Last French post ... for now!

I know, I know, I know - you are all dying with envy, so I'm not going to bore you with shots of devine countryside and fairybook châteaux - I'm saving the slideshow for a visit home - but I think I do need to share a few shots from our wine lovers' tour.


Les raisins pinot noir

Sally and I set out for the Bourgogne region south of Dijon on recommendations from various sources (including Richard in Mali, and Magali in Monpellier) and we were absolutely delighted to hit the slopes and get stuck into the great pinot noirs of France - hard to resist!


Sunset over the vines

The route des grands crus de Bourgogne winds through some of the most charming little villages in northern France and there are so many caves and so much to look at it is hard to decide where to stop.

Thank goodness we had Magali's top spot Domaine Lejeune in the village of Pommard as number one on the hit list. This family run business uses a mixture of traditional methods with some modern science to produce absolutely devine wines - but more importantly, the grand patriarch of the family began a tradition of sharing the knowledge through entertaining informal discussions and has passed on his knowledge over the years at the university - a true raconteur!


Resting on lies

So we did the tour twice - premièrement en français then, afterwards in English.


Domaine Lejeune picnic wine

We learnt all about how burgundy wines are classified, how well they age, who's who in the biz and best of all ...


Ooooo, I love a complex wine

... how good they taste! We'd met up with Paul in Dijon (and Barb is still crying because her beer loving bro' got to join us instead of her good self) ... and dragged him along for the ride.


The 1978 vintage

Unfortunately we weren't allowed to try the €300-a-bottle vintage - but we were allowed to look.

And no wine tour is complete without a picnic spot and picnic fixings, and by this stage Sally and I became dab hands at finding the markets, and ordering the finest fromages, pâtés de campagne, legumes, pains, boutouns de chèvre, pistaches - all the good things!


Faire des courses

So from la Bourgogne we headed west to the Loire Valley and sampled a whole new range of wines (and castles - sorry, saving those shots!) and vistas.


Wish it was our voiture

How can you complain if you're ambling through the vignobles in vintage green sports car on a sunny autumn afternoon?


Although the Megane was fine for us

Luckily we were pretty content in our highly electronic hire car, when the 'intuitive technology' didn't get the better of us. From Tours it was back to Paris via some wonderful towns, including Chartres where we stopped and filled up on medieval cathedrals and chili-flavoured chocolate - and also the unwonderful town of Palaiseau, just south of Orly, where we passed a very traumatising 45-minutes going around in circles and thinking we might get stuck there forever (it's that logical French sign-posting that I blame - sheesh!)

After a crazy trip back in to Paris from the périphérique and battling peak hour on the metro to find our hotel, we eventually managed to catch up with Annette to reminisce about the old times in Antony's class at the Alliance Français de Melbourne and that promise we made to meet up again in Paris!


Antony's girls!