Of the Back Roads and Small Cities

Elane and I love to visit the smaller cities when we are traveling. She says that it's because you can wander around aimlessly knowing that, around any corner, you can stumble across something wonderful. We found this to be true, again, in Beaune.

Beaune was a walled city in times past with homes built into the insides of the walls. Much of the wall has been torn down or re-purposed by now but we stumbled upon a stairway and found that it led up to the top of one of the remaining sections. From the top you could still see the remnants of the moat on the outside.





Beaune is now famous, mostly, as the center of the wine making region of Burgundy. It is quaint, relatively rich, and is well maintained without feeling overly restored.

Beaune is also the home of Hotel Dieu. Hotel Dieu was a free hospital founded in 1443 and built by the chancellor of Burgundy after decades of war and disease left the populace destitute. The poor stayed in dorms while the rich stayed in more plush digs. The treatment was limited to rest and comfort, which were both in short supply in that time, and a good dose of prayer. We didn't visit Hotel Dieu on this trip but it is historically important and a gorgeous landmark worth mentioning again, anyway.

After exploring the town for the morning, we found a shop that had a tandem bicycle to rent and we took off on a 16 mile trek through the surrounding vineyards and villages - a splendid way to pass an afternoon. 

By the way, I forgot to mention that Beaune is also known for Kir - a black current liqueur topped with white wine - or Kir Royale made with Champagne. What better way to recharge at our halfway point. Note the statue in the background immortalizing the tradition of wine making.

Tonight was a splurge night for dinner and Elane won the dinner selection competition, again, choosing the local specialty - steak from the local charolais (white) cattle, aged 45 days and prepared to perfection.

Restarting the Blog

Restarting the blog:

One thing that I learned in France is that hotel owners guard their wifi bandwidth like fathers guard their daughter's innocence. After repeatedly loading pictures onto Elane's tablet, resizing them for upload, writing the text and, finally, attempting to upload them to Blogger only to have the process freeze I decided to give it up for while we were on the road. The new plan is to put together some posts as if they were "Live" and do it from the comfort of home with a glass of wine - not that there wasn't wine in France, but, I digress.

So, here we go, enjoy...

Day 1 - the trip to Beaune, France.

Maybe I should be glad that getting to Europe was such a pain in the neck/rear end because, if it were easier, I'm not sure France could stand it. On this trip we were rewarded for our conservative planning by not having to panic as unexpected hours of travel ticked by. First, our flight to Toronto popped up as delayed. The United rep said that people with short connections should consider checking into other arrangements. We had a comfortable layover in Toronto but checked into it anyway. Good thing because, while our new flight arrived in Paris over an hour later than our original, the flight to Toronto was cancelled completely.

No worries, we still had plenty of time to get from the Paris Airport to the Gare de Lyon train station and catch our TGV (high-speed train) out of Paris to Burgundy

. Most of this time was spent in line while 65 other travelers and an hour and a half of time passed to pick up our reserved tickets. (Note to self - make sure that our credit card has a chip in it for the next time we go to Europe). A short wait and a nice walk later, though, and we were zooming east at 130 mph.

Beaune is known mostly for 2 things, wine and escargot. We finally settled in to enjoy both at a fun brasserie on a wonderful evening on the Place Madeline.

First ever blog post - Have at it!

According to +lavail hull , I need to post a blog entry so he can comment. Here goes, Bo. Have at it. I concede that it's also a good idea to try it out and see how this stuff works before starting our trip. Now let's try to insert a picture...

There it is! This is from the first day of our first trip to France in 2001. It was taken in a wine cellar that is in the first town we'll visit on this trip. +Elane Vandenbergh wisely suggested that I should wait until I was sober before buying a couple of cases. If you don't hear from me for a few days, this might explain any delay.