Weather and location are really our friends on this trip, folks! While we opened the festivities with friends and the wonderfulness of the chateaus of Fontainebleau, Vaux le Vicomte, then Amboise and the Loire Valley chateaus and ambience, I must confess we are HUGELY enjoying our much-more low scale stay in Villers-La-Faye (VLF). It is cool, crisp, rural, and very laid-back, so Lynn and I fit right in! Yesterday and today we cruised through some excellent sights and experiences. Let me tell you a little about them.
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| Beaune church |
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| Beaune's Notre Dame |
Yesterday, we decided to return to Beaune, after doing a reconnaissance run there the day before. We wanted to go shopping, really, both of us wanted to, no kidding. We’ve been invited to visit our longtime friends in Geneva, Switzerland Thursday, and wanted to bring something from this locality to share with them. Also, we wanted to take a wedding present for their son who was wed this past summer. Voila, a trip to Beaune to shop for our friends! We had an easy time finding our way back, and found a parking spot on the “ring road” that surrounds the old central village. This is a beautiful old town, and we enjoyed walking all over, getting the feel of the streets, residences and shops. Yes, people really live inside most of the old towns we visit; the towns are not museum pieces, but vibrant places alive to their occupants at all hours. Well, ALMOST all hours! More on that later…
We narrowed our search down to a particular wine shop, La Vinotheque, said to be the oldest in Beaune, with an actual wine cave under the main floor. The owner Jerome was a super-friendly guy who spoke some English, but mostly stuck to French so Lynn got in a lot of practice. He explained a lot of what we needed to know to choose wine as a present. Most of the towns are known by wine officianados for the particular taste of their local grapes…the “terroir” of each wine is very important. Who knew? We walked all over town discussing what to buy, and noticed the town church bell ringing to signal NOON o’clock. Simutaneously, we saw almost every shop in sight closing and locking their doors, with everyone leaving the shops for lunch, not to re-open until 2:30!!! Wow, these same shops had only been open an hour or so before shutting down for lunch! Hoping for the best, we made our way back to our wine buddy’s shop, and LUCKILY HE REMAINED open during the lunch break! We made our purchases, plus supplies for Lynn to use to make kirs, and took off, while the rest of the town was basically shut down for the lunch siesta.
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| Beaune just before the lunch bell! |
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| Lynn's KIR recipe is great! |
It’s so hard to remember the working hours in the small towns here. Basically, no one does much in town until 11 a.m.(except bakeries (boulangeries)). Then, shops open and people circulate on the street until NOON, when everyone breaks for lunch, for 2 or 2 1/2 hours. Restaurants stay open during this time, of course. AFTER the lunch break, shops re-open until 6 or 7 p.m., while the restaurants close down, usually from 2:30 p.m. until 7 p.m.! So, shop BEFORE noon, and eat lunch BEFORE 2:30, otherwise you are completely out of luck! It works well for the French, and is OK with us, after we are reminded and adjust our thinking appropriately!
We made it home and relaxed with books and goofing off til evening. Then, we headed for a restaurant recommended by our hosts, just a couple kilometers away, Terrasses-de-Corton, in the little village of Ladoix-Serrigny. What a wonderful evening! Of course, our reservation was at 7:30 p.m., since they weren’t open for dinner til then. We received a clean spacious table, and were treated to wonderful service and conversation with the host and server. They even pretended not to mind my miserable French while ordering dinner and wine. Lynn had a chance to use her French too. Best of all was the food: Lynn went for the escargot (!) entree, which she handled admirably and which was in fact VERY delicious. I was less adventurous, with a chicken main course. New language lesson: joue de boeuf means beef cheeks, very tasty and tender. We ate, talked, enjoyed the place and the people, and eventually made our way back home after about 3 hours. We love this part of the French way of life: restaurants do not expect you to hurry through your meal and leave fast. The table is yours all night, there is not another reservation coming in behind you that requires you to finish your meal and clear out. The meal is your night out, which was certainly OK with us!
