Characters II

More characters from our trip (in no particular order)

Big Nose Man
This was the nickname we bestowed upon the Old Frenchman who led the tour of Musee de Olivier in Nyons. He looked like he had spent many years enjoying the wines of the region and may even have a natural knack for Truffle hunting. The first question he asked Anthony was "you have only one wife?" (in French, of course, as he spoke very little English). He kept joking with us throughout the tour (or at least, this is what we thought since we could understand only a little bit of what he said and he would make motions and laugh every so often as if he had just said the funniest thing). He also seemed to get upset if we moved towards the wrong station too soon (even though a couple of times I was moving to get a better view of something or to read the descriptions in English). At the end of his tour in French, we went around the small exhibits again with our English handout and suddenly, a lot of his hand motions and what we thought were jokes made sense.



Missed the Boat Lady
This nickname pretty much gives away the end of the story, but I'll tell it anyway. In Cognac, we took a tour of the Hennessy distillery. Part of the tour was on the other side of the river, and we had to take a small electric riverboat ride to get to the other side. On the other side of the river, we began the guided tour which began in an exhibit room and was led by a tourguide. The group was made up of mostly senior citizens on an excursion from their Princess Cruise. In fact, besides our group of 4, there was only one other young couple who were not part of the cruise. After we left the first exhibit and entered the cellar (before which we were told to stay with the group, so we wouldn't get lost), one of the younger women from the Cruise excursion wandered off looking for a bathroom. We had noticed from the beginning of the tour that she had a sour expression on her face and didn't look too thrilled to be there. Apparantly, as we were following our tourguide through the cellar, the doors to the highly secured rooms were closing behind us. When we got to the end of the tour, we boarded the boat to go back to the other side, and the tourguide asked if everyone was accounted for, at which point, some of the other Seniors from the cruise said "Where's Lola?" We waited for a few minutes and then left without her. She eventually showed up at the end of the tasting, which was in the store where we bought our tour tickets. We overheard her telling her friends that she had to go to the bathroom and went looking for one, but couldn't find one (surprise) and when she tried to catch up with the group, all the doors had closed and locked. She eventually found her way out and walked all the way up to the bridge to cross the river and back to the main store. I hope Lola learned her lesson and doesn't miss another boat!




Mr. Elbows
Well, we didn't run into Butt Babe again in Carcassone, but the Farmers did see another familiar face. On their flight from Seattle to Paris, Erica had the privelege of sitting next to Mr. Elbows, a man who apparently had more elbows than the average person and manage to continually jab her with them during the long non-stop flight. Mr. Elbows and his wife were in Carcassone. We didn't get the pleasure of meeting them personally, but it was funny to run into another pair of tourists in a town hundreds of miles from Paris, who happened to be not only on the same flight as the Farmers, but in neighboring seats! Let's hope Mr. Elbows doesn't sit next to the Farmers on the way home!