Golly gosh, Nosh

Sherry received Nosh's weekly promotional email yesterday and one of the products being offered as a promotion was 250gm La Rustique Camembert cheese, the promotional price being $12.99 reduced from $19.99

We were at the supermarket this morning and checked out the local price for the same product - would it surprise you that the equivalent NZ price was $2.54!!!

No one minds anyone making a profit, and the supermarket obviously were on their price, but even allowing for freight, import duties etc. even $12.99 looks decidedly dear and could even be described as price gouging and if that description is apt what would one categorise the non-promotional price as?

As a matter of interest from what I can determine the equivalent GST tax in France is 20% but 10% for books and restaurant meals and 5.5% for groceries.

Today was a quiet day, being Bastille Day though we did return to the mustard factory to undertake that tour and in the afternoon we went for a swim to cool off from the low 30 degree heat.

Tonight we are going to Gigny where the locals have their Bastille Day celebrations including a firework display which we will report on in our next blog

 

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Smaller is best

The 9.00 am TER service from Beaune arrived in Lyon right on time at 10.44 this morning and disgorged its passengers into the hustle and bustle of France's 3rd largest city and immediately our world was turned on its ear!

Having been in far smaller cities since arriving in France where there may have been no more than 50 streets making up the central city to walk out of the station into a teeming mass of people and with an information map far bigger than we were used to and with the street names in such small type due to their number it was rather daunting.

Nevertheless we left the station area and made our way to the River Rhone which together with the River Saone run through the city.

The Rhone like most rivers of substance was pleasant on the eye with the numerous bridges crossing over it towards the old town

High above the city the Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourviere sat looking down

so we went to the Tourism Office situated on the "place Bellecour" to find the easy way to get up to it

A €2.80 return trip on the funicular did the trick and we were soon at the top taking in the views from the lookout area....

...in the company of a one-legged John Paul II

I may have said it before about a previous church/cathedral but this Basilique is simply stunning internally with "decorations" that are very pleasant on the eye and give a very clean look to the interior - the ceilings are gorgeous

With only 6 hours in town we could do no more than give Lyon a cursory once over (however the pedometer shows that so far today we have walked 17.78kms!) but in doing so saw the only reference we have seen on our trip to Auckland

Mid afternoon we made our way back towards the railway station spending sometime in the Part Dieu shopping complex which is a very modern complex of at least 3 storeys with shops and shoppers shoulder to shoulder!

I write this blog on a stifling hot train as we return back to Beaune and wonder if it too will be run on the honesty system that our morning trip was - at no time during the trip were our tickets checked!

Tomorrow is Bastille Day here in France and we hope to join the locals in the evening at their celebrations but try as I might since we arrived in France I have been unable to purchase a full sized French flag.

P.S. The train home was run on the same honesty system. It got into Beaune 1.5 hours late due to a fire on the line. The pedometer ended at 19.73 kms for the day so it is no wonder this old body feels a little lethargic!

 

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Back to Ancy-Le-Franc

In my previous blog I omitted to include a photo I had taken of Brian and Lindsey's holiday home in AFC

It was built in 1850, has 3 storeys as well as a high roofed barn and its own "cave"

The layout of the grounds are somewhat confusing as they own a piece of land behind the house which is located behind the rock wall.

Lindsey (surname Kirk) is a very accomplished artist who has had numerous exhibitions in NZ and in the near future has her second exhibition in France

Her website is www.lindseykirk.com

 

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She ain't quite "nectar of the gods"

Today was planned out but did not go to that plan.

Started off in fine fashion as I watched the Warriors have a good win over the Melbourne Storm - this was achieved by accessing Livestream.com via Unblock.Us and while I missed the first 15 minutes due to "technical difficulties" the remainder of the game streamed uninterrupted.

Having been to the Mustard museum the other day we had booked for the Mustard Factory tour @ 10 this morning. We arrived in good time and joined others on the tour but it soon became obvious that we had been booked on the museum tour which we had done so it was back to the reception area and we rebooked for the factory tour on Tuesday.

Plans needed to be adjusted so off to the Tourism office to see if we could book for a "cave" visit and did so for the Patriarche later this afternoon.

