Saint-Emilion

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Location: Saint-Émilion, France

We found a great hostel in Bordeaux. It was very clean and modern: lots of glass, sharp angles, and bright solid accent colors. It would have been easy to confuse with a Google office building.

A handful of people at the hostel wanted to go to Saint-Émilion. We hadn't heard of it, but we didn't have any other plans, so we went with them. It was about an hour away via public transportation.

The group consisted of a German man in his mid-20s, a few young women from different countries, and us. The German was about 6'5, with wavy black hair and an athletic build. The women arranged themselves in a circle around the German at all times. We tried to interact with the rest of the group a few times; our attempts were politely rebuffed.

Saint-Émilion is a tiny village that's thousands of years old. Basically all it's ever done is produce wine. All the buildings are the same color, with the same beige limestone construction and the same darker-beige tile roofs. The village is surrounded by vineyards as far as the eye can see. Regardless of where you are in the village, you can look in any direction and the view looks like a postcard.

There's a wine shop on every street corner. Well, several, probably. The wines are all very cheap by American standards, but we did discover shelves of ridiculously expensive boutique waters. We found one bottle of water that cost 76 euros. We decided to buy wine instead. The shops had cardboard carriers that could hold six bottles of wine each. We filled up one carrier for less than the price of a bottle of water.

Anybody who likes wine should go to Saint-Émilion, and every time I buy wine, I check to see if the store has a wine from Saint-Émilion.

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