DAY 8 - 18.6.2006

The first night in a car didn´t went so well for our new travel companion:) Well, neither did we get the best possible sleep, but we have gotten used to it. We had slept in a gas station. It was our first night in service station and it was quiter than I thought it would be. We tried to get out of the main road, but once you got out, you had to pay a toll for using the main road. So we didn´t want to pay extra because we weren´t sure how the toll is determined. Anyways, France was the first country where there were tolls on highways. Our travel guide said that you won´t get cheaper traveling with a car than a train unless there´s at least three persons in the car. The tolls were quite expensive. But at least now we had third person with us to share the toll.

Next big city in our list was Bordeaux. Some helpful HC member in Bordeaux had told us that there´s a famous medieval wine town near Bordeaux. That place is called Saint Emilion and it´s one of the biggest wine producers. The same place was also mentioned in our travel guides so we searched it from our roadmap. It seemed to locate before Bordeaux so we decided to visit that place first. It was a bit hard to find the town, but after using my excellent French skills we found it.

Saint Emilion is absolutely charming! It really looked like a medieval town. All the buildings were very old. And the town was surrounded by vineyards as far as could be seen. At the main area, all those vineyards had a little tent where they presented their wines. With 2 euros you could buy a wine glass and walk around those tents tasting wine as much as you wanted. Me and Arttu took it quite easy because we had to drive but our little japanese friend took a bit too much wine for her size;)

We were lucky because this day was the last day when there was a festival. It was some medieval festival and people were dressed according to it and playing funny music. We didn´t stay there to see the whole show because we still wanted to see Bordeaux and two HC members there.

After a short drive we were at Bordeaux city centre. We met Sandra and Louise there and went for an ice cream. Bordeaux is one of the prettiest city we have seen so far. It is quite old and every building there is light brown so it seems like it´s carved from one big stone:) After saying goodbyes to our friends in Bordeaux, we tried to find some place to eat. It was a bit difficult because it was sunday evening. But after a little walk we came to this World Cup area where there were different restaurants offering food while televisions were tuned for the Brazil - Australia game. As I had never eaten japanese food and we had a good expert of japanese cuisine with us, we decided to go to the little japanese outdoor restaurant. Setsuko explained us what each food was made of. I myself ordered one piece of Sushi and Maki and surprise surprise... the same miracle that was in Germany happened again, I loved that food! Well, love is a strong word but it was very good. Thanks to Setsuko, now I have the courage to go to a japanese restaurant in Finland.

After Brazil had beaten Australia, we head to our car and south towards Spain.