Having achieved that we then went walking in the vineyards that rise into the hills to the west of Beaune township.

Once you leave the confines of town it gets very peaceful out among the vines which stretch literally as far as one can see from left to right - they make a very nice sight

All the vineyards are well laid out and signposted and depending on their position on the slope, their orientation to the sun, the geology of the ground in which they are planted their classification is determined from Grand Cru (32 vineyards producing 5% of the total output in Cote D'Or) then Premier Cru (585, 18%) then Communal Appellations (53 communities, 36%) and finally Regional Appellations (22 Regions, 41%)

So the more expensive wine is a Grand Cru wine, but having tasted a few over the past few days it doesn't matter what the quality of the grapes you need a good winemaker to get the good wine!

On the way back to the digs we walked through a rather pretty park

In the afternoon we visited Patriarche Pere et Fils a significant wine trader founded in 1796 who buy grapes from various winegrowers in Burgundy then mature the wine to their own standard and then retail it under the Patriarche brand

They have 5kms of vaulted cellars running deep under the streets of Beaune containing over 3,000,000 bottles of wine at various stages of maturation - the complex is very impressive

Included in the visit was tasting of approx. 14 different wines from around the region and having tasted the majority of them I didn't find one to my liking

The temperature was up again so we ventured back to the pool well attired in my new "speedos" only to run into another spot of bother - we placed all of our clothes and shoes etc. in a plastic shopping bag and attached it to the tray they provide which you hand in for safe keeping only to be informed that you couldn't hand in a bag - we could put the items individually in the tray and they would accept that but not if they were contained in a bag! Go figure - even the local lady who explained it to us thought the rule was idiotic or perhaps very French

Nevertheless the swim had the cooling effect desired even if by the time we got back to our accommodation another swim might have been nice!

Tomorrow we take the train to Lyon to have a look there.

Bonsoir

 

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Going for an eye test

The roosters had barely stretched their throats this morning before we were up and out.

On a Saturday Beaune has a well regarded street market and we wished to have a peek at it before we left town for the day so we strode across to it from our digs while they were still setting stalls up.

The stalls stretched approx. 800m down the street and into the very centre of the town, stalls which were displaying "stuff" of every description from clothes to shoes to chairs to mattresses to baskets and then the foodstuffs - cheeses, mustard, meat, poultry, vegetables, olives, breads, pastries - I think you will get the picture.

We only had time for a quickish stroll through the market as we had to be on the road by 9am but nevertheless we certainly picked up the flavour of a regular French street market.

When Sherry went to the eye specialist earlier this year she was talking to one of the attending optometrists, Brian, and in the conversation she discovered that he had a "holiday home" in Ancy-Le-Franc which was in the general area of our stay in Beaune.

It was loosely arranged between them that when we were in France later in the year we might make a visit.

During this past week we emailed Brian and invited ourselves to visit for the day an invitation he graciously accepted.

We arrived in Ancy-Le-Franc (ALF) at 10.30 and met him and his wife Lindsay at their 150 year old 3 storeyed typical French house in the village.

After introductions over coffee we them drove them to Noyers said to be the most beautiful village in Burgundy where there was another street market of bric-a-brac of all sorts of things of all sorts of ages.

The village itself had some attractive old buildings of the wood with cement infill type which were rather pleasant on the eye.

After walking among the stalls for an hour or so went to the restaurant Brian had booked at and then spent another hour or so over a very leisurely 2 course lunch accompanied by various liqueurs and a good Burgundy red.

Before leaving Noyers we had a look at the "lavoir" which was in use until the 1970s - the ladies of the village took their washing to the lavoir and washed it in the flowing water - thank God for washing machines!

Back to ALF to visit the Le Chateau d'Ancy le Franc which is a chateau in the Renaissance style built in the years between 1542 & 1550.

One of the reasons for the visit was the free wine tasting of numerous wines from the Burgundy region but I soon realised that if I kept on sipping I would be in no fit state to drive the car home.

The Chateau itself is quite outstanding as it is not as pretentious as some of the other chateaux we have visited and being in a small village there were no crowds.

