The Traveling Princess

Sept 10:

· We learned more about wine making at our chateau-winery. The “big machine” showed up at 5:30am to crush their sauvignon grapes. The machine looked a bit like a concrete truck but was pulled by a tractor. The machine spins the grapes around and smushes them at the same time. The juice drops into a big tub at the bottom of the machine and then is siphoned out. The left over grapes come out via a conveyor belt and are dumped into a big wagon. Be sure to notice the tractor if you are a Clarkson Farms fan. It turns out Lamborghini tractors do exist. We think the left-over grape skins turn into a sort of compost, but it was challenging to figure that out from French.

This machine crushes the grapes with a smoosher inside of it (we had to use my poor French knowledge and a lot of hand motions to understand this - we have no idea what the official names of these machines or processes are). Then the left over skins come out the conveyor belt on the back end. The juice gets siphoned into a big vat, depending on what its future use will be. White grape juice goes in the white tanks behind the crushing machine. If the juice gets turned into wine, they either go into barrels (making it a more expensive wine) or into concrete tanks (making it more of a table wine). I didn’t realize that many wineries use concrete vats now as they are breathable, stay cool, cost less than wooden barrels and are better for the environment. Most Bordeaux wines go into concrete tanks. Clarkson Farms fans: notice the brand of tractor here…

· Speaking of French, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how many words I see and know. My many years of high school and college French finally got used. I still can’t understand most of what they say as they speak way too fast and only pronounce the first half of the words. But, I was able to read many words. And, I know a few of you are asking, how did the Meta glasses work – did the Live Translation help? The answer was no – the French just speak to fast for anyone except other French people. Meta also told me the speaker was too fast to translate. Maybe I’ll have better luck in Spain??

· Despite our last campground being idyllic – the chateau and the grapes and wine, we got a bit tired of the rain. We had a couple days in a row of rain. We thought we could duck out between showers for a bit of site-seeing.

· We visited the smallest village in all of France – just 1.7 hectares which is a bit bigger than 4 acres. It was a medieval town with a wall around it. Oddly, it was more like visiting a ghost town than a tourist attraction. We saw 2 men when we rode our little motorcycle into town. They took one look at us and left. All the stores were closed, the tea salon was closed and most businesses looked like they hadn’t been open for years and years. The buildings were a mess – no regular maintenance done. The shutters were all rotting, the doors were rotting, the weeds were overgrown everywhere. We finally ran into a family from the UK also visiting. They had heard there was a “big” pottery festival taking place this weekend. Well, the dinky pottery store was closed. After the British guy yelling “hello” for a minute, eventually a guy appeared and told us he’d been chopping wood, but could open the pottery store and the tea salon. We glanced around the pottery store, but it was so small, we didn’t find anything of interest. So, away we went to the grocery store, in the real town 15 minutes away which is becoming a daily habit. More about this below.

· So, we got rained on after the grocery store on the way back to the RV. Then, when we planned to go eat dinner out, based on the radar and weather forecast, we found out that the weather people are worse here than most places. We got soaking wet on the motorcycle going to dinner and also going home. And, since its been in the 50’s at night here, it was not pleasant. Anyway, after all this rain and cold, we decided to leave a day early to find the sun and warmth – Spain, here we come.

· But before I tell you about Spain, did I tell you about our motorcycle? It is a Honda Dax which looks a bit vintage-y. It is the only motorcycle that doesn’t need charging (yes, I insisted on gasoline) and that also fit in our baby “garage” Our garage door is about 80 centimeters high and the motorcycle is about 85 centimeters. We have to take the mirrors off the motorcycle to store it away. And, we have to lean it a bit sideways to fit in the opening. But it does fit. And, both of us fit on it. Most people see it and are surprised that we both fit on it. Not sure what that says about us or the motorcycle.

· We hadn’t needed a reservation in any of the places we’ve stayed in Germany or France. But it turns out that schools in Spain start Monday next week vs Germans and French kids already went back to school last week. So, a reservation was necessary, but we didn’t know that until we showed up at multiple campgrounds to be told they were full. One very helpful guy told us that in Spain, most towns have an RV parking lot that can be used. It doesn’t have electricity hookups, but the one we stayed in had water refills. We had enough electricity stored that we were able to make it through the night on our electric reserve.

· A few words about RVing:

o Our RV fridge is very small, so it doesn’t allow for stocking up. We’ve been eating a lot of sandwich stuff when we eat in the RV. Marcus loves bread, meat and cheese so he is in heaven. But because we haven’t yet gotten into a rhythm, we seem to find ourselves going to the grocery store every day. We parked next to a Lidl so found everything we needed.

o I figured you might need a bit of humor about now. In case you haven’t been camping in an RV, there is a miniscule bathroom. Ours has a sink and toilet in it. There is also a shower but it is separate. The toilet has to be raised somewhat because of the black-water storage tank under it. That isn’t a problem for most things. But, I did take a shower this week in the RV. The shower is 22 inches by 32 inches. I was quite proud that I figured out how to shave my legs in there. Quite a feat! But back to the raised bathroom. There is approximately a 9 inch step up into the bathroom. The only electrical outlet in the back half of the camper is in the bathroom. That is also where the mirror is. So, if I want to dry my hair, that is the best place. But, I found out that if the hairdryer with the attachment for curly hair held above my head hits the ceiling (the ceiling isn’t raised – only the floor). So, either I keep bumping my head with the hair dryer, or I step down out of the bathroom to dry my hair. But I really like to look at my hair when I dry it. So, hair drying has become an aerobic sport – step up, step down, step up, step down…. I guess that’s one way to work off all the bread we are eating!

o And, one last funny story about camping. It turns out that while every campground has public bathrooms, they aren’t all equal. When we arrived in our French chateau, we were the only campers there. I needed to go, to the restroom (or “toilet” in French) so I set off to find the public one and see how it was. It was extremely clean so I figured I’d try it out. But, I realized much too late that this was a bring-your-own toilet paper place. So, there I sat, dripping and wondering what to do. Since we were the only campers, I ended up duck walking to the door and yelling extremely loudly for Marcus. By the tone of my voice, he knew something was very wrong. He nearly fell down laughing when I asked him to please bring some toilet paper. It was fine in the end, but was a very important lesson learned (not to mention perhaps TMI for a blog, but I’m hoping you learn this less better than I did). Or, at the very least, you are laughing your tail off about now. 😊

· So, we’ve moved to a 3 night stay at our next campground (with the reservation). We were hoping to stay outside of San Sebastian, but everything was fully booked. So, we are the next town over, called Zarautz. You can see from the pics, it is stunning. Our campground overlooks the sea on one side and a grape fields on the other side.