What I really want to tell you about is my trip to France in October. Since the trip was really a food and wine exploration, I felt it would fit here. I should not have waited so long, but really - who has time for blogging around the holidays? We went for 10 days. It was Joe's birthday present (he celebrated a milestone birthday last year) and he had wanted to make this journey for quite some time. We went with some friends of ours whom we had never traveled with before, and you all know what a risk that can be, but it wasn't. It was great and they were the perfect travel companions. We actually had a great time (at least we did and I hope they did too).
We flew to Paris on the usual flight out of the States that departs at night and arrives in Europe by morning. We had reserved a rental car ahead of time and, without going through all of the grizzly details, ended up with a lovely Mercedes station wagon that served us perfectly. We left the airport destined for Burgundy and, to our dismay discovered pretty quickly that our GPS spoke German. So we did the old fashioned thing and got out the maps we lugged all the way to the France with us and found our way.
The trip across France was very interesting. Having only been to France once before; a trip that was limited to Paris and a bus trip to Versailles, it was fun to see what the rural landscape of France looked like. It was quite scenic. One of the first things we noticed were these trees that looked like they had nests in them but they were actually Sycamore trees that were pruned a certain way. Off in the distance we would see rolling hills with very old - and when I say old I mean old - homes and/or farms like you only see in Europe. Houses made of stone, and castles, and very large, stocky white cattle known as Charolais cattle.
And, of course, vineyards :-)
When we exited the highway to access the local roads that would take us to our final destination I knew I was in love. As we came into Nuit St George I knew I was in a place that I had always dreamed of being in and it only got better from there. We were staying in a beautiful, old, stone inn in Morey St Denis in Burgundy surrounded by vineyards. When I say it doesn't get any better, I am pretty sure, for my tastes, it doesn't! The name of the Inn was Castel Tres Girard and here is a picture of it. It was surrounded by vineyards in every direction and they were making wine in the basement.
I cannot emphasize enough how much it was more like "farmland" than something glamorous. These people were making a living producing wine. The homes in burgundy especially, were very old and really quite beautiful. Most roads in these little villages could only acomodate one car going one way at a time. Let me see if I have a photo:
This was around the corner from our Inn in Morey St Denis.
And this:
And, if you want to see old, this Chateau was built in the 10th Century and is still in use. It is in Gevrey-Chambertin:
So, if you know anything about France, then you know they take their meals (food) very seriously. They eat lunch from 12:00 to 2:00 and do not try getting into a restaurant for lunch before or after those hours. As a matter of fact, I would not even attempt to walk into a restaurant at 1:30 and ask for lunch. But, as I mentioned above, that was exactly the time we arrived at the Inn and the woman, whose name I unfortunately did not write down, who ran the inn, rushed us into the dining room and fed us. And, we were grateful she did. My first meal in Burgundy were eggs cooked in red wine (oeufs au vin rouge). It was simply perfect.
This too I have a picture of:
After a nap and a shower, we took a little walk about. And before long it was dinner time. Dinner is served from 7:00 till about 10:00. They take your entire order at the beginning. They do not rush you through dinner. You have a cheese course with each meal, unless you decline. And, you are served with grace and respect for the meal. I cannot think of anywhere I would rather eat than in the places where we ate in France.
Over the course of the next few days we traveled about Burgundy eating and drinking their food and wine. We visited Beaune which is the Capital of Burgundy and a beautiful city. We had a wonderful lunch there also and hope to go back someday. We traveled the countryside. It was hunting season and we actually had a deer run out in front of our car one day on our way through the countryside to visit an old cathedral in Chateauneuf.
After Burgundy, we traveled over to Beaujolais to spend 3 days in that lovely part of France :-). Our house wine is usually a Beaujolais-Villages, which I just happen to be drinking while writing this. We love the different Beaujolais wines and were anxious to test and taste along the Beaujolais wine route.
We stayed in a beautiful inn in St Amour called Auberg du Paradis. For the next three days we traveled around Beaujolais tasting a lot of village wines we cannot get here in the States. The highlight of our exploration of Beaujolais, after finding this:
was our dinner in Auberge du Cep in Fleurie. It was one of the restaurants that Johnny (R.W.) Apple (a food writer for the NY Times)
http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/travel/22apple.html?pagewanted=all
suggested that was worthy of a plane trip to visit. He only chose one restaurant from each country! This particular restaurant was a bistro in Fleurie. We could not have asked for a better experience as our reason for being there was to taste the local wines and eat the local foods. Again, it was perfect.
Our traveling companions were Frank & Eileen. Both Joe's and Frank's ancestors came from the Alsace region of France/Germany depending upon when you are referencing. So, we needed to visit this region since we were going to be so close. We chose to stay 2 days and nights in Strasbourg. And this too was lovely. Joe got to have his charcroute and I got to search for little French wine bars called Winstubs because Charcroute is not my "thing".
Winstub's serve a blend of French & German food and we did pretty good in choosing one. The proprietor was a hoot and entertained us, as well as the rest of the restaurant all night. Here he is trying to get us to drink Shnapps at the end of the night:
Actually, I think he succeeded in convincing Eileen that would be a good thing to do :-).
We had a marvelous trip and I cannot wait to go back.
Well, this took longer than a few minutes so I did not get any knitting done nor did I watch any videos. But, I did enjoy reliving my trip to France and look forward to the day when I can do it again. Bonsoir.
