Dijon à la derniere fois

Our journey back to Dijon ended in a series of holding pattern runs that might have discouraged a dam buster bomber as we tried to aim for La Gare (Avis bay). We turned a logical left instead of an illogical right a couple of kms out of town when the road was barred with signs indicating either choice would be accepted by the barrers, but alas the left directions quickly evaporated and Jane (our GPS voice lady) was adamant that we should drive up the closed road. The target was eventually successfully reached after several evasive manoeuvres.
A compensation for this is that our hotel is in a very quiet street- it is dug up for its entire not inconsiderable length, and so there is no traffic, and today, no workers. See photo.
We spent our day walking among three free museums: cyclists please note the artistic pièce de resistance. We would have gone to a fourth, recommended by the Bureau de Tourisme, "Moses Well", but we found it deep inside a psychiatric hospital in an unmarked position, so we turned back.
Last dinner was at Moulin à Vent, at the head of Rue Forges, where we had trad burgundian fare and a half bottle of Gevrey Chambertin.

Nuits St Georges et al

Our holiday is coming to an end and there is little time left to see the sights. Today, however we went to that wonderful wine town of Nuits St Georges. We found it to be very touristy so we walked around it a couple of times, had lunch at the ominously named Eden Pizzeria and then took a drive through the hills to Ternant or rather Hameau de Rolle where there is a rustic restaurant called la ferme de Rolle where we thought we might try out tomorrow. We decided not to but the drive was beautiful, through undulating hills with trees changing to their autumn colours. It was a completely different Burgundy and well worth the visit. The drive back took us through a town called Boulliand which is also rustic and has nothing to recommend it other than it's narrow streets and a very expensive restaurant. As we came closer to Villers la Faye the view of vines on the hillside was amazing to our eyes. We stopped to get a better view. There were vines in very straight rows on either side of a small valley. These vines were the straightest most disciplined plants we have ever seen - not a leaf out place. The rows went vertically and horizontally along the hillside and created a beautiful picture. Five minutes later saw us draw into the driveway of our gite. Now night has fallen and we have watched the clearest sunset we have seen in the area.
The photo of Nuits Saint Georges from a hill above shows a refined church building. The only other town feature besides its vineyards is a beffroi completed in 1619, now sporting a clock with carillon that plays a charming tune before the clock chimes.
We returned briefly to the town for provisions on Friday, and spent the rest of the day strolling and reading.

Venturing out

Today we drove to Autun which is a town about an hours drive from our wonderful little gite. As we drove we noticed a great change in the countryside from the gentle hills of the wine country and the myriad of vines covering them, to the rolling hills of farmland and the beautiful white cows that call this area home. As we neared Autun, the hills became more treed and rather picture postcard idyllic. It was a wonderful drive and the town was also picturesque as we drove into it. It sits on a hillside with the cathedral at its highest point so it stands out against the landscape.
We parked and walked to the centre of town which was a very open area, originally the champs de mars where armies may have camped and later the town common where the farmers grazed their cattle.
All this activity required sustenance so a coffee and a planning session brought forward decisions about our plan of action.
We proceeded on foot to a remnant of the Porte d'Arroux and then the temple of "Janus" (wrongly named- it's Gallic) from the first century. It was a pleasant walk and a beautiful setting with great views of the town behind it.
From there we walked back into the town and up to the cathedral which was like most of the churches in Burgundy, very large and imposing from the outside and fairly mundane inside.
From there we went back to the car and drove to a roman amphitheatre where we found a wonderful juxtaposition of the ruin of the amphitheatre with young men doing soccer training in what would have been the arena. The French are fabulous at using what others have left behind for the benefit of the current generations.
Our drive home took us on the same road as we came but we stopped at Pommard to sample the local wines and to make a purchase. Our short stay in this village was punctuated by three young soldiers standing next to our car smoking. Not very interesting? They were English soldiers. I wonder what they were doing touring the French countryside and buying wine for that's what they'd been doing!
In the evening we went back to Beaune for dinner in a restaurant suggested by the owner of our gite. A slow relaxed meal and a wonderful evening was had by us. Tony started with the inevitable escargots and Wendy with fois gras. Both of us then had a charolais steak, possibly the most meltingly wonderful piece of meat we've ever had, accompanied by an assortment of vegetables. The cheese course was irresistible, one of the cheeses being called Epoisses which is banned from being carried on public transport in France because of it's pungency. It is a local Burgundean cheese from the village of that name and well loved. It was good as were the other two on the platter. Dessert was an assortment of tastes being cassis sorbet, white chocolate mousse, poached pineapple and a creme brûlée. To drink there was a cremont rose, Burgundy's answer to rose champagne and a bottle of premier cru Saint Georges 2006. By the time we got home we were tired content and over indulged, but a good time was had by both of us.