A walk around the grounds looking at the 26 sculptures dotted through the gardens topped off the chateau visit.

Back to Brian and Lindsay's for a coffee before we said our goodbyes and we returned to Beaune arriving around 8pm with the temperature still at 28 degrees

Another enjoyable day in France!

P.S. Here is a did you know!

Did you know that you know approx 10,000 French words even though you can't speak French?

We were told that every English word that ends in "tion" apart from 3 is the same in French as it is in English!

 

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Holi-day

Today was a holiday day on our holiday as we didn't do too much today.

In the morning we visited the Musee du Vin, the museum that celebrates the wine industry that dominates the Cote D'Or and which the locals are naturally very proud of - we went into a "cave" (more on that in a later post) and the lady gave us quite a good background to wine pricing.

A locally produced quality wine solely from local grapes would retail for €100 plus and that has lead to wines produced from a mixture of grapes so that there are wines available for tourists around the €20 per bottle

The museum was interesting but most of the written material was in French which left us guessing to a certain extent regarding the significance and or age of some of the exhibits

,

An old wine press, various tools of trade and some very old wine bottles discovered in the area

What astounded us was that this industry has its roots in the years "before Christ"

Again there were numerous large tapestries adorning the walls - tapestry has featured numerous times in the telling of the historical stories that we have encountered.

After lunch it was a visit to the Notre Dame but the interior was nothing to get excited about being rather dull in comparison to other churches we have been to.

The rest of the afternoon was taken with Sherry spending some time (and a goodly proportion of our daily budget:)) at the Coiffure but the result suggests that both time and money was well spent!!

Tomorrow it is up early to go to the weekly Saturday market which is said to be a feature of Beaune life before we scoot 117kms back up the A6 towards Paris to meet up with an optometrist - more on that tomorrow.

 

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The spectacular

We became aware today that at around 10.30 each night during the summer season 7 sites around the city are illuminated.

We went out tonight to have a peek and our expectation was that it would be a static display - instead we were treated to the most spectacular outdoor visual experience we have seen

I tried to capture the essence of it on a couple of videos

The first is the Hospices building which I wrote about in today's earlier blog and can be found here

And the other longer video is the illumination of the Notre Dame and is available here

 

 

 

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Caring for others!

The day dawned fine but not too hot which was a pleasant surprise given the forecast.

We walked to the "Gare" to book tickets for a return train to Lyon on Monday to have a look around that city which is 138 road kms south of Beaune

The journey takes 1hr 44mins and the cost is a rather reasonable €40.80 each for the return trip

After obtaining some information from the Tourist Centre and a lunch in town we visited the Hotel-Dieu Des Hospices Civils de Beaune

The "Hospices" as it is commonly called was established in 1443 by Nicolas Rolin and his wife Guigone de Salins as a hospital for the poor which up until 1971 has been in constant use before moving to new premises leaving the Grande Salle des Povres, a lavishly decorated Paupers Ward with Gothic chapel, available for visitors

The Hospices were classified as a historic monument in 1862 and today is a rather interesting museum depicting how a hospital was run in the 15th century

In various areas of the complex are some quite breathtaking tapestries not the least being "Le Polyplyque du Jugement demier" dating back to the time the hospital was erected.

Because of generous benefactors over the centuries the Hospices have been able to develop a 63 hectare vineyard which enables it to hold annually the world's most famous wine auction on the third Sunday of November

The wine is sold in barrels and is not cheap!

After leaving the Hospices we then walked a couple of sections of the ramparts that encircle this walled inner city though it has to be said that it was not as interesting as the walls around York though we did see this rather unique "security device" designed to stop crims scaling a wall to gain entry

Here is a question for our Mr Key. If NZ is such an efficient dairy producer how is it that in France we can buy a litre of milk for €0.74 (i.e. $NZ1.22) when our "budget" milk sells in NZ for approx. $3.50 for 2 litres?

Also if we get sold the line that we need to pay export prices internally, if milk here is approx. $2.45 per 2 litres why are we not being asked to pay around that figure in NZ?

 

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