Chateaus & cognac

We traded in our tiny attic apartment in Paris (where I kept hitting my head on the ceiling) for a huge chateau in southwest France. Our room has sweeping ceilings, chandeliers and windows twice as tall as me.

While in China about a month ago, we were contacted by Brian and Margaret -- a British couple who now live in France and have a herd of 10 llamas (they came across our blog online). They kindly picked us up from the Angouleme train station, gave us a tour of the region in the rain and brought us to our chateau just down the street from them. We then went back to their place to play with llamas and have dinner.


The following morning we went to a small cognac house that has been family-run for eight generations. We later drove through the town of Cognac, where we saw the large manufacturers like Hennessy and Remy Martin. At the intimate place we toured, we got a family photo along an old stage coach route that ran from Paris to Bordeaux.

Next, we had lunch at a restaurant where the special of the day was cows tongue. As vegetarians, we opted for cheese omelettes and experimented a bit with trying mussels in curry sauce. We finished the meal with homemade chocolate moose!


Then it was off to see some champion show llamas at another farm before returning to Brian and Margaret's to help feed their herd.



The next day started off exciting with two llamas and a reporter from an area newspaper meeting us at the chateau for a photo shoot. As a reporter myself, it was interesting to talk with Jean-Yves Delage, a longtime teacher turned reporter for the Charente Libre.

We then loaded up the llamas and paid a visit to the town hall. We posed for photos and had coffee with the head of the local tourism department, who presented us with a bottle of pineau -- a mixture of grape juice and cognac. Joining us was yet another reporter from a different newspaper.

Two newspaper articles, meeting elected officials, what was next we thought?


After lunch, we went to another tourism office for photos with their staff before going to an underground church that was built in a cave. To finish off the day we stopped by an alpaca farm and then sipped chilled pineau before eating Spanish omelettes at dusk.