About that cooking school...........

Jacques Pepin and Hubert Keller and other TV cook stars can chop up stuff watching somewhere else besides where the knife blade is located. We are not Jacques nor Hubert but we need to keep our eyes on the ball (knife) ALL the time. Swiss chard fritters don't taste that good.......

Speaking of food (fud) and McDonalds - they have gone very serious about ordering your Big Macs - it's done at a kiosk and after you decide how to pay they BRING it to you. Yesterday at the Bordeaux train station we needed an English translator to find the location of the car rental return - it took 3 tries before a charming lady helped us. I spoke with 3 McDonalds people getting my fud, each of whom responded to my turgid French in English to help out the dumb ass tourist. That's in Agen, a town of maybe 35,000.

And still speaking of food - this is Bacon. He's a loud, proud son of Agen who lives in the cooking school. He's BIG, probably 200 pounds of lovable lummox who guards the place during and after school.  A very big pussycat of a dog

Wednesday was our big driving day. I wanted to see the great Bordeaux grape region, the famous Pauillac, Pommerol, Medoc wine country. Much like Napa and Sonoma without any hills or mountains surrounding it. We went all the way to the most northern part of the Bordeaux peninsula - think top of Pt. Reyes and Tomales Bay. We took the ferry across to Royan and then skirted the edge of Cognac country on the way home.