Return to Dijon

Well, today we went to Dijon which is the place we started from in Burgundy and approximately 25 years since our last visit. Doesn't sound all that exciting but getting out of the city on Saturday was totally traumatic. Why, I hear you ask? Driving a strange car on the wrong side of the road is problematic enough but add to that the road works going on in central Dijon and particularly around the station, where we picked up the car and you have a recipe for trauma. We must have driven around in circles at least three times with the GPS giving very patient instruction which kept leading us back to the station. Our GPS lady just wasn't up to date with the road works! In the end we turned her off and followed the road deviation signs and had no further trouble. So, today we went back, in fear and trepidation but it was a breeze!
The cause of all these road works is simple. Dijon is building a tram network throughout the inner parts of the city and every tourist who goes there seems to be upset by this activity. You only have to read the travel blogs for Dijon to see the hesitation that people express about going there.
Dijon is a medieval city and has some remarkably old buildings and some that are full of fun. There's one with a cat on the roof, not a real cat, but it looks real until, if you watch it for a while, you note that it doesn't move. Just as well as it's on the very edge of a ridge and looks as though it will either leap or fall but it does neither.
The cathedral building was begun in the late 1400's and consecrated in about 1529. The churches we looked at were very imposing on the outside but relatively small and oppressive inside.
We followed a tourist walk, called the route of the owl, in reverse, which led us passed most of the interesting public buildings including the Palais des ducs et des etats de Bourgogne and the hotel de vogue. We also walked passed les halles which is the market but which was finished for the day by the time we arrived. Fortunately we have another day there on Saturday, our last full day in France.

We concluded our trip home with a close up look at the only chateau classified as grand cru in cote de Beaune, south of our village, Corton Andre, and completion of our drive through back lanes to our cottage.

A day in Beaune

Beaune is a short drive from our house so we decided to spend a day there. Monday disclosed ample parking, possibly because many things in this tourist town are shut after the exertions of Sunday.
The town inside the ramparts (mostly built to keep the various marauders out during the 30 Years War 1618-1648) is compact and we feel can be sufficiently explored by tourists such as us in one day.

The hotel de ville is neat, and it was pleasing to see artichoke flowers in its garden.

The amazing jewel is the Hotel-Dieu, and although we had seen it on our last visit to the town in 1986, our memory suggests that it has been much restored and is now more extensively and far better displayed. Flash photos are not permitted and I had no tripod, so my internal photos are blurred or to dark to show without light correction not possible with my current iPad skills.
But the external court of honor, a straw model by an 18th century patient, the kitchen and pharmacy with bottles of woodlice powder, crayfish eyes, vomit nuts powder etc are all worth the camera eye. The polyptych of the last judgment has a giant magnifying glass installed in front of it's centre so that the exquisite detail may be appreciated.

After a picnic lunch outside the ramparts we took a walk along them but there was not much of interest to see for those who are not war historians of the 17th century.

