Into the Wine Caves...
Trip Start
Feb 28, 2011
1
18
80
Trip End
May 18, 2011
Beaune, Burgundy, France
Thursday, March 17, 2011
We continued to the train station, which was quite close. We then got on the train and yet again we got another free train ride! Here in France--unlike Italy--they haven't been stamping our Eurail passes and we have just been changing the dates on the tickets. In fact, they often times don't even look at both of our passes, they glance at one and walk away without even comparing our passports to the Eurail pass. The train was really empty and we had a whole 6 person cabin to ourselves, which I (Lauren), took full advantage of and stretched out and fell asleep after writing in my journal. I was woken up in an awful way by Sean shaking me saying, "Lauren I think we missed our stop!" The train switched directions and was going another way. Fortunately we had not missed it as Sean soon discovered after talking to the conductor.
We finally we made it to Beaune. We walked around the cold city that was enclosed in walls. The city was in the shape of a circle. We found the tourism office and was able to find out what not to miss. The area of Burgandy is known for their wines in France so we decided to take advantage of that and go to one of the many caves that store wine underground. We chose an English tour the lady at the tourism office suggested.
In order to get there we took a log cold walk across town! We walked up to the small building that didn't appear as large as it was on the inside. We were the only ones present for the tour so that was really nice so we could ask all the questions we wanted (especially me). We walked down several steps into a cave that stored about a hundred thousand bottles of wine. The bottles we crusted with mold and cobwebs especially those from 1934. The guy who gave us the tour really enjoyed his job and was the perfect person for us first time wine tourers. He had a passion for wine and gave me excitement. We tried about four different wines and they were all wonderful. They had two bottles from 1934 that sold for 1000€ each. We ended up buying that one, haha just kidding! But we did want to try it!
It was really interesting to learn everything about wine, in my opinion I now think the art of wine making is beautiful. There is so many variations in the ground conditions, climate, weather and the wine makers preference that creates an infinite possibilities of different wines from one small region. In Burgundy the only use two different types of grapes and make an endless amount of wine. They differentiate their wine not by the type of grape like we do in the US but by the location where the grape was picked. I thought this approach reveals much more about the wine then just calling it a "2006 Cabernet." I also learned that its more important to have a thin glass to drink your wine from than the style of the glass. I was always under the impression that you must drink different wine from different types of glasses.... Glad we did not fall for that one and register for all the different glasses because they sure did try to persuade us at bed bath and beyond! lol
After the wine tasting we took the next train to Dijon and met up with our next couch surfing host, Ben! We then, with a group of college students, went to our first McDonalds of the trip! OMG they LOVE McDonalds, it was so crowded. There were definitely some heavier people here than in Italy. You could purchase you order at a touch screen computer stationed in several places throughout the restaurant. I got a salad and Sean ordered some fries and a coke.
So that night we headed to the college part of town to grab a drink at a bar. It reminded me of Lawrence, lots of college students getting drunk. It was fun though to get to talk to Ben and his friends. They told us before we headed out that evening that St. Patties wasn't celebrated, but we ended up running into quite a few people who were celebrating the holiday. The night ended after a few drinks and we walked back to his place because we had just missed the hourly bus that runs at night, luckily I didn't have my heals on!
That concludes the night.
Much love,
Lauren and Sean
Comments
The part cracked me up where you said you could ask as many questions as you want and that you took full advantage! And the comment about Sean frantically waking you up thinking you missed your stop!!! hehe. I wish I like wine as much as you.. I feel uncool that I don't. Anyway I have to go read more!