Stinky Cheese

June 12^th –

It was another early morning leaving the hotel room and an even longer car ride. Hervé and Katia met us at the hotel, and we followed them to Roquefort, where we were going to look at cheese caves. For those of you who don’t know this already, French cheese is kind of a big deal here. I’m personally not a big fan of most of them because they are much stronger than I’m used to. I managed to squeeze in a little nap in the car on the way over there.

We first had some lunch once we got to the city. We ate salad and sausage in a Roquefort cheese sauce, which actually was pretty good. The Roquefort cheese tastes a lot like blue cheese, so I am somewhat used to that flavor. I also had the chance to try a new drink – Pastis. I just had a sip of Will’s drink. It’s really weird because it tastes exactly like black licorice. Now, black licorice isn’t my favorite taste in the world, but I can at least tolerate it. It’s nice that you can make it as strong as you want depending on how much water you add to it. After filling up on food, we made our way to the first tour.

There were signs warning people to wear warm clothes,  and it’s certainly a good thing I decided to listen to them! We have to make our way down into the cave, and it’s about 55 degrees down there. The tour guide only spoke French, but we were given a paper handout with English on it.  Another thing about a lot of French cheeses – they stink‼ We could tell when we were getting close to the cheese because there was a really bad smell in the air. I’m sure the French who are used to this kind of smell have no problem with it, but I certainly did not enjoy it. Besides the smell, though, the tour was pretty interesting. They had some cheese samples at the end, but I decided not to have any.

We decided to go on another cheese cave tour. This one was a lot more crowded, and it appeared that a school field trip was there. Again, the tour was in French, but we were given another English handout with information about the cheese caves. This tour wasn’t as long as the first one, or as interesting in my opinion. There were more cheese samples at the end, but I decided to pass again.

On our way back to Montredon, we stopped at the largest suspension bridge in the world, the Viaduc de Millau. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first saw it! It was extremely tall, and I told myself that I would never want to cross that bridge. Luckily, we were just at the bottom of the bridge, so I didn’t have to cross it. It’s amazing that they built this bridge in only three years!

After the car ride back, we went over to Hervé and Katia’s house again for dinner. We had leftovers, which I had no problem with because I was happy to eat more of the lasagna. One thing I’ve noticed about French meals is that they never end! Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit, but they do continue for a really long time. Just when I think the meal is over, they will bring out something else for us to eat. Because of that, we end up staying at their house pretty late, and I get so tired by the time we are back at the hotel. This is part of the reason why I’m slightly behind on my blog posts. Oh well, at least I’m having a good time!