We then took the recommended visit to the caves of the largest wine agent, Patriarche Pere et Fils. There are literally kilometres of caves and millions of bottles, punctuated by videos in the language of your choice. We set a cracking pace to keep ahead of a group of Germans seeking to watch the shows in German. At the end of the exploration we were presented with traditional tin tasting cups and offered a carefully arranged group of 13 of the region's wines to taste with them (10 pinots). Our verdict is that metal cups are not good for tasting (a fact also well known to Cleopatra, who used to insist on glass). However we gave very positive marks to the Mersault (white) and Gevrey Chambertin 2008 & Pommard 2007 (reds).

A visit to E.LeClerc to buy milk on the way home demonstrated again what we already knew, that a French hypermarket far outsizes any Coles or Woolworths.

Two villages

Sunday morning is misty turning into fine drizzle.
We drove 25 km south to Chagny. This large village is host on Sundays to an attractive market that spreads through most of the streets in the centre of the village, selling fresh and hot prepared food, and clothing. Where we enter there is a stall selling South American woollens while the vendor plays her pan flute, filling all the street with those dulcet tones.
We succumbed to the lure of a dozen enormous oysters (provenance unknown), a local soft goat cheese, and from a stall selling only the most delectable of fungi, a local Truffle.

As the rain was clearing this afternoon we explored our own home village of Villers la Faye on foot.

On our return home dinner was a degustatory feast- first course successfully shucked oysters seasoned with wine vinegar, second course baked vegetables, third course scrambled egg avec generous serve of truffle, accompanied by our local haute-cotes de Beaune, and dessert of escargot (the pastry kind) fresh from the village boulanger this morning.
The photo collection is from the Chagny market and our village.

Paris to Bourgogne

For our final days in Paris the weather cooled and our general pace slowed. Our last piece of tourism was a visit to the Musee Cognacq-Jay, a delightful and outstanding collection of 18th century paintings, furniture and ceramic minatures donated by the founders of a once leading emporium "Samaritaine" including several each of Canaletto, Fragonard, and Reynolds.

Our final Paris meal was at a traditional bistro La Sancerre, good enough to write home about- moderate cost, competent chef, pleasing outlook on the corner of rue Bretagne and rue des Archives, justifying the positive reviews in Trip Advisor.

We spent a lot of Friday wondering if our train would go on time or at all as the SNCF staff disrupted the system following the stabbing of a ticket inspector.

Saturday is moving day and our apprehension proved groundless as the train was "a l'heure". Avis has provided an Opel. Getting out of Dijon was however pure stress. Roadworks and street closures everywhere had our poor GPS lady bamboozled and she led us round and round the gare attempting get to the dug up road until we shut her down and followed a temporary sign saying "Dijon Sud". Elementary really.

The Dijon cottage is the best holiday house we have ever occupied, roomy rather than cozy (lounge room with separate dining area, separate TV room, kitchen with breakfast bar, 2 bedrooms, garage, etc. Country silence. Views of and from the lounge below. A welcome gift from the owner of a bottle of Haute-Cotes de Beaune. Luxe!

Coffee and no Cake

Today was to be another fairly quiet day as we build up to leaving Paris for Burgundy. We got up late and headed to the Tuileries in search of a cake shop which had been recommended. This we found in the expensive tourist area of the rue de Rivoli. Having observed the beauty of the rows of cakes and the prices attributed to them, we decided against such extravagance and started looking for a specific coffee/tea shop (Cafe Verlet) in the rue de St Honore. Having found it, we were delighted by an old world interior with sacks of coffee beans and large tins of tea lining the walls. But what we loved most was that there were no tourists here and there was the opportunity to try coffee from beans of a single source. Our favourite is Yirgacheffe from Ethiopia and since they had these beans we took the opportunity for a trial. And nor were we disappointed. It was a great coffee in a great place.
From there we went through the Tuileries, where we were approached by people involved in one of the many scams (this particular one is to ask you to sign a petition as a lead in to request money). We brushed this off and proceeded on our way to the Musee Rodin which took us through a diplomatic and government quarter.
The Musee Rodin has a beautiful garden which contains some of best known sculptures including The Thinker, Victor Hugo and Honore de Balzac. The garden also offers a view of Invalides and the Eiffel Tower, which is as close as we propose to get to these landmarks. Inside there are many rooms of sculptures most by Rodin but some by other less well known sculptors. Many of the works were presented to the museum by Rodin in 1916 but included in this was the odd painting by Van Gogh and Monet with whom he was friends.
On the way home we went via the church of St Sulpice with its large square and enormous fountain. We had felt that there was a good reason for seeing this church apart from its enormous size but in the end we couldn't remember why and were generally underwhelmed.
We returned home from here to rest before venturing out a bit later to get a long awaited felafel for dinner which was most enjoyable.