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| Terrasses-de-Corton in Ladoix-Serrigny - wonderful dinner! |
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| Yeah, escargot! |
Next day was Wednesday, and it was another perfect bike-riding day…AFTER it warmed up a bit. I headed out west of VLF, to find the Canal de Bourgogne, and it’s fabled bike path. Lynn agreed to drive to meet me in a little town we spotted on the map up at the end of the canal path, Plombiere-les-Dijon. Boom, the plan was set. I headed out, and had the best time climbing, descending, and floating across barely-used country roads. Fields were being plowed by distant tractors, some of the vineyards were receiving a late harvest by picking tractors, and all was right in the world. I made for a little town called Pont-d’Ouche. Why? well, I liked the name!!! Also, “pont” means “bridge” in French, and I needed a bridge across the canal to find the bike path. It worked, and I headed toward Dijon on a flawless bike path with nice pavement or tightly-packed crushed gravel the whole way, roughly 25-30 miles. While riding, I learned why most of the towns along the way had the word “Ouche” in them: the CANAL runs right beside the RIVER OUCHE! Go figure…I thought the canal itself was a dredged-out river, but apparently not.
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| The Canal bridges OVER the River d'Ouche, which runs UNDER the Canal! |
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| Lock raising canal boat |
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| Canal boats at lock and tied up |
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| Plane trees on one stretch of the Bourgogne Canal |
Beautiful ride. The canal ran slightly downhill in my direction., but stiff cold headwind kept me from too much speed. Locks are needed to allow boats to go "uphill" and "downhill" on the canal. There are dozens of canal locks designed for long narrow canal boats, to raise or lower them depending on which direction they are running on the river. I got to see a couple of boats using the locks: the boat crew has to do all the work on the lock, there are no more lock workers. Once the gates to the lock are set, the flow of water into the lock is immense, taking only a few minutes to raise a boat higher to allow it to run the next stretch of canal until blocked by another lock. That's how you make a boat run "uphill". This is a leisurely way to travel if you are a passenger, as there is no way to be in a hurry! The boats themselves are really impressive for the most part, with decks for sitting, drinking, eating, and enjoying the slow passage of the sights.
My fun was seeing the sights: the canal, the boats and locks and lock-keeper houses. But, there was a lot of natural beauty too. Lots of beautiful, colorful ducks were sleeping along the canal, or paddling around in the water, with a few great blue herons sternly overseeing the scene and occasionally flying off in their awkward prehistoric gawkiness. A few times I saw a hawk swoop into a neighboring farm field and grab some kind of prey before flying back across the canal. Stately plane trees had been careful planted along the canal by a previous generation in some spots. As I got closer to Dijon, more bike riders appeared. There were actually a couple of bike clubs out riding today, with small pelotons of 12-15 riders who whooshed past me with a small curt wave. What a great way to see this slice of France: majestic boats and locks on this old canal, scenic little towns along the way, easy riding, no cars to avoid, and a beautiful Person waiting to take me home at the end!
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| Met up with my ride in front of the canal! |
Lynn and I connected up at Plombieres-les-Dijon, in a little park by the canal where she had been reading a book in the shade while waiting for me. Stupidly, in retrospect, we violated the restaurant-closing rule I mentioned above (I finished riding after 2:00 p.m., we couldn’t get to a restaurant for lunch before 2:30), so the best we could do was find a coffee shop-type place attached to a store called “GIANT-CASINO”…another Wal-Mart type store on the edge of Dijon. Ham sandwich and a Coke to share, and we were out of there! We drove part of the “Grand Crus de Bourgogne” route back to VLF through vineyards, tiny towns and chateaus. What a cool ending to a super day, the sights were beautiful. We made a fun stop at the "Cassisium" in Nuits-St.-George...a plant that manufactures Cassis, from which Lynn makes kirs. The young lady who ran the tasting and sales shop spoke with us in French, and in American English. I asked her if she'd spent time in the States, and she said no, but she (formerly) had an American boyfriend who came from Mansfield, Ohio. What a riot, that's where Mom's family is mostly located...the boyfriend could've been one of my cousins! We bought some Cassis cookies and headed out. Once we got home, we were pooped.
Here are the pics from our trip if you'd like to see more:
TRIP PICS
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