Bordeaux, Day 7: Walking the Grounds at Château de Lescours, Final Dinner at Chai Pascal

June 9, 2026

A slow and easy day, today. Kirt and Anne took the Ford kids back to Bordeaux for another visit, but the rest of us stayed back at the chateau. Liz spent some time relaxing and reading, and I ended up going for a walk around the property.

With, I might add, a glass of wine from the vineyard (it seemed appropriate). While I walked around a few days ago with Liz and Kirt, today I was just on my own.

I moved quite slowly, trying to just be present and marvel at how amazing everything was. No agenda, no rush, just… walking and observing.

A small area along the side of the main building.

On the wall, an old and faded mural. It was half-hidden by the flowers and foliage, but still exuded a great deal of joy.

When I asked Pierre about it later, he mentioned that it was a portrait of all of the workers, from some years back.

The mural was not visible from far away. You really had to be up close to even know it was there. This felt like a small secret that only I discovered.

One thing I’ve discovered, with my time at Chateau de Lescours: I really need more statues in my front and back yard.

I’ve really been missing out,.

A small tunnel, which I can only guess may lead to a rabbit warren (I spotted one or two rabbits over the last week).

Every once in a while, I’d catch a glimpse of a tractor going down one of the rows. I stood and watched a while, as it was clearing some of the grass from below.

At one point, I had a chance to walk into the row to view the tractor from behind – a good, closeup view of what the process was like.

But standing there, as much as I wanted to… that idea felt intrusive. It felt like me being a gawking tourist, while someone was hard at work.

As interested as I was, I contented myself to just watch from afar. And then continued about my walk.

More than just alligators in the moat. Hard to believe it was deeper than this, in the past.

On the far side of the property, where some chickens were freely roaming.

A nearby enclosure, with an assortment of various poultry.

Not every day you see a turkey on a swingset.

Looking back at the main buildings.

Love is in the air.

For dinner, we all trekked out to Saint-Émilion for our final group dinner together. We were scrambling a bit earlier in the day to find a place, and ended up with a reservation at Chai Pascal.

They were able to take our reservation for 10, but we had to go with two tables of 5. L to R it’s Jackson, Paige, Audrey, and Liz.

Liz and Audrey.

Walking back to the car.

After dinner, everyone was decompressing and hanging out in the living room. We played a few rounds of Quiplash again, but ended up spending most of our time playing a game Jackson suggested: “Imposter.”

It’s a bit like Werewolf or Mafia, where one person is not part of the overall group… and the game hinges on the imposter pretending, and the others figuring out who the imposter is.

Jackson had an iPhone app that made the game pretty easy to set up. Everyone saw a secret word, but one person was not shown the word (and was just shown the word “Imposter”).

Everyone then went around and stated one word that matched the secret word. And from there, everyone had to guess who knew the word and who didn’t (and was the imposter).

I was a bit skeptical of the game, but it got quite boisterous and fun. Each game was quick, and was easy to set up and start.

Another fun game nigiht, with a lot of noise and laughing and yelling. As much as I loved the location, the wine, and the vineyard… these loud moments with family were among my favorite of our trip.