Last Sunday, I went to Saint-Émilion for the afternoon with three of my friends from EAP. Saint-Émilion is a small town in the wine country around Bordeaux, only about 40 minutes away by train. Tourists basically go there to go wine tasting, see some vineyards, and then go wine tasting a couple more times. But it's also a cute old French town, even if you're not so into wine.
I actually stayed awake on the train for once, and the scenery on the way there was really pretty. The train station in Saint-Émilion is literally in the middle of a bunch of vineyards, and you have to walk by a lot of them to get to the main part of the town. The rows of grape vines go on forever, and there are all these old châteaus and winding dirt paths; it's very hard to not stop every ten steps and take another photo!The main part of Saint-Émilion is very pretty too. It's pretty small, but all the buildings are all that cool old stone, and the streets are cobblestone and winding and narrow. There are a lot of little shops and cafés. The town is a little tourist-y, but it seemed like it was less obviously tourist-y than places like Carcassonne; it was a little quieter and more quaint. Also, I didn't see a single Renaissance fair.
However, after some confusion about the store-front pricing of "Saint-Émilion macarons" versus the pricing on the actual cases of rainbow macarons (mysteriously labeled "Parisian macarons"), we realized that Saint-Émilion macarons are actually totally different from those cool rainbow ones! For one, they are not even colored; they're just beige. And they're not sandwich cookies!! Just one thin, flat cookie. (See someone else's photo here.) What! How are these considered to be the same type of pastry! Anyways, two different stores gave us samples of the Saint-Émilion variety, so we decided we had expereinced those enough, and we bought the rainbow kind anyways. The Saint-Émilion ones were good; they taste kind of like angel food cake but more almond-y, but they're just weren't as exciting. I mean, just LOOK at the rainbow ones!!
Three of us split a box of 12, so we all got four macarons. We probably spent 20 minutes photographing them before we actually started eating them! Then we picked in rounds which ones we wanted. Thank God, I did not get stuck with that black licorice one in the corner. I had raspberry, chocolate hazelnut, blackberry, and apricot flavors. MAGIC. They are SO GOOD. The little cookie parts taste like meringue and are crispy on the outside but soft on the inside. And the filling in the center is really sweet and tastes kind of like jam for the fruit-flavored ones. If only they weren't like 1.50 euros each... still totally worth it if you're in France!!!
After very slowly eating the macarons, we started making our way through town back to head back to the train station. Shockingly, we were leaving Saint-Émilion without tasting any wine! One of the shopkeepers must of sensed this because as we were walking by his store, he invited us to come in for a free wine tasting. Or maybe he thought it was weird that we were just standing on the street staring into his shop. (We were debating whether this 8-foot tall wine bottle inside was real or inflatable. Debate inconclusive.) Anyways, he was really nice and gave us two different kinds of red wine to taste. Even though I'm not a huge fan of wine, I did like the first one. The second one was good too, but after a whole glass, I was like oh geeze, must finish to be polite. Then we had to kind of awkwardly hurry out of there without buying anything because our train was going to leave soon. I think he got a lot of business from some of the other people there tasting wine though...We got back to Bordeaux in time for dinner with our host families. Even though it was short, I really liked this trip because Saint-Émilion was so pretty and French-y. And those macarons!!!!! Unbeatable!!
À bientôt!
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