"Your focus determines your reality" - Fall 2025 Travel Adventures - Update 10/17

[Dis_Yoda]

Saturday
September 20th 2025
Visit to Domaine Le Prieure Winery

At 5:30PM, we met back up with our group to head to Chateauneuf-du-Pape for our farewell event.



Our first stop was a Domaine Le Prieure Des Papes, a small winery in the region, for a discussion on wine making then a tasting.

They walked us through their production as it was in progress from the harvest. They use old fashion methods while having upgraded to some more advanced technology over the years.









From there we were led out to the terrace where we got to taste four different wines from their vineyard.







I really enjoyed all their wines; however, the pricing to purchase the wines and get them shipped were insane. With the state of tariffs as well – you may end up with an additional bill upon arrival in the US! At that point, it wasn’t worth it to spend 400+ Euros on 6 bottles of wine to get home.

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[Dis_Yoda]

Saturday
September 20th 2025
Farewell Dinner at Le Comptoir de la Mere Germaine

We headed into the central area of Chateauneuf-du-Pape for our farewell dinner. The restaurant was the bistro offshoot of a Michelin-Starred La Mere Germaine and we had to make our selections for our dinner a couple days before.

There were three tables set up for our group and we ended up seated with the younger trio we had made great friends with during the trip along with the solo older gentleman. It made for a great group for our final meal! My husband wasn’t really paying attention when the menu was being selected earlier in the week and just said he’ll have what I’m having which I guess worked out for 2 of the 3 courses.

To start, we had veal carpaccio topped with arugula and parmesan. I really enjoyed this but raw veal isn’t my husband’s cup of tea. He did really enjoy the aged parmesan at least.


Veal Carpaccio w/ Parmesan

Our main was a simple beef filet with roasted potatoes. It was a bit overcooked for my taste but I do like my beef mooing. It was nicely seasoned.


Beef Filet

To finish, it was some type of stone fruit white chocolate panna cotta. I wish I had remembered to take notes at this point in the trip! It was a nice light way to end the meal.


Panna Cotta

We headed to the bus for the last time and headed back to the hotel saying goodbye to all the temporary friends we had made over the week. We also had the awkward handing of the tip to the tour guide but he did earn that money!

Then it was off to bed as we had a viator tour booked for the morning that we needed to rest up for.​

 

[Dis_Yoda]

Sunday
September 21st 2025
Viator Winery Tour

We decided to skip breakfast this morning and eventually made our way to the lobby to meet with our taxi we had arranged with the front desk at 8AM to take us into Avignon. As it was Sunday morning, there was no traffic, so it only took about 15 minutes. This meant we had 45 minutes to kill before it was time for our Viator tour to meet at the Avignon Tourism Office. We figured it would be nice to get breakfast before we enjoyed all the wine but there wasn’t a lot open on the main street close to the Tourism Office so we ended up at McDonald’s. I had a sugar donut while my husband had an egg McMuffin. The McDonald’s didn’t have many options so we both just went with something simple.

After we ate, we headed back to the tourism office as a crowd of people were building. Different tour guides kept calling tours and names out and eventually our tour guide called for our group of 8 people. We headed to his transit van and began our way to Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

Our first stop was along a vineyard to see the stones that are in part of the AOC. This is one of the features of this wine region. The stones are remnants of ancient glacial deposits, and they absorb heat during the day and help keep the temperature consistent in the evenings. This is helpful in the northern part of the area.





We then headed to Brotte Wine Museum. We had about 30 minutes to explore all things wine from the types of wines in France, the brands the Brotte family makes, the 13 types of grapes grown in the region, equipment used in the wine making process and how their wines have been counterfeited.















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[Dis_Yoda]

From there we drove to the Chateau de Pape Jean XXII, also known as the Castle of the Pope. This was constructed in the 1300s and was where the Pope would go to get away from Avignon. It remained under the care of the church until the French Revolution when it was sold until it was deeded back to the state in the last 19th century. During WWII, the Germans took over and when they had to retreat due to Operation Dragoon – they blew up the chateau destroying the entire northern part. Only the cellar and the southern part of the keep stayed intact.







