St Emilion and Fireworks

After our now traditional over-eating of breakfast croissants, all 30 of us headed to St Emilion for the day, playing "Spot the Chateau" from the cars.  We parked just outside of this very popular tourist town and walked in past the vineyards, with our little street urchins helping themselves to grapes along the way.  We had a lovely time wandering the tiny and sometimes steep cobble-stoned streets, though the kids were a bit put out we were in family groups today and they weren't mixed in with their cousins. This meant they were separated for about 15 mins at a time because it's such a small town, and there are 30 of us, so we ran into someone around almost every corner. After lunch in the main square, we booked into a tour to see the underground church of St Emilion -38m x 20m with 11m ceilings - the largest underground church in Europe! We saw the underground cave where St Emilion was said to live, which had a fertility chair - supposedly if you sit on this chair and pray to St Emilion, you will be pregnant within a month.  Aunty Katie rushed to sit on it (to help Anna and Xavier with a new sibling), while the rest of us gave it a wide, wide berth (no pun intended, ha!). We also saw the catacombs, which freaked Alice out more than a little, and to finish the day we climbed the bell tower above ground - 200 steps, to have a spectacular view over St Emilion, the Chateaux and the surrounding vineyards - just beautiful. We also hope it helped to justify the pile of cheese we ate on returning home. 

I should also say the fireworks were a big hit - as all of the directions were in French, the chief pyromaniac, Damian, suffered a bit of smoke inhalation and a few dud ones, but once we worked out how to light them properly, they were fabulous, noisy, and lots of fun for the kids - a real highlight of this week!!