Leftovers...

Glancing through my photos from the past couple of weeks and finding a few that didn't make it into previous posts, but are perhaps worth brief comment.

I stayed at the Hotel Mulia Senayan, one of the nicest hotels I've ever visited.

A small portion of the enormous lobby. The hotel has nearly a thousand rooms, six high-end restaurants, a couple of lounges, shopping, spa services, and on and on - they don't make 'em like this anymore, at least not in North America. In addition to the impressive physical plant, the hotel boasted impeccable service - I was frequently greeted by name, and always with a smile.



My very comfortable room.



A night time view of the rooftop spa, located next to an Olympic-sized pool, and overlooking the city. On this same level there's a poolside bar/restaurant, a spa, and a health club.



The view from my room, day and night, looking south toward the cluster of office towers, high-rise malls, and hotels of the Senayan district. At rush hour (pretty much any time other than between 10 PM and 6 AM) it can take a half hour to get from my hotel to those buildings.





One of my co-workers was nice enough to take me to Sunda Kelapa, a 17th century harbor from which traditional two-masted pinisi schooners still transport cargo from Java to the islands of Sulawesi and Kalimantan. I'm not a boat guy, but it was really cool to see these working vessels. The manual labor required to load them: not so fun. Notice the gangplanks, which are literally notched planks. There are a few small cranes and forklifts on the dock, but all the actual loading is done manually, by the ethnic Bugis and Makassarese sailors who crew the ships. We didn't stay long, but I really enjoyed seeing this fascinating, anachronistic place.

Cusco

We bid farewell to Ollantaytambo on Saturday morning with a leisurely breakfast at El Albergue, and then hopped in a van to drive back through the Sacred Valley to Cusco. To our surprise, the hotel paired us up with another couple who were headed to the same hotel at the same time. And to our amusement, they were Oregonians.

We wound our way up through the same landscape we saw a few days before, but we were no less amazed by it than we were the first time. The sky is impossibly vivid against the pink hills. Women walk donkeys and pigs on leashes. Children cradle baby goats in well-worn slings. Old ladies in traditional native dress sit on the side of the road, shaded by anachronistic billboards for cell phones or cheap beer. Electrical transmission towers are the only real indication that life is any different in these small towns than it was a hundred years ago

Things are different in Cusco.

Cusco was the capital of the Inca Empire. It's nearly a thousand years old, and almost half a million people live here. It's bigger in every way than its neighbors.

There are two things a typical traveler will notice right away:

1. There's not a whole lot of oxygen in the air. At an average altitude of about 11,000 feet, Cusco is not the highest city in the area, but it IS the highest one in which you're likely to sleep.

2. It's very hilly. Absolutely everything is uphill or downhill from where you are.

We saved Cusco for the end of our stay in the Sacred Valley area to give ourselves a chance to acclimatize. Melissa's been taking diamox to speed up the process-- a godsend since she gets an altitude headache in Santa Fe. Steve's allergic to sulfa drugs, so diamox was not even an option. Other than tiring out faster than we would at sea level, we've been blissfully unaffected by the headaches and nausea that sometimes plague visitors to Cusco.

We checked into El Balcon, a beautiful old home with a dachshund and weimaraner in matching sweaters, and a parrot who taunts them from the leafy apple tree that shades the inn's courtyard. Then we met the couple in the next room-- more Oregonians!

Our room is ten stairs up from the courtyard. A tiny Peruvian man hoisted our enormous suitcases up on his back, while we lumbered up behind him. Every step felt like twenty. Feeling completely pathetic, we ducked into the hotel dining room for a taste of local medicine-- coca tea.

Coca tea (mate de coca to the locals) is a simple preparation of dried, whole coca leaves soaked in near-boiling water. It's a stimulant, and (supposedly) increases oxygen absorption in the blood. It also (supposedly) aids digestion and reduces intestinal gas. Win-win-win! While there is a very small amount of cocaine in the tea, it won't get you stoned. It's illegal to bring the leaves into the U.S., so don't expect any herbal souvenirs.



After our tea, we set out to explore Cusco. We pointed ourselves downhill to the Plaza de Armas, and our legs mostly cooperated.



Everywhere in the Sacred Valley, someone wants to sell you something. In Cusco, it's unrelenting, and the density of street peddlers increases markedly with proximity to the Plaza de Armas. At almost every door, a young woman jumped out to offer "Señorita, manicure?" or "Señor, (wink) massage?" Artists approach with their portfolios. Old ladies in bright, new traditional clothing, and children with baby goats in newish, mass-produced slings offer to pose for a picture for a small "propina". They're caricatures of the people in the Sacred Valley-- Las Vegas Show Incas playing their parts.

We left the Plaza de Armas, and found a kinder, gentler square a few blocks from the madness. Plaza Regocio was also lined with cafes and souvenir shops, but there were very few tourists, and therefore, very few hawkers. We eventually made our way to Chez Maggy-- a highly recommended pizzeria, and one of the older restaurants in the area. Dinner was good, cheap, and a fun change of pace.

