Last day; again more wine

 Saturday, November 15, 2025

When we left you yesterday we were headed out to find a nice french restaurant.  We ended up eating Italian. Let us explain.  As you all know Lynda is having some mobility and fatigue issues.  We ended up having to walk farther then Tim thought to find a restaurant.  We went by several nice looking bars and a pizza shop before finding a restautant.  Lynda said enough walking, lets eat here. It turned out to be reasonably busy, always a good sign, and it had a nice local restaurant feel.  The final plus was the food was good and it was nice to eat off the ship anyway.

Saturday morning was our last excusion.  It was another vineyard but in a totally different area southeast of Bordeaux. This wine maker was famous for his sweet white wines, mostly sauternes, French dessert wines. There was one unusual  discovery we made from all the other vineyards we visited.  This appellation was located near the confluence of two rivers, one of which was consistently cool water and the other warm water.  The result of this was that in August, as the grapes were finishing ripening, there was fog over the vineyards every morning.  This resulted in a good fungus that damaged part of the grapes on each vine. These damaged grapes remained on each bunch of grapes harvested and resulted in a characteristic taste that made sauternes distinct from other white wines It also added more sugar to the wine.  We tasted three different vintages from the same grapes. The nose (smell), color and taste was different in each.  The youngest wine was a pale yellow, the next oldest almost orange and the oldest almost brown.  They were also sweeter the older they were.

Saturday evening we enjoyed a bittersweet meal with two other couples we had become friends with on the cruise. In an unusual coincidence, one of the other wives was also named Lynda Carol, causing some confusion all week.  And, fittingly, our final meal featured Coq au vin, a very traditional dish of whole chicken cooked slowly for hours in red wine. It was delicious.by 

Sunday  was a long day of travel.  We flew from Bordeaux to Paris to London to Detroit. We had a 6:00 reservation on the Michigan Flyer bus from Detroit Metro to East Lansing. We arrived early enough in Detroit we thought we might be able to catch the 5:00 bus. Then disaster struck. The plane pulled up to the gate but neither of the jetways worked. After setting at the gate for an hour our plane moved to a new gate. Now we were scrambling to make our 6:00 bus. Fortunately we made it. It's Monday as we write this blog posting.  We are both tired after a strenuous day of travel but still have great memories of our time in Spain and France.