Catching up now that we have a decent internet signal. Tuesday we visited Beaune. It's a sweet little town that is known as the wine capital of Burgundy in the Cote d'Or. The highlight of the day was a visit to the Hotel Dieu a charity hospital founded in 1442 which continued to serve its patients until the 1980s. It was initially funded by one of the Dukes of Burgundy and staffed by an order of nuns as a place for the poor to find care, but they became known as such good care providers that noble people also wanted to be patients there. So while the funding came initially from the Duke, it was augmented later by gifts from grateful patients and their families. In particular they were gifted with vineyards, the income from which supported the institution down through the centuries. Other gifts included some extraordinary artworks, many of which are still on display there ( I didn't try to take pictures of them, but you can see some of them at www.hospices-de-beaune.com)
The large ward for the common folk has beds along both walls and a chapel at the end. Those beds typically had 2 people in each with no regard to gender of the occupants. The nobles had a separate room with larger beds and each got his or her own. The nuns provided care and food. Because it was expensive to pay the lay pharmacist, nuns eventually trained in pharmacy as well - some of the first women to do so. There was a river running under the hospital into which all the refuse could be deposited and carried away by opning one of the trap doors in the floor. I could have spent many more hours there since it is also a kind of medical museum where you can see the developments of techniques and instruments through the centuries.
After our visit to the Hotel Dieu we went to a local wine merchant's cellar where we had a wine tasting and talk followed by lunch in a local restaurant.
Yesterday we lunched at Cafe Sillon where we had oignons farci served with fennel on a bed of pimento puree, hangar steak with purple potato puree and carrots, and poached cod with pickled radishes and braised baby onions There were other flourishes, but I can't remember them. Should have asked for a copy of the menu.
Later in the day we walked from Vieux Lyon to the Brasserie Georges. After about 20 minutes of walking we stopped to be sure of directions. The lady we asked told us to keep going on that street and then up and around the train station, or perhaps she said under the station or through it? None of us was completely certain. She initially told us it was quite far to walk, but when she looked down at our (of course sensible) shoes she changed her mind and said that we had "chaussres bon" so we could probably make it. When we got closer, we could see the restaurant and the station, but also a 4-lane highway with on and off ramps between us and it. We ended up climbing over a wall, sidling through a parking lot, trying to stay against the wall of the ramps, and eventually having to negotiate across several lanes of hyped up commuters trying to get home. Quite an adventure for these 60 year old legs. Linda kept trying to be the voice of reason, but John and I dragged her along. Eventually we got there intact (though our clothes looked a little worse for wear).
Our reward was an old fashioned dinner in an Art Deco beer-hall/restaurant from the 19th century with hearty peasant cuisine my Alsatian grandmother would have approved of. Among the dishes were seafood bisque (which evidently involves a laborious process of simmering and then pulverizing the shells), poached smoked pike over creamed lentils, wine braised beef, quenelles (fish mousse dumplings), broiled trout, floating island, and frozen nougat. The most interesting dish to me was the french onion soup which came with a glass of egg yolk whisked into madeira. The waiter lifted up the corner of the cheese layer on top of the soup and added the egg- madeira mixture to the soup below so that the egg yolk gets cooked in the soup. Good eats and great company.
Later on in our bus and walking tour, we visited the oldest part of the town (not counting the Roman ruins). It's got the narrow, winding streets we've become familiar with, but it's also got a distinctive feature - traboules and miraboules. Traboules are passageways through occupied buildings that connect one steet to another. According to our gude, as the town grew more populous,there was a need for more streets, but the town was already laid out and there was no room for new ones so they built the traboules into the allready existing grid as a way of moving more people and goods through the town. Latler, during WWII, the Resistance used the network of passageways to evade the Nazis. Some a now abandoned or used for storage, but we were able to walk through a few, including one that is actually a mirabole - because it opens into a coirtyard. The one we visited is famous for it's red tower that rises upfrom the miraboule courtyard.
Monday we took a bus tour of Lyon. Visited the basilica on the hill which we'd only seen from a distance the day before. It was a spectacular church with stunning mosaic work and a beautiful crypt below ( in the picture). Then we saw the "Mural of Lyon Life". There are a number of murals around town, decorating the blind walls of buildings, but this one is most famous depicting notable citizens of Lyon through the ages and incorporating trompe l'oeil images of shop facades. Around the corner is a more ordinary one, bur interesting to me because it incorporated 2 actual windows amongst the fake ones.
Wednesday was a travel day. We made the acquaintance of Bruno, our taxi driver who is a big fan of NYC and wanted restaurant recommendations in Brooklyn for an upcoming trip. When I told him I'd email him some, he took 3 euros off the fare! The TGV (Train de Grands Vitesse ) was very fast indeed and we were in Avignon just about 30 minutes later. Linda fell in love with the Avignon train station and spent a considerable time photographing it so I'll let her post about that.we arrived safely at our boat in Avignon and went for a wander in the town once we'd settled in.
None of the people I've met who've been to Provence have mentioned Le Mistral. I knew the word and had a vague romantic idea of some sort of seasonal winds that blow down across the lavender fields, but I had no clue how fierce these winds are or that they affect the region on average 100 days out of the year. We first noticed them at Notre Dame de la Garde where they were crazy wild, blowing us off balance and making it a little frightening to walk too close to the railings on the hillside plaza. Linda was taking a picture for a fairly conservative looking Muslim couple. She said she had to stop and tuck her shirt in so as not to flash them as the winds blew up (she would like her mom to know that she did in fact tuck her shirt in so no harm). Later that night we were eating in a restaurant back down by the harbor and the winds started to rattle the the windows and blow the fabric roof of the eating area around in a threatening way, as well as picking up and tossing fairly large pieces of debris outside. Walking home, we had to lean into the wind in order to make headway. At lunch the next day, we were sitting at a cafe in a courtyard when the wind picked up our neighbor's lunch and dumped it into her lap ( this was a ceramic plate, not a paper one). I said I knew about vol au vent, but I'd never seen salad au vent before. Later that afternoon, the little bird we were watching almost got blown off the wall by the wind. Our planned cruise to the Calanques (Mediterraneann fjords) the next day was canceled due to the winds and the ferris wheel in town shut down for the day because it wasn't safe to run it. The sound the wind made blowing through the spokes of the wheel kept making me think there was a sporting event nearby because I thought I was hearing a crowd roaring.
So I have a new respect for Le Mistral. People here seem to take it in stride, but it is definitely a force to be reckoned with.
After our bus tour we headed into Le Panier, one of the oldest quarters of the city. Winding streets, long stairway walks, lovely little plazas, teeny cafes tucked into ancient buildings and artist's workshops made for an enjoyable afternoon of exploring. Afterward we had a much needed bit of cafe sitting where
Linda made a new friend.