Dijon

Managed to cough my way through the night so keep telling myself that I am getting better. Awoke to grey skies and rain with forecast of about 19 degrees. Breakfast had and then a 9am walk through the main streets of Dijon, led by our guide Laura. Very pretty park opposite our hotel. Light rain when we headed out, but it soon stopped so that was good.

Dijon is really quaint with lots of winding streets and of course the essential city square. Something I didn’t previously know is that although the name Dijon is synonymous with mustard, the mustard seeds are not from here at all. They are from Saskatchewan. It’s the recipe for the mustard that came from here! So there’s your bit of trivia for today.
Also, as we wander about the city there are little brass ‘triangles’ with an owl emblem on them that show a walking path for tourists to follow. If there is a larger ‘plaque’of an owl on the footpath or road it signifies a particular point of interest. What a great way encouraging tourists to see the place and what it has to offer. you can get maps of routes to follow from the Tourist office.

There is an optional tour later this morning to Beune that J is off to, but I have decided to stay in Dijon and do my own thing. First chore on my list is to find a laundromat. The lass at Reception attempts to give me directions to the supposed closest one, but I’ve checked on Google and reckon I can locate one closer. As it turns out, it was closer too, except I turned left instead of right when I headed off armed with 2 bags of dirty clothes, so ended up taking twice as long as it should have! Be that as it may, a light rain had started to fall, but thankfully I finally happened upon my laundromat so in I ventured. Thank goodness there was a young fellow already inside, as all the instructions were in French, and as much as I understood how to operate the washing machine, I couldn’t for the life of me work out how to pay for anything via a separate machine. The fellow didn’t speak much English and my high school French wasn’t coming in very handy unless I wanted to tell him that my pen is on the table and the name of my aunt! However with some gesticulating on my part, shrugging of shoulders on his, I finally had success and my washer woman duties were underway. I thanked him profusely. He had left before I needed to use the dryer, but by then I was pretty confident that I had sufficient skills to start up my own French laundrette. Mission finally accomplished so as I fluff and fold our clean clothes and place them inside our laundry bags I have to head back to the hotel in the rain!
Quick trip back to our room and I make myself a coffee and have my lunch. I then decide that I need to get outside in the fresh air again as it has stopped raining so wander back into the city and have a lovely time wandering about, nowhere in particular. Back to the hotel to have a read of the kindle and then J arrives back, cold and wet as she had been wandering about some of her tour in heavy rain, poor love!
We have a bit of time to put our feet up before we head out to an optional tour of a vineyard and dinner. There are 14 of us doing tonight’s dinner. Our fabulous driver Ramzi, drives our coach through narrow winding little streets of various small villages as we make our way to Fixin. On arrival we are met by Phillippe who is third generation owner of the land. At the entrance to his cellars is the villages one bread making oven ‘Fourbanal’. Apparently bread was and still is, highly valued in France so back ages ago it was only one wealthty prominent person in each village who had and operated the Fourbanal. It takes about a week to slowly get it to the right temperature so once each month the locals would bring their bread dough along for it to be baked in the Fourbanal, often at very high prices. As luck would have it, next weekend is a celebration of this process so the Fourbanal was already being heated and the man who is now in charge of it, showed up just as we arrived. My best way of understanding it is that rather than it be
like a big pizza oven where the heat from the oven base working up from the bottom does much of the cooking, this system relies on the radiant heat cooking the bread dough from all around it. If I’ve confused you, then look it up on google...

But back to Phillipe...He has 45 hectares of land but it is not in one large block. There are plots all over the place. I think he has about 14 in different villages. Some are on the flat and others higher up on rolling small hills. He does a great job of explaining the vine growing process as we wander about some of his vineyards. France is extremely heavily regulated re grape growing and production. There is no such thing as a co-op amongst the farmers. It’s every vintner for themselves.
We head back into the large sheds where the vats are kept and then shown the underground barrel storage area and bottling rooms. All very interesting and Phillippe is very entertaining in his explanations of the process.

We then go into a separate 16th century wine cellar for a tasting session. Between each tasting we are served what I know as cheese puffs, and they are lovely. Not being a red wine drinker, the red wines are wasted on me, but clearly Phillippe knows his stuff. We then are invited into his family home built in 1645. His wife Martine is our cook and she has laid out 2 lovely long tables for our group, where J and I are pleased to find ourselves sitting at the ‘better’ table considering who our fellow table mates were.

We started our meal with a fresh garden salad and a glass of white wine which was right up my alley. Our main meal was a baked chicken in a light mustard, cream, white wine and Parmesan cheese sauce along with a grilled tomato, carrots and a pilaf rice. All lovely, but I couldn’t eat it all. Red wine was served throughout the rest of dinner, so J and Terry who is Canadian but I forget exactly from where, were only too happy to share my glass. Dessert was stewed cherries in red wine with home made ice cream but I didn’t have that either as I was already full up to pussy’s bow, however I was happy enough to drink the sparkling white wine, plus J’s share. Lots of laughs at our table during the evening and unsurprisingly J and I got the most laughs! We couldn’t leave until we did some wine purchasing so are now set for our next few night’s happy hours in our room, something we haven’t been doing so far... and come to think of it, this could well have been a contributing factor to why I have been poorly! A lack of happy hour...
A very merry coach trip back to the hotel, as Laura puts on some easy listening music that J instantly encourages all to get involved with some bus karaoke. As luck or otherwise would have it, Abba’s Dancing Queen is played,so I’m happy to join in. We eventually get back to our hotel and bid all a good night, which it most certainly has been.
My sinuses are still blocked but at least the constant dry cough has lessened considerably so I’m feeling much better and hope to continue in the direction. and also, I forgot to mention earlier, we have all been given Martine’s cheese puff recipe so I reckon I might give that airing at a futures Princess event.