Authored by Christina Watt

As we drove along in the “mystery beast” throughout Bordeaux (more on that in a minute), Bob couldn’t help but notice a couple of spectacular cars that we had to stop and admire.  His dad used to race cars like these when he was growing up, so he can never resist taking a good look.  I suspect you’ll admire them too.

In the village of Bages:

In the town of St. Emillion:

At Les Sources de Caudalie:

Even these guys made us smile in Sauternes:

But what didn’t make us smile?  Our rental car.  We had reserved a Mercedes, since we figured we’d be spending a lot of time in the car (and an automatic, so I could also drive it if need be), but missed the fine, fine print (Mercedes “or like model”). When we arrived, of course, there was no Mercedes to be found at Europecar, and more disturbingly, no automatics either.  (Yup, I’m mentioning them by name.)  Instead, we got the closest possible thing they could find for us.  A manual BMW, which in theory, would have been just fine.  IF it hadn’t been missing the emblems on both the front AND the back of the car, and had been an automatic.

Yup, you have to be pretty cool to drive the mystery beast – they don’t let just anyone behind the wheel of this baby…!