Day 12 - Friday 5th May

At meals, we've been going out of our way to meet new people. This morning we sat with an Australian couple from Sydney. They had similar travel plans to us. They even plan to go to the Sarlat region.

This morning's excursion was to the Sauternes region. As you might guess, this is where Sauternes wine comes from. The area is named after the main village. Here they make sweet white wines - quite different from the rest of the Bordeaux region which makes blended red wines.

It took about 40 minutes to get there by bus from where our boat was moored at Medoc. Our main destination was the Chateau Guiraud which is yet another magnificent estate with impressive buildings.

When getting on the buses, Suzy likes to go on the bus where Isabelle is the guide. She gave us a running commentary of interesting information on the way to the chateau. As it turned out, the guide for the tour of the vineyard was another Isabelle.

The new Isabelle gave an excellent explanation of the wine making process. We went from the wine making area to the area where the wine is stored in barrels. Then she took us to a wine tasting area where we sampled two of their wines.

We don't normally drink white wines but we liked these ones - particularly the first. The second one was sweeter and might be better with cheese rather than with dinner. Suzy bought a small bottle so we could try it later.

A feature of this estate was the beautiful flowers - some growing on the walls of the mansion and others in the gardens.

On the way back to the boat, we passed through the local area. I took photos of the scenery and the chateaux from the bus. A couple of times the bus stopped at prestigious chateaux so we could get better photos. We were back at the boat at 12 noon.

The keyboard for our TV system in our room was still not working and so Suzy went to the reception desk to report the problem again. This time the chief engineer arrived promptly. Although it took him almost half an hour, he eventually fixed it. He had to try four or five keyboards before he got one that worked properly. It does not reflect well on Apple keyboards.

After another lunch in the main dining room with great food and wine, we set off on the afternoon excursion where the main destination was the Chateau Roquetaillade in the Sauternes region. This estate has been in the family for about 700 years and was built by Pope Clement.

Our guide, Sebastian, gave us an excellent tour of the property. He was very informative and very entertaining. For example, he quipped that we shouldn't ask how the family had descended from a pope.

The three main buildings on the site consisted of the old castle, the chapel and the "new" castle. We started in the chapel which has ornate decorations before taking a walk around the new castle and heading inside.

The last stop was the large kitchen on the ground level. Apparently the family uses this kitchen every day and there bedrooms are directly above the kitchen - partly so they can benefit from the warmth generated by the kitchen.

Isabelle had told us that Sebastian is in fact the Viscount but he always refers to the family in the third person as if he is just an employee. Similarly his mother, the Countess, ran the tour for the other bus load from the Scenic cruise.

Apparently the Countess was English and she married the French Count and had two sons who were both sent to school in England. They still run the estate after the father died some time ago of a heart attack.

After leaving the chateau at 4pm, we once again did a tour of nearby points of interest.

Today was cloudy and there were some light showers at the beginning of our tour this afternoon.

Depending which app you used, it was about 11C when we went to breakfast and it was forecast to reach 26C. As it turned out, it struggled to reach 20C. The breeze made it feel cooler.

Dinner was in the main dining room at 7pm. As usual, before we went down to dinner, Tania gave us a summary of tomorrow's activities.

Soon after we started dinner, the boat left the dock and headed towards Bordeaux. We were due to get there about midnight and the captain would have to manoeuver the ship under the Pont de Pierre again - but this time at night.

Tania had promised a surprise entertainer after dinner. It certainly was a surprise because it turned out to be Milenko the "hotel manager". He did a great job of singing and playing the guitar for more than half an hour. He got us all up dancing.