Summary
Packed up our stuff and departed Lyon in our newly rented, peacock blue, Ford Kuga. Took the A6 Autoroute north thru Burgundy. These major highways are great for getting from A to B quickly but don’t offer photo stops. So you’ll just have to imagine the beauty of a medieval fortress on the top of a hill surrounded by fields with white cows, green grapevines and vibrant yellow rape seed (for canola oil). So pretty! We drove the Route des Grands Crus de Bourgogne, passed Dijon, Macon and Beaune and ended up on the outskirts of the lovely little town of Semur-en-Auxois, our home for the next 3 nights. Petit Chablis in the hotel bar then a delicious dinner at a restaurant in the town of Pont.
Details
By the time we’re awake Ron and Nancy are gone. We message. They got to the airport quickly and are just waiting for their flight.
We pack and clean. I walk/tram to the train station to pick up our next rental car. This will be car number two of three for the trip. I received an email two days ago from Hertz. It said our car was all set and included photos from every angle (proof for later if the vehicle comes back scratched or dented. “It was impeccable when you got it!” On my trip to the train station/rental car office I see that the outdoor market, across from our VRBO, is finally in full swing. Every spot is taken and there are trucks lined up between us and the market, parked as close to their booth as possible.
At the Hertz office I was handed a slip of paper with the number of the parking space for our car: 3179. Up on level 3, after much searching, I realize they miswrote the number. It should have said 3079.
Our car is an automatic, yay. A bright blue Ford Kuga with all the newest bells and whistles. Also Yay.
When we got to Lyon we found there were oodles of parking spots near our apartment entrance. Unpacking was easy. Today there are less than no parking spots nearby. That is to say, a row of big trucks are double parked. That actually works out well as I can also be double parked and no one will bat an eyelash. I hope.
Using WhatsApp, I call Karen and she’s OK to “elevator” down our bags. This wasn’t the plan but hopefully it’ll work. I do dash upstairs briefly to drop my key and give one last ‘look-see’ to ensure we haven’t left anything. Soon we’re on our way. We message our host to let him know we’re out.
It’s Sunday but there’s lots of traffic. Lot’s of people headed to the autoroute. Soon we’re out of town, zipping north on the A6.
After taking a ticket for the toll road, I press the accelerator and the car just crawls. Cars whiz by as we creep slowly over to the shoulder. I press buttons and retry this “please accelerate” thing. No change. I treat the car like any other complex electronic device (i.e., I turn it off and back on) and it’s working again. Shaken, we press on, leery.
It’s a fairly quick two plus hours to our destination, the medieval town of Semur-en-Auxois.
We do stop at one of the autoroute rest stops. It has gas (which we don’t need) and parking, food, and importantly bathrooms. I again try to figure out why the car weirded out earlier. On my way back from the men’s room I stop for a quick coffee. How French! There are banks of uniform, inviting, futuristic looking coffee machines lining the walls on either side of my path through the store.
I tap the glass and get a series of choices. Beverage? caf/decaf? strength? size? sugar? how much sugar? brand of accompanying biscuit? I make my selections and pay (card or cash) and my biscuit drops into a small tray. The machine whirs and whines as my small coffee is brewed. I see how I can additionally retrieve a wooden stir stick, if needed. This is important stuff. Lots of thought went into the design of this machine. Most importantly, no humans are needed, real time, to make my coffee or take my money. Ah, progress!
As we get closer to Semur-en-Auxoise, GPS guides us off the Autoroute. I give back my ticket and tap my phone to pay the toll. Now on a smaller, more quaint road, we cross back and forth over the narrow Canal of Burgundy, the superhighway of its day. We see bright yellow fields of rape seed flowers (canola oil).
In a field by the road are small groups of identical large cows standing around. They’re all a uniform creamy white other than a big wide horizontal black smile across their backside. It’s a bit comical.
At our hotel (Hostellerie d’Aussois) we’re the third car in the parking lot. In the lobby are the gentleman behind the desk and a lady vacuuming the carpet. We guess those are the other two cars. Perhaps we’re the only guests here tonight? We have the hotel to ourselves? We’ll be given the best room?
Monsieur photocopies our passports and asks about our dinner plans, ie do we need help with a reservation. The hotel restaurant is an obvious choice but it’s closed on Sundays. He suggests somewhere else that sounds good and makes a reservation for us.
For the next half hour he provides an encyclopedic amount of information about Semur-en-Auxois, what to do, where to go, how to get there, etc etc. Since we speak some French he think we understand everything perfectly. We smile, nod, and say “Ah, bon…”
We eventually get to our room. It’s smallish. The view out the window is an enormous earth moving machine. Perfectly centered in our view. Hm. We unpack and I head to the bar to blog. Karen won’t be far behind. Of course I’m the only one there. The man behind the desk follows me into the bar to see if I need a drink (this is France). Absolutely, but maybe in a half hour. First I need to ‘work’ a bit.
After Karen joins me, and enough ‘work’ has been done, I reach out to Monsieur for a couple of glasses of wine. Given where we are, Petit Chablis is the obvious choice.
At dinner time we pile back into our blue Ford Kuga and head to Le Pari des Gourmets in the nearby village of Pont. The claim to fame there is the reservoir used to keep the Canal du Bourgogne at a decent level.
Like our experience at the hotel, at the restaurant we’re the only ones here. Maybe we’ll have company in a bit. At our place setting is the menu, a rolled up leather scroll. How medieval. Near by is a cube, laser cut, with a QR code on three of the six sides. The leather scroll menu offers choices and prices. The QR codes will take you to a website with the menu in multiple languages with explanations, pictures, histories, etc. whew! How modern!
Karen’s starter is burrata on a soup of strawberry, black olive and tomato. Mine is a 3D single egg soufflé, mi-cuit centre, on a soup of velouté grannie smith apple and other yummy things. Both are delicious. Plats are haddock for Karen and the vegetarian for me. Mine is multi-ancient grain risotto with finely diced veggies, thick broth, and two colors of asparagus. Both were borderline divine. The 6.50€ glasses of accompanying wine were also very good. I shudder to think what such a meal would set us back in Austin.
Back at the room Karen suspects we are short “one piece” of luggage. From the US we brought, among many other things, a smart rectangular soft sided cooler full of medicines and remedies, should we need them. This includes a two month supply of the plastic arm leeches Karen wears to monitor her blood glucose level. Not cheap. Once in Europe we transfered all of that into a big plastic bag and presto-change-o, we have a cooler (and, groan) one more piece of luggage of which to keep track.
Upon doing some amateur forensic in-room investigations we agree the bag-o-meds is not with us. :-/ Whoops!
Photos
[Note: to view the photos in chronological order, start at the bottom :-/ ]
