Hotel de la Poste Beaune

... is that everything closes for lunch from 12 to 2. They are serious on their lunchtime here, and when its raining and there's not much sightseeing to do in the small towns, well, lets just say we were lucky to have enough wine to get us through it. We also tried a proper french dinner in the town of Beaune, a 4 course meal for 12 Euros. Caity got Rabbit and Tom got Veal, or so we thought. We still aren't sure ...

... the car to make our way to the hotel. We checked in and the lady was less than pleased to help us. She was not very friendly to say the least. Either way, we got up to our room and dropped our stuff before heading out for dinner. It was only about a 15 minute walk to the center of the city from our hotel. I think we spent 20 minutes once in the square trying to find a restaurant with something for everyone. Eventually we decided on the first place we looked at... go ...

... hours. <br>I got to Dijon at about 1840. My guidebook said the tourist office would be open until 1900 so I could get a map but it closed at 1830. Luckily I had copied down the directions to the hostel from the internet just in case. I had to take two buses. However, the second bus' monitor wasn't working and it was only by chance that I turned to look at the name of the next stop which I thought was mine, and so got out. Lucky I did though because I found that the bus ...

13th July 09<br><br>Neinburg Weser<br><br>After a delightful week with my cousin Marilys and her husband Gerd at their lovely home in niemburg being shown places we would never have found without them - the painted church at Marklohe where Gerd had been Pastor, the great stone at Staatsforst Krahe, the palace at Celle, the blueberry (hfarm and cafe at Brokeloh where we enjoyed the unlikely combination of a type of potato rosti/pancake with blueberry sauce ...

... medieval Phillipean castle and explained the evolution of castle defenses. It was thoroughly enjoyable, though it would have been better had it not been 30+ degrees on the dry and dusty construction site.<br><br>After leaving Guedelon, we headed for our home base for the next two nights, the city of Beaune. Beaune is a small city of 25K in the heart of Bungundy. After checking into our hotel, we ventured into ...

... impressive<br>88 mph while the temperature guage registered - Gobi desert. Despite being ridden hard the <br>old girl took everything Kev could throw at her leaving him spent but happy.<br> Somewhere along the way a turning was missed and an extra hundred km's were added to the<br>journey. So we thought we knew better than Dashboard Doris and decided to go native and <br>head across country. Turns out that Doris is a smug cow but we did see some lovely ...

... easy enough to get this right on the motorways, ********* junctions of smaller roads! But the mistake lasted only a few seconds and the surprised French driver who alerted us to the mistake was really nice about it, slowing down gently as I eased (well, lurched) to the right side of the road, and not even offering a corrective beep - very polite indeed in the circumstances.<br><br>The last stretch of our day's journey ...

The staff member in charge of student services (Kerry) owns a house in the Burgundy region of France, and he has made a tradition of taking the Global groups there for a wine tasting trip. Thus, this weekend was spent drinking A LOT of wine (shucks;) Soooooo, Friday at noon we headed to France (PS France is a 5 minute drive from Versoix). We stopped at our ...

... the village, then the premier crus, and finally, the grand crus, which are grown on the best locations of the slopes. When I say we tried them all, we tried at least the village varieties with some grand crus thrown in the mix for good measure. No '97 Gevery-Chambertin from Trapet, but we did taste some really good stuff and began to acquire a wine vocabulary to suit our noses and palettes in the process. Our second tasting led us to the Marché aux Vins and a series of ...

... surroundings. They discovered that several different factors impact the ultimate taste of the wines including, the growing soil, underlying rock, the altitude, slope of hills or the orientation toward the sun, and microclimate (typical rain, winds, humidity, temperature variations, etc.) No two vineyards, not even in the same general area, have exactly the same conditions or, as the monks termed it, terroir. This concept was what ultimately led to the French system of classifying ...