From there we headed to Bouachon for a tasting of five wines. These were some of the best wines we had tasted during the trip.
We ended up purchasing two bottles of wine here to bring home as it was more affordable than dealing with the whole shipping thing. I would say this facility was rather commercial as it was also used for cruise excursions as there was one going on while we were there. Luckily, we were a small group and had a nice quiet area for our tasting.








For the cost of this Viator tour – I felt we got a good value especially when I was trying to arrange a private tour, I either was told nothing was going to be open on Sunday or the cost was going to be over 1000 Euros. This tour was about 200 and only took 3.5 hours. After we finished up, our guide drove us back to Avignon to get dropped off near the tourism office.

At this point, it was pouring rain. It had been off and on all morning during our wine tour, but it hadn’t really affected us much but now as we left our tour guide, it definitely was! We needed lunch after having tasted 10 wines during the tour and right next to where we were dropped off was Italian Queen, a pizza chain. It was out of the rain and I never got to eat half my pizza the day before. We each ordered a pepperoni and were pleased!



After we finished, we ordered a taxi through the taxi app and headed back to the hotel.

A look at the radar made for a very lazy afternoon as it was going to be raining hard the rest of the day. My husband did go running again and we packed everything up.



One of my long time friends from here on the Disboards was in this part of France for their big vacation of the year. Here and I had been messaging and had planned on meeting up in the evening. They drove over around 6PM and we grabbed some local fast fare and proceeded to eat our meal in the bar at my hotel. We talked about our various travels around France. She had flown into Milan and had just made her way to Avignon this day. A golden staying at hotel came to say hello as they were very upset at the rain as they didn’t want to go potty.



Eventually we parted ways, and it was time for bed as 2:45AM would come quickly as we were heading home.​

 

[Dis_Yoda]

Monday
September 22nd 2025
Travel Home

2:45AM came early. We were very glad we had everything put together so we just needed to quickly get dressed so that when the bellhop got our luggage at 3AM – all would be ready.

Double checking we had everything, we headed to the lobby to check out.

Imagine my annoyance when I saw the three drinks we had ordered the evening before but never got were on our folio? Using google translate – I let them know what happened and we got it removed but I was hoping to not have to deal with that.

Our transfer van picked us up at 3:15AM and we were on our way back to Marseille. The airport didn’t open until after 4AM so we had time to arrive and get checked in on the kiosks before they were able to take our luggage. We were glad we got in the line though as it quickly grew once people realized that is what the line was for.

Security was a breeze as it was still early in the morning and we headed to our gate. Once at the gate, my husband went in search of coffee and eventually came back with a hot tea for me as I was fully sick now.

Once the stores opened up – I got another water and some candy for the flight. I wanted to make sure I stayed well hydrated with how sick I could tell I was becoming.

The flight from Marseille to Paris was uneventful. I’m pretty sure I slept through most of it as I was tired.

At Paris, Passport Control was quick, and we walked to our gate for the flight to Houston. We had a little over 2 hours until it was to take off. Once at the gate, I headed off to get some food as well as picking up some macarons to enjoy once we were home. I got a sandwich of chicken, mozzarella and pesto on a baguette and got my husband a small baguette for his breakfast as that is all he wanted.

I dropped a piece of my sandwich and made a friend.



We boarded on time and took our seats at the back of the plane. The lunch served was chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans. Not as good as the chicken on the way to Paris but still better than 2019.



The afternoon snack was a warm tomato bread which was just enough to get us by until we were home. Our flight landed a little early at 1:30PM Central Time but it took a while to get through customs as we made a bad choice of line. I did make the agent laugh when he asked if I had anything to declare and I showed him my bag of macarons. The one good thing about the slow customs was when we made it to baggage claim – our suitcases were already on the conveyor so soon we were off to home, but not after stopping to pick up Gantu & Qi’ra from the kennel. We would be picking up Gideon and Belo the next day.



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