That was Saturday. Sunday in Cusco is all about the World Cup. We're hanging out at Mr. Beans, a small, charming bar that's attached to the brand spanking new Hotel Brituvian. Brituvian is a joint venture between Brit Cliff Morris and his Peruvian wife Mariela Rodriguez. Cliff wasn't the first expat we've met here.

Walking near the ruins alone near Ollantaytambo, Melissa met Winn. Steve was sipping a latte at... wait for it... Incabucks. Winn traveled from North Carolina to the Sacred Valley seven months ago. She met Wow, a Quechua-speaking native whose family traces their roots in Ollanta to the Incas. Winn opened an inn, Casa de Wow, just a few days ago. Wow is an artisan, and makes all the furniture and textiles for the guest rooms. And there were others. The hostess at a restaurant where we ate lunch was Canadian. The waiter with blondish dreadlocks at another restaurant was from Barcelona. As Winn explained, local businesses "love to hire gringos because they're trustworthy". As sensitive liberal-ish Pacific Northwesterners, we sort of hate that description, but it's impossible to ignore reality here. There's poverty, there's desperation, there's purse-snatching, and there's plenty of counterfeit cash passing around, even from established businesses who clearly know what they're handing you.

We saved our phony 10 soles note as a souvenir.

Location:Tambo De Montero,Cuzco,Peru

On vacation - finally!

Had our last breakfast at the Doubletree El Pardo before heading to the airport. Check-in was tedious but uneventful, and we got to our gate in plenty of time. Our hour-long flight was equally uneventful, although it was fun to fly from the never-ending fog bank of Lima into the sunshine of the Andes. Our plane circled past a number of impressively jagged peaks before landing at Cusco’s charmingly low-tech airport. It’s nice to occasionally experience a place that isn’t quite at the cutting edge of 21st century technology.

Not that Cusco isn’t trying. After meeting the driver from our hotel in Ollantaytambo, we drove into the center of town to pick up tickets for Machu Picchu and it’s clear that Cusco is riding a boom of tourism-driven wealth. There’s new construction and refurbishment everywhere, and the town is bustling with tourist-related businesses – restaurants, adventure tour companies, bars, and internet cafes… it’s reminiscent of Boulder or Zermatt or any other outdoor-oriented sports town. Lots of robust outdoorsy types to go along with the typical hippie trail backpacker crowd.

In short order we were on our way out of town. The road climbs steeply to the north as you leave the Cusco basin, past more and more construction. Unlike the true shanty towns that border Lima to the south, these dwellings – although by no means luxurious – appear more working-class in nature. We saw lots of kids in school uniforms and backpacks returning home as we passed. At the crest of the basin, intense construction stopped and we moved into an agricultural zone of scattered farms and ranches.

We followed a river valley for several miles, then turned right and immediately began climbing again, topping out at the town of Chinchero at about 12,500 feet. The road meandered through high plateau land with fantastic views of surrounding glaciated peaks, then began its descent to the Urubamba River valley, over a vertical mile below. This is the famous Sacred Valley, home to the Incas and the site of countless archaeological wonders. We caught occasional glimpses of ancient terraces and other examples of the amazing stonework for which the Incas are famed.



The road from Urubamba wound along the river, through groves of eucalyptus and bamboo, past small pastures and fields, lots of stone walls (ancient and modern) to the bustling town of Ollantaytambo. Like Cusco, Ollanta is enjoying a boom economy, and this formerly quiet Inca village is full of the sounds of construction. The main square, unfortunately, is a major construction zone right now.

Our hotel, located perhaps a quarter mile downhill from the town proper is also the Ollantaytambo train station. They've added on to the original station building and now have about a dozen beautifully simple, spacious, and comfortable rooms. The hotel also boasts a nice restaurant and an espresso bar that serves delicious coffee drinks - even at 5 AM, which is handy, since we'll be on the platform about that time tomorrow morning.

The Geeky Joy of Planning

For me, much of the pleasure of travel comes from planning the next trip. The wealth of information available online just enhances that anticipatory pleasure. These days, in addition to getting the nuts-and-bolts info that was formerly available via Fodor’s and other travel books, I can use TripAdvisor to easily compare consumer reviews of restaurants, hotels, and tourist attractions. I can incorporate suggestions from viaMichelin.com to devise the perfect road trip through France. And I can use Google Maps and Google Earth to see actual images of places I’ll be visiting.

As I’ve been researching our destinations in Peru, I’ve come across yet another online resource that just knocks me out: Google has partnered with Panoramio.com to provide an enormous amount of user-provided photo content to their maps. Individuals can upload landscape photos of everything from the Eiffel Tower to their own backyard, and can quickly associate those photos with the specific spot from which they were taken. I’ve uploaded pictures of street scenes and tied them to the precise spot where I was standing when I took the photo. That content then becomes visible to anyone else who uses Google Street View to look at that location.

