Château de Monbazillac, built in 1550.
This weekend one of the teachers I work with, Vero, invited me to spend the night at her family's house and join them for a barbecue. Vero lives about 40 minutes from Périgueux outside the town of Bergerac (which I have visited before, thanks to her). Her family lives up on a hill looking down on Bergerac and a bunch of vineyards and her address is technically Monbazillac, an area known for its wine - not unlike much of this region! But, basically, if you live up on a hill looking down on vineyards and old French towns and you live about a kilometer from an 500-year-old castle...you're doing something right.
View from the terrace at Vero's house.
Some flowers around the terrace (the photo on the left was taken in the evening and the one on the right in the morning - that explains the totally different lighting).
More views...
Vineyards!
Obviously it's a really beautiful location! It was a bit surreal actually! I went over with Vero on Friday evening and had dinner with her husband and three of her five daughters (the other two are in college in Paris). We had a nice time chatting and eating foie gras and tasting local wine and also an alcohol made from walnuts. We spoke mostly in French though Vero is half-Scottish, half-French and is bilingual, as are all of her children. Today, Saturday, company came over to celebrate Vero's husband's birthday, and they had a barbecue. Again, another example of how nice everyone has been to me here!
One of Vero's daughters, Pansy, who is 11, took me on a walk over to the castle in the afternoon. Apparently she loves walking over to the castle and always volunteers to take guests over to see it. She was a funny character, and we had a good time chatting as we walked over to the castle. She gave me lots of words to practice my French accent - she also found it hilarious when I butchered a few of the tougher ones. My French-speaking friends, there's a 90% chance you are saying the word brûler wrong, I assure you. Also, say this: turlututu chapeau pointu. IT'S NOT EASY. (You're probably saying tourloutoutou chapeau pointou.) Clearly she was giving me words with "u" in it because the French pronunciation of "u" does not exist anywhere in the English language, so it's a tough one to grasp. I've been getting people to help me with it lately cause I want to improve my accent!
Anyway, this is the walk to the château and the château itself that Pansy took me to see:
A pretty stone house we walked past as we walked over. We walked through vineyards and down some little country roads. Wow.
Vineyards next to the château. The wine that grows in Monbazillac is a sweet white wine. I tasted it once when my family was here - but I really hate sweet wine, so I didn't like it. But it's good if you like sweet wine!
Ta-da! Pretty cool castle, right? It's just a very typical French countryside castle. It's very, very cool that they live a short walk from here, right?
The old well by the castle. Pansy threw rocks into it to show me how deep it was - it was pretty deep!
Grassy area next to the castle and the view beyond (a very gorgeous view of the countryside and the town of Bergerac).
Looking back at the castle from that gazebo in the above picture.
And looking back at the castle and some of its vineyards - SO cool!
It was a nice little weekend - which isn't over quite yet! I just hung out in my apartment this evening though there is apparently a Medieval festival of some sort in Périgueux tomorrow. I have no idea what that is going to entail, though the flyers indicate food, games, and sword fights. We're going to go check it out because, hey, why not? Hopefully I'll have some funny pictures to report back with tomorrow.
I'm down to my last week of teaching and about nine days in Périgueux, which is very strange. It absolutely has not sunk in yet. I'm neither excited nor sad at the moment because I just haven't processed it yet (and then I'll be both of those things). But this week I need to figure out some of my itinerary details and start packing so I'm ready to clean next weekend. Crazy! Hopefully it won't be a difficult process!
Hopefully more tomorrow. Meaning, hopefully tomorrow I'll have pictures of corny knights.
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