Quiet day and exciting night

Our remaining Paris days are for sauntering. So on Wednesday we sauntered through various streets previously unsauntered.

We called into Saint Gervais near the Hotel de Ville. This church is home to an order of monks and nuns, and they were singing the midday office in the chancel, nuns on the north and monks on the south, facing east instead of each other. Not communal.
The most notable sight was Place Igor Stravinsky (photo) where the contrast between old and new speaks for itself.
After that a visit to the Shoah memorial with the names of all the Jews deported inscribed on one wall and a wall of the Justes who sought to protect them- these unnamed. There was a display of a book called Maus (written in comic style by Art Spiegelman where the Jews are mice, the Germans cats, the Swedes reindeer, etc).
The quiet day was preparation for a wonderful evening's entertainment at the Paris opera being held at the Garnier. This is an 18th Century building complete with frescos, cherubs in gold and an enormous chandelier decorating the ceiling. The opulence of the building is evocative of wealth and privilege of a bygone era but is open to all today. We booked our seats late and had been warned of the discomfort we would experience but nothing prepared us for the beautiful red velvet seats which sat us bolt upright with a back which is a velvet covered bar and barely enough space to put our legs and no room for knees that would dig into the back of the person in front unless one sat with legs wide apart. The ambience was electric, wonderful, full of beauty with which to feed the eyes but the seats were so uncomfortable. But we counted ourselves lucky because we could have got standing room or a seat at the side, which although more supportive, meant that we would have had to do contortions in order to see the action on stage.
The opera, La Clemence de Titus by Mozart, sung in Italian with French surtitles was magnificent, an experience worth having. It lasted a little over 2 hours with 1 interval. It was an opera written mainly for a soprano and castrati with a couple of modest roles for tenors. Since we no longer have castrati, these roles were sung by mezzo sopranos. They were all fabulous. This has definitely been a highlight of our trip. We were on such a high after the opera that we went out and celebrated with a kir royale before getting home close to midnight.

Montmartre au matin

On Tuesday we arose early to go to Montmartre, warned of ever larger tribes of tourists as the day matures. We came out of the art nouveau metro cover at Abbesses, but had to wait until 0830 for petit dejeuner at the traditional boulangerie- a bowl with about 500 ml of cafe au lait, half baguette with large portions of butter and two thick fruity jams.
We caught the Monmartrobus up the hill to just short of Sacre Coeur. A short look inside and then we absorbed the panoramic view from the butte. The simpler church of St Pierre next door took over foman a Roman temple (perhaps Mars) from which a column or so survives (see photo).
From there, guided by Rick Steves on my kindle, we took an exploratory walk down through the village, noting houses at times occupied by Renoir, Dali, van Gogh, and a host of other artistic names too numerous to mention, noted the places where they ate drank and played billiards, saw the view that Utrillo painted (see photo) and the last two functioning mills (painted by Renoir) and the sole current vineyard (photo).
We encountered St Denis in a little park, still keeping his head.
Then the studio of Picasso and many others (photo).
Lower down we passed the cafe where Amelie (Audrey Tatou) was shot and finished up at Moulin Rouge. There seemed no need at the midday hour to continue on to Pigalle, so at Blanche we boarded the Metro for our base.
The evening was spent pleasantly in meeting with a friend of Wendy's from Melbourne. We met at metro Monceau and walked through the gardens and then strolled around the area wending our way back to her apartment in Batignolles where we had an aperitif before going out for dinner at a Japanese French restaurant called Epicure 108. A very relaxed and pleasant evening was had by us and we returned to our apartment at about 11pm to tumble into bed in preparation for Wednesday.