The concept becomes really fascinating when multiple users contribute similar photos. As you can imagine, we weren’t the first people to snap a photo of the pyramid in front of the Louvre. And as more and more users upload their pics of that same location, some sort of magic happens behind the scenes at Google Maps that overlaps those photos, creating a sort of montage through which you can navigate from one shot to another. It’s an incredibly cool effect: you virtually pan through a scene, and seasons change, night follows day, all sorts of transient factors happen while the primary subject of the scene remains unchanged.



Click on the screen shot above and you'll see what I mean: each of the arrow icons on the borders of the photo are links to other related pics. The round bubble-looking icons inside the body of the photo are also links that "zoom" to a similar photo taken closer to the subject. The large carat icons on the bottom of the photo move you forward and backward in the indicated directions. Finally, the big transparent trapezoid represents a the rectangular frame of another photo taken from a slightly different perspective. And to bring context to this whole wacky thing, in the lower right hand corner, a small map displays where you're standing and what direction you're looking. Initially confusing, this whole concept is quickly mastered, and allows you to virtually walk down the streets of Paris (not to mention a whole host of other locations).

Anyway, the point here is that there are all sorts of emerging technologies that enhance the whole experience of travel. We’ve arranged lodging in the tiny village of Ollantaytambo, Peru and reserved seats on the train to Machu Picchu, all without lifting a finger off our keyboard. Pretty amazing, and pretty darn fun.

Zermatt to Strasbourg, Day Nine.

En route from Zermatt, Switzerland to Colmar, France, our navigation system asked us to drive on to a train. We resisted at first, but a kindly toll-booth operator told us in flawless English: GPS knows best!

Switzerland has one of the best systems of roads we've ever seen, with endless kilometers of perfectly smooth highways. In the mountains, they've constructed a series of options for travelers to shave hours off certain trips. There are tunnels, bridges, and trains, all with fairly high tolls, that cut right through mountains instead of looping around them. Thrilled at the idea of shaving 90 minutes off our drive to Alsace and having more time to spend in the region, we paid a $25 toll and drove our rental car on to an "auto train". The open-air train holds a single row of cars and nothing else. You drive on, engage your handbrake, turn off the engine, and the train does the rest. At first it felt like a gentle ride at Disneyland. Then the train moved into the tunnel-- a tunnel with no lights whatsoever.

And that’s how it continued: approximately 20 minutes of utter blackness, accompanied by the clacking roar of the train. We sat bemusedly in the dark until suddenly we emerged into bright sunshine and stopped. In less than a half hour of total elapsed time, we cut an hour and a half of driving – around 150 km – by means of a single 15 km tunnel. It’s known as the Lötschberg Tunnel, built over a seven year period from 1906 to 1913. Since diesel costs over a Euro per liter, and since we have been averaging a bit over 6 liters per 100 kilometers, our gas savings alone were about 10 euros – add in the time savings and the toll-booth operator was right: our GPS gave us some good advice on this one.

We continued to roll down through the Alpine foothills and into the rolling hills that make up much of Switzerland’s northern half.
We crossed over the Rhine River into the Alsace region of France and made our way to the small city of Colmar – a previously unknown destination, but one that was recommended by a couple of our European friends. Colmar lost its "hidden gem" status the moment we learned it had not one but two Sephora stores. Sephora's a plague on the landscape here, like McDonald's, and it's such a massive bummer to see one built into the ground floor of an otherwise beautiful old building. Nevertheless, the Germanic, half-timbered, car-free center of town was a scenic place to spend the afternoon. Thanks to our Rick Steves guidebook, a map, and a little help from our phone's GPS, we found L'un Des Sens, a delightful wine bar hidden on one of Colmar's winding side streets. We needed a break from meat, so we ordered a cheese plate and what looked like a salad on the day's chalkboard. The owner explained that it was not a salad but rather "seasonal vegetable caviars". We couldn't imagine what that meant, but we were interested to give it a try. We mentioned that we liked Riesling, so she also asked if she could select some wines for us. Her choices were excellent. One young German, one older Alsatian. The vegetable "caviars" were like pestos... or tapenades... one was made with juicy olives. Another had tomato and oregano. One had zucchini, another had eggplant, and our absolute favorite with a bright red pepper "caviar" that was similar to romanesco. The cheese plate included Delice de Pommard, a cheese that we'd never had before this trip but has quickly become one of our favorites. It's a triple cream goat cheese rolled in mustard seeds, and the piquancy of the mustard is beautifully balanced by the freshness and richness of the cheese. Our fingers are crossed that we can find this one at home.

We said goodbye to L'un Des Sens and then stopped at Pâtisserie GILG for macarons. We weren't sure how long it would take to get to Strasbourg in Friday afternoon traffic, so Melissa decided to give Colmar's pay toilet a whirl. Yup, she's in there in the picture. It's an interesting concept. It's like a vending machine, only you pay to leave something behind. It's not a bad deal for €0,30. Each time someone exits, the interior self-cleans. It doesn't self-dry, so it's important to convince yourself that in this case, a public toilet covered in droplets won