Monks and Alcohol?

15 September 2012

Happy Saturday! Today the group made plans to take a bus trip up to a small town called Voiron, where we had plans to visit a distillery owned by the Chartreuse Monks, where they made liqueur called Chartreuse to support their monastery. This stuff was really cool...but we'll get to that in a minute!

I really enjoyed the town of Voiron. It almost reminded me of Florida in an odd way...the sun was shining, the streets were busy enough to enjoy the hustle and bustle, but not busy enough to stir up a headache. The streets were like mini outdoor malls, and on every corner there were small trees that blossomed vivid pink flowers, but these trees were also fountains! (The trees were probably fake, but whatever...) I stopped to stare at one for a good five minutes, I was so hypnotized by the beauty!

In the middle of the town there was also a huge chapel, and it was nothing like the little St. Johns in the middle of Johnsburg! This one was impressive! And I can only imagine how long it has been in this town, it was like a mini Notre Dame for Voiron!

After seeing some pretty fantastic sights in only the first ten minutes, we decided to go out to lunch. We went to a cute little restaurant right next to the chapel, and it was owned by a man whose son was the waiter. They were some of the nicest people I have ever met in such a long time. They teased us Americans and spoke in broken English, but in a poking-fun sort of way, so we played along and spoke to them in broke, southern-drawl French! My lunch was three little sausages, fries, a salad with dijon mustard dressing, and a small cup of lemon yogurt, which was probably the best yogurt I have ever tasted in my entire life. And the fries tasted really good when dipped in the yogurt like a frosty, don't judge me!

After enjoying lunch, we finally went to the Chartreuse distillery to take a tour and learn about the Monks. The tour was really interesting, and we saw how the alcohol was made. The next part was the greatest though. The tour guide brought us down to the cellar, the longest cellar in Europe, where there were barrels, upon barrels, upon barrels, of alcohol. And these babies were HUGE - twice as tall as me! And the line of them just kept going and going! And here I thought the fraternity across the street from my apartment back home had a lot of alcohol, this cellar would put them to shame!

Caution - Wet alcohol

After taking a tour of the distillery and the cellar, we went back upstairs and ended the tour with free samples of Chartreuse Yellow or Chartreuse Green. These drinks were yellow, and green! Talk about fun! I had a sample of the Chartreuse Green, and it was delicious. But...extremely strong. Extremely, strong. It was about 55% alcohol. With one sip I suddenly became vividly aware of my throat and nostrils. Burning, of course. That is one sip I will never forget!