Monceau to Concorde

Monday morning we took the metro to Parc Monceau. This park, designed in the 18th century contains statues of people such Guy de Maupassant, Gounod, and Chopin. Curved pathways provide gracious walks past seemingly unrelated edifices. A small pond which is used for ice skating in winter is accentuated by a small colonnade of Corinthian columns and as one walks on there is an arch which was part of an earlier hotel de ville. In the middle of the Parc there is a pyramid which only adds to the unusual nature of this little parc. On closer inspection it would appear to be a storage area cunningly disguised....Adding to the eclectic nature of this parc there is currently an exhibition of Chinese sculpture to be viewed with interest. As with most of the parks we've been to, it appears to be a haven for young mothers with their infants in strollers. Very pleasant to observe.
From Parc Monceau we strolled down to boulevard Haussman, one of the main arteries of Paris and named for the man who redesigned the city in the 1800's. There we found, to our delight (our delight being that we found the place!), a small museum called Jacquemart-Andre which is named for the people whose home it was along with the permanent collection contained therein. At present, apart from this collection, there is an exhibition of the art of Fra Angelico and his contemporaries. The exhibition was small and intense with about 2/3 of Paris in each room so we had to struggle to get a look. However it was worth it. We would have liked to go to the cafe which is a grand and gracious room but the third of Paris which was not in the gallery was in the cafe so we had to be content with a sneak peak!
Our next expedition was a walk down rue Faubourg St Honore which was initially quite disappointing as we expected it to be adorned by shops with goods of astronomical prices and they mostly seemed to be commonplace office furniture shops and the like. However that only describes our impatience! We soon came to the desired shops and enjoyed the window shopping until heat, traffic and the restrictions of the Elysee Palace got the better of us so we detoured and took the metro home to have a very late lunch and a rest.
In the early evening we ventured out again but only in our local area which is always a pleasure to walk around. We are continually amazed at how the place comes alive. It is now fairly late and the place has quietened down ready for sleep....

Postscript: more on the Qatar bonbon

It seems the bonbon that caught our eye was one of a display set. Supposed to end 30 June 2011. Perhaps Qatar decided to keep theirs permanently. Anyway a picture of the set on this link:
http://blog.paris-on-demand.com/2011/05/10/giant-candies-in-the-champs-elysees-area/

Dejeuner sur l'herbe

Another warm day but this time we decided to go to the bois de Vincennes for a picnic. It is easy to get to for us, just 8 stops on the metro and a short walk. We entered the gates at the Parc Floral de Paris which is a bit like the botanical gardens in Melbourne. It is a place where many Parisians go on weekends to relax and spend time with their children. The number of strollers was quite remarkable. Then there were the people who had hired quadricycles the size and shape of a small car (don't know what they're called) but many a parent was labouring to peddle them for their children's enjoyment! They accommodate four or six people.
It's easy to see why people headed for the parc today as it was cool and pleasant in the shade of large colourful trees and shrubs. We spent hours there just watching the people passing by and occasionally taking a stroll.
We returned to our stamping ground with the intention of renewing our acquaintance with Berthillion ice-cream but found to our dismay that there were long queues at every outlet we passed so we decided instead to head back to our apartment for a rest and cool drink. On the way we were sidetracked by the sound of New Orleans coming from one of the side streets. On investigation we came upon a quintet of elderly Americans playing Jazz on the sidewalk. They drew quite a crowd causing traffic chaos which Parisians seem to manage with good humour and patience. We listened for some time, paused for a peek into the Carnavalet garden of box hedge, silverbeet and other colourful attractions before resuming our walk back home for a drink and a rest.