Thread: Interesting, Odd or Funny Pics II.

Poor old Pedro!

Originally Posted by Xtreme

What a coincidence - The word 'Tun' was used yesterday in the Word Association Thread by rovers4 and my first encounter with the word was a few days earlier when I came across the world's largest Tun - The Great Heidelberg Tun'
This barrel has a capacity of 221,726 litres and that's an awful lot of wine in anyone's books.

Roger, Helen and I visited the Mercier 'Maison', in the Champagne region, a few years ago. They still have this bull-drawn barrel on display. Imagine hauling this around the neighbourhood!

The automated train tour through some of the cellars, which have a total length of 18kms, was interesting.

Unfortunately for Helen, I don't think this Champers is available in Australia.

THE CELLARS

In 1871 Eugène Mercier began the construction of his cellars in Epernay. It took six years to build the 18 kilometers of impressive underground tunnels that are home to the Mercier heritage. Once the immense cellars were open, Eugène Mercier, who always had an eye for creating significant events, had visitors tour the tunnels in carriages pulled by four horses. The tour was even taken by the President of France, Sadi Carnot, when he called at Mercier in 1891.Designed and decorated to impress, to this day the Mercier cellars are among the most often toured cellars in Champagne and receive over 100,000 visitors every year. One of the most remarkable objects to be seen on the Mercier tour is the “giant wine cask,” which bears witness to another of the founder’s flashes of genius. Eugène Mercier arranged the building of the world’s biggest wine barrel, which was designed for assemblage. His genius for communications inspired him to surmount every obstacle to have his exceptional cask displayed at the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris. The Mercier cask even won second prize at the Exposition—first prize went to the Eiffel Tower!

Yay, a fun new game!

Sometimes the Bee just nails it.

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Tried to scan some of the photos I had from some of my time in Africa
Photos 1 and 2
Main road (Zaire as it was known then) from Kinshasa to Lubumbashi in the middle of the route near Kikwit. soem days we only made 2km and got held up by trucks including overland trucks for days sometimes as we couldnt pass them when stuck...
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Ferry crossing in Zaire (fee 3 packets of cigarettes and 5l of fuel)
one more the road
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