{"id":1103,"date":"2018-11-30T19:33:12","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T19:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1103"},"modified":"2018-12-02T19:30:04","modified_gmt":"2018-12-02T19:30:04","slug":"le-somail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1103","title":{"rendered":"Le Somail"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the eastern edge of the Minervois appellation in the southwest of France, there is a small village \u2013 a hamlet really \u2013 named Le Somail.\u00a0 There are no vineyards immediately surrounding it, the nearest ones being only a few kilometers away.\u00a0 When you are visiting wineries in the general area, leave yourself some time to visit this charming spot.<\/p>\n

It has a certain Brigadoon quality, as though time had slowed down, if not stopped, in the 17th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 That\u2019s because Somail exists solely because it was at a convenient point between Toulouse and the Mediterranean Sea on the Canal du Midi<\/a>.\u00a0 It provided a stopping-off point for the boatmen and a harbor for their ships.<\/p>\n

And so there were inns built, a bridge over the canal, a chapel, a few caf\u00e9s.\u00a0 They are all there today, some of them updated for the 21st<\/sup> century of course, with the enhancements done with a dash of French \u00e9lan<\/em>. \u00a0There are many boats, called p<\/em>\u00e9<\/em>niches<\/em> along the canal, and vacationers with rentals continue to steer their way (a bit shakily in some cases) under the ancient bridge.<\/p>\n

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The bridge is festooned with pots of flowers and offers a view of the hamlet and its boats.\u00a0 One near to the bridge is quite a sight.\u00a0 It\u2019s a floating grocery store, good for a few provisions for the boaters and croissants for the locals in the morning.\u00a0 It, too, hearkens back to another era.<\/p>\n

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The Epicerie Flottante, or the Floating Grocery Store<\/em><\/p>\n

A good idea is to save your visit to Le Somail for lunchtime.\u00a0 There is a row of outdoor caf\u00e9s stretched along the southern bank of the canal, several of which have quite a reputation in the region.\u00a0 Steve had one of the specialties, frog legs in a garlic cream sauce.\u00a0 It was particularly delicious and would surely have been enough for two, except that Lucie doesn\u2019t eat the little hopper sand could not even look at him eating them.<\/p>\n

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The southern bank also has all the requisite craft shops and galleries that seem to pop up wherever tourists gather.\u00a0 They\u2019re fine, but really no better than all the other sun dappled villages in the south of France.<\/p>\n

On the other side of the bridge from the restaurants are several small hotel\/guest houses and restaurants that offer fancier fare than the previously mentioned caf\u00e9s.\u00a0 The old chapel is worth a glance as well.\u00a0 And there is a truly unique attraction: the Librairie Ancienne<\/em> (the Old Bookstore) which claims to have 50,000 books, surely an undercount.\u00a0 Of course, most of them are in French but there are plenty in all languages.\u00a0 There are marvelous picture books to thumb, rare books to stare at under glass, comics, kids\u2019 books, lithographs, engravings, antique maps and more.\u00a0 If you are a bibliophile, you could get lost in there forever.<\/p>\n

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A partial view of the interior of the Librairie Ancienne<\/em><\/p>\n

You can see all there is to see in Le Somail in an afternoon, lunch included, or you can stay for the night and really get the feel of the place.\u00a0 It does come down to a choice, wine tasting or soaking up the atmosphere.\u00a0 We chose the former, but not without a little twinge of regret as we pulled away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the eastern edge of the Minervois appellation in the southwest of France, there is a small village \u2013 a hamlet really \u2013 named Le Somail.\u00a0 There are no vineyards immediately surrounding it, the nearest ones being only a few kilometers away.\u00a0 When you are visiting wineries in the general area, leave yourself some time … Continue reading Le Somail<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1103"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1126,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103\/revisions\/1126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}