Monday 10.4.2010


Sunny Colmar, Adieu

After the first rain-free day of our trip to date, we find the sun out again this morning. Leslie has gone to great pains to put out some cereal, pastries and beverages this morning but we have to remember that we’re in France and that’s breakfast. We get packed up and get luggage moving to the car. Well, actually, John has a long chat with Leslie about the business, living in France (she’s from San Francisco), light politics, family relationships etc. etc. while Mary and Pat get packed up and get the luggage moving to the car. In his defense, John gets the big bags down the stairs and out the door.


We spend another hour walking around Colmar before we hit the road. This is really a lovely, big-time tourist site. The German influence is all over town, and every building, even while connected to the next, has unique touches that make it interesting. There is a small canal that runs through a corner of the old town lined with historic buildings, canal-side restaurants and hundreds of flower boxes. St. Martin Cathedral, dating to the 13th century, sits like Jabba the Hutt in a big round mound in the center of the city. Around the corner is the Dominican Church which is almost as old and almost as large although longer and leaner. One of the big draws in the city is the Unterlinden Museum which documents the ping-pong history of the area as the French and Germans swatted it back and forth. We have to leave the museum for next time, but we agree this is an area where there could be a next time.

Our destination today is Beaune in the heart of the Burgundy wine region. The challenge is to program “Mademoiselle Monique Deneuve”, the Nav-Babe, the Chick on a Chip, hereafter referred to MMD, to get us to Beaune on scenic country roads without toll ways. We seem to be doing nicely for a while when the road gets a little bigger, and then a little bigger, and then there is a toll plaza ahead. We see no humans at any gate so manage to scrape together our E2.80 to feed into the machine and raise the bar. Our concern with tolls isn’t the money (although why not?) but it is the unfamiliarity with the procedure, and we would prefer to avoid the painful learning curve. We also prefer the smaller back roads.

We picked up sandwiches and chips before we left Colmar so pull into the next rest stop near Belfort to have a picnic and get a new plan. We reprogram MMD (Mother of Mass Desolation) to take us to an intermediate stop, Vesoul, that we find on a real map and then we reprogram again there. She again tries to get us back to the big highway so we stop and reprogram again to go to Gy and then on to Beaune. All of this actually does work and we have a nice afternoon driving through little villages and rolling countryside. We do get back on a four-lane nearing Beaune, but that works too and we wind up on the doorstep of our hotel at 6:00.


The front desk person shows us to our rooms on the 3rd floor (no elevator) and then directs John into a parking stall in a cave behind the hotel with the driver’s side 6 inches from the wall. He is covered with cave-dust when he gets to the room, but the bags have, once again, been delivered by the ladies. M and J’s room is huge with old log beams angling up to a timber ceiling, heavy solid wood doors, three dormer windows on the street side, and a massive bath with the toilet in another little room. Pat’s is a slightly smaller version of the same, but on the courtyard side of the hotel. Big TVs but no English stations, so maybe we can learn some French while here.

Many restaurants are closed on Monday night so the desk person gives a choice of three that she thinks will be ok. We walk a couple blocks to the first on her list and it seems a bit more formal than we are looking for after our day on the road. We walk back past an Italian that looks ok but is completely empty, never a good sign. The next restaurant is back the other way past the hotel and it is even more formal than the first. Finally we reverse course and test our luck with the Italian (ARome Italie Restaurant). Pat gets a beer while John and Mary get an Italian Wine (in Burgundy!!!!) because that’s all they offer. Mary and Pat both get the Macheronni pasta and John has the special Truffle and Parmesan Mousse. Unbelievable! The biggest flavors we have had on the trip so far, and the truffle-parmesan combination was an absolute explosion. Even Pat, who avoids big flavors like the black plague, enjoyed her multi-layered-flavored pasta. We got really lucky.

Back to bed at a reasonable hour with a late wake-up tomorrow.

Today’s weather: Sunny and warm in Colmar; cloudy and starting to drizzle in Beaune. Low 48, high 72.