France, Oh the food!

We landed in Paris and promptly drove to the Normandy coast town of Bayeux.

I was offered a Toyota Prius hybrid/electric car from Hertz so we accepted it thinking it would be fun. In fact, the Prius is basically very gutless and more like driving toy than a real car.... BUT - It did have "Sally Traffic" the built in talking GPS road map. We came to love Sally. It was liberating to drive knowing sally at least knew where we were. Unlike every other country we went to, we never got lost in France. I personally dont reccommend you buy a Prius, we got better mileage from the Peurgot 207 in Italy, BUT do bring a GPS to Europe.

Normandy was the scene of some of the biggest battles of the 2nd world war and the Normandy coast is where 2 million US, Canadian and British troops landed to confront the German army that had occupied France 4 years earlier.

If you are a travelling Churchill fellow and you want to be made welcome, go to Normandy. Our B&B was just off Sir Winston Churchill Boulevard, next to Eisenhower Blvd. They love Sir Winston here. Our hostess was insistent she make our appointments for us and made special mention of Winston Churchill when making the appointments.

In short - we were made very very welcome. Because we were fellows, but also as the French were very nice in general.

We came to Normandy to learn about Apple cider production - a precursor to vinegar making. We visited a very small and a very very large cider producer. The large producer doesn't take guests but opened their doors to us and gave us many hours of their time. We even got to meet and be part of their quarterly government inspection and meet with the inspector. Very enlightening!

We left Normandy for the Loire valley and the city of Orleans. The town of Orleans gives it name to the method of converting wine to vinegar in barrels... The Orleans process. The warm and hearty welcome of the french people had only one blemish, the vinegar maker "Martin Porret" in Orleans. We had emailed many times, phoned and spoke to them, even had our fantastic B&B hostess call them for us in french (We heard her mentioning Sir Winston and how bad an impression of the french they were giving) but they still insisted in not seeing us.... So we went there anyway! No address, just the street name so we drove down with the windows open literally "Driving by smell" till we found the place. No one home so we left. Only ONLY disappointment of the trip and it was on the last Day no less!

We are no in Singapore at the airport as I write this. I have to go back to work tomorrow which will be hard after 6 weeks on no cooking, washing, cleaning, making school lunches etc...

This week we will put 2 more posts. ONE will be some select photos, the other will be our best and worst summary.

Thanks for reading the blog, I hope it was fun for you, I know it was fun for us.

Ian and Robyn Henderson
Churchill Fellow 2006 - Vinegar Making

Jerez Spain and the bullfights

The world of vinegar continues to amaze us.

In Jerez (Pronounced "Herethhh" - I think.) We met the incredible people and facility of Exvina. They make the El Majeulo brand of Sherry vinegars. Christina and Joaquin were our hosts and a meeting we thought might take and hour or so took over 5 hours and included a great local lunch. We sampled Sherry vinegars from all over their Bodega at various ages, and various styles. They even have a very sophisticated elaboration area and make a lot of vinegar for a lot of people. It was truly awe inspiring, especially when, like most of the other vinegar makers we meet, they have not been commercially making vinegar for that long. Wow.

We did the obligatory Flaminco dance dinner show in Jerez, and drove to Sevilla for our flight home. Robyn insisted we see a bullfight, even though I tried to explain what happened to the bull. She absolutely insisted, so we went, saw the bull fight (not much of a fight really), drank a beer and left early.

All in all, 7 days in Spain and 1600Km of driving but Spain was well worth the visit.. We loved the people we met, loved the vinegars and the people and sights were great. We were upgraded in our rental car to a Peugeot 407 all leather version. Whats a car, no way I could afford one of those.

Thanks Spain!