After our very pleasant visit at Haut Brion, Naomie invited us to stop by La Mission, which we did. Another lovely estate. From there, we decided to drive the 45 minutes west to the ocean and have lunch on the beach at Archaron. The drive took longer than we thought because of road work, but we enjoyed the charming seaside town with its colored houses of white and red stone. Wandering along the beach boardwalk, we found a café and purchased sandwiches and sparkling water and sat on a beach to watch the waves. It was around 70F with a slight breeze, but there were people sunbathing and jumping in the water.
As our next appointment was in Sauternes, we decided to take a back road, but got lost several times and nearly ran out of gas. We tried to buy gas at several gas stations, but none would take VISA credit cards. People told us we needed a blue card? There were no attendants to give cash, so finally in desperation at the 3rd station – which was at a Carrefour, and they refused to take cash until 2pm! – we begged a nice old man to use his blue card to buy us $20E worth of gas and we paid him in cash so we could make it to Sauternes.