a family sitting there so we stood leaning against a luggage rack for the entire 3 hours. We used the I pad to watch more Sopranos and Ryan made friends with this very outgoing 7 year old girl who kept looking over the seat at him. Her mother fell asleep and she actually became a little obnoxious at some points but then eventually began to bother the high school age boy sitting across the aisle from her.
Funniest moment of the day occured about halfway through that train ride. I told you that Ryan and I were standing by a luggage rack. Well, we were actually alternating between standing, crouching and leaning against the luggage and sitting on the floor. At one point he reached back to tuck in his shirt when he realized that it was all wet in one spot and the top of his jeans was wet too. There was a bit of a perfume odor in the air and it became apparent that he had activated something aerosol in someone's bag that he was leaning against! Oops! He ran off to the bathroom to wash his hands with a good 5 inch area of wetness on his lower back - I have tears running down my face now just remembering.
We hit Paris at the Lyon station and had to find our way across the Seine in the rain to get to Austerlitz station where we realized that we had missed our train to Blois by about 10 minutes (due to the delay in the other train). I thought that trains went pretty frequently along this route but instead of getting a 1337 train, we were delayed until 1548. That meant that we got in to Blois at 1727 and the car rental place closed at 1700. We wandered around the station a little in the cold and rain before we decided just to take a taxi to our chambres d'hotes. With tomorrow being Sunday, I don't think we're going to get a car at all. So, we've come to the Loire but won't actually be seeing any chateaux (except the one in Downtown Blois) - shuttles run to them during the summer but not during this season and not on Sundays. Oh what fun this strike is...
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