Clos des Crazies

I have lost track of the days, but a couple of days ago, we left the lovely Chateau Biac to move to the Saint Emilion region of Bordeaux, and to stay at a bed and breakfast called Clos des Saveurs, in a little town called Gensac.

The b & b stands at the end of a long narrow drive, and was purchased two years ago by an English couple who used to run a restaurant in London. To say they were odd is a bit of an understatement. It's hard to describe the oddness, but trust me, it was there.

The woman had flaming dyed purple-red hair, and she is one of those slow-talking-starers. I'm not sure if you know what I'm talking about, but she stared at us relentlessly while we were talking, with a strangely judgmental look on her face. Then, it would take her longer than it should have to respond.

It sort of felt like words went into her ears, then found their way to her brain, she deciphered what you'd said, judged it harshly, said several nasty things in response (internally), decided she couldn't say those things, and came up with something else.

And there was nothing actually wrong with her, so it's not like I'm being mean to a slow person, she was just odd.

She also looked at my boobs a lot. Every woman out there will know what I'm talking about when I mention the face-to-boob eye-flick that all men do: where they look at your eyes for a bit, and then periodically, glance down at your bosom and then back up to your eyes.

To all the men out there: we see you. You're not as fast as you think you are, and we always know when you have looked at our bosoms. Always. We just don't say anything.

Anyway, she kept doing that to me. It might have been because she was very short, and basically my chest was right at eye-level, but still, it made me uncomfortable.

Anyway, we went into Saint Emilion, wondering if we had made a mistake coming to stay with them, and worrying that I was going to wake up in the middle of the night to find her standing over me, all crazy-eyed, hair on fire, eyes fixed on my twin peaks.

Saint Emilion (also pictured above) is an absolutely beautiful town, complete with cobbled streets, church, and shops. Wine shops, hundreds of them. I would say that 85% of the shops in this town were wine shops, completely devoted to Bordeaux area wines. It was fantastic. But alas, pricey, and since we are traveling in a heat wave with no fridge, now is not the time to buy wine.

Upon our return to the no-tell motel, we actually had a wonderful evening.

Well, first, Steve went for a swim in the pool and set an alarm off. Apparently, to prevent children drowning in pools, it is French law that pools be equipped with motion sensor alarms that produce a prison-camp screech whenever anyone goes in the pool.

The man who runs the hotel with crazy lady, seemed very perplexed by the notion that Steve had gone swimming, despite the fact that it was 6,000 degrees outside and that he had only a few hours earlier been going on to Steve about the pool and how it had just been cleaned and how nice it was, etc.

Anyway, since the owners had previously been restauranteurs, one of the special things they offer is a three-course meal, cooked by them for you alone. We sat outside in the garden, and the he-owner put the television out the window so we could watch the World-Cup final, which was quite fun.

The meal, I must say, was wonderful. It started with slices of Serrano ham, duck, and crevettes, beautiful fresh bread and house-marinated olives with garlic and rosemary. That was followed by a cold melon soup shot-glass. Then onto the main: sea bass on top of a bed of ratatouille in a seafood stock, salad and roast potatoes. And a bottle of white wine. Dessert was ice cream, trifle and a key lime pie with a creme-brulee sugar crust. Honestly, I could hardly eat any dessert because I was so full, but it was really an extraordinary meal.

Then came the night. It was boiling, absolutely stifling, and we couldn't open the windows because of the mosquitoes. On top of this, poor Steve was too tall for the bed, and with the footboard firmly in place, he couldn't put his legs straight without hanging over the side of the bed.

I haven't mentioned this yet, but the hotel has only four rooms and we were the only people in the place. All of the other rooms were open, and we seriously debated just sleeping in another room, but we decided to suffer through.

In the morning, Steve told the woman that he couldn't sleep because of the footboard, and asked if we could move to another room. She said we could but would have to pay more. Steve replied that he didn't want to pay, he just wanted to sleep.

She then informed us that we could pay or leave. So....we left. Not before she informed us that many tall people had slept in that bed and not had a problem; she informed us of this fact about 17 times. She also said that she couldn't move beds from one room to another, though neither Steve nor I had EVER suggested that. When Steve went to pull the car up to the front door so we could pack up all our luggage, she ran outside, hair flying. I think she thought we were about to do a runner.

I also think she thought we were trying to scam her out of a nicer room. I also think she was....nuts.

Anyway, we packed up and left.