today

August 8^th

Jim and I had a great day today. We awoke in this outstanding “hotel” Le Home in Beaune. For burgundy wine novices, this is the heart of burgundy, the Cotes d’Or, with Cotes de Nuits, Cotes de Beaune, Maconnais, Cote Chalonnaise, and Chablis While yesterday seemed sunny during the drive, today was tempestuous, windy cloudy mixed with the light misty rain, so we opted out of biking. We had the breakfast de rigueur, café, croissant or bread with cheese and jam, and (packaged) applesauce. I was able to speak with Hotel Tomaseaux and learn my "sac a dos" was mailed out today, hopefully to Avignon.

We then took off in our Ford C-max and Jim spied a Feuvert store looking electronic, and we tried for the convertor. It was a car supplies store but the gentleman directed us to “bricorama,” where we found our adaptor for 3.80 euro, the best buy I have made, and then squirreled away a fake terracotta plastic planter as a cooler and a tarp for a picnic undersurface.  We then saw a sign to the very label we had tasted to we followed the route. The skies were still full of fury, and tried an RS site, closed, but open at Corton Andre and a separate small cav first.

At Corton Andre

We waltzed in and the usual bristlie-ness prevailed at first but melted away as we spoke. We bought a few from each and then decided to do the vin Sensations course that RS recommended.

Our spanish classmates at Vin Sensations

We had a great class, after a carousel side picnic, sans tarp/cooler. We then decided vin, even if only tasted had to take a break. We found some lavender sachets (hand sewn in France,) and a beautiful Provence jacquard yellow and orange pici-nic cloth with napkins, and temporarily separated we both bought serrated couteaux for the bread and cheese. We re-located one another and went to the Hotel-Dieu museum, a charity hospital built by a financially fortunate merchant and his wife in their twilight years hoping to gain redemption??

Hotel-Dieu

Nonetheless, still really fabulous. Then to the recommended Athenaeum book store, where we found references for the knowledge we had gained in the wine tasting course in the afternoon and decided salad for dinner was what we needed. We found a bon marche and had a nice repast, with a petit peu du vin and took our laundry to the launderette for the evening entertainment, about all you can handle after all that wine tasting. Even if you spit the most of it, still some of the 4+5+9 tastes goes down, a tiny swallow, but some and well you can imagine. So now I am charging up. I had wifi connection but it has lapsed. Jim is reading one of our purchased books and I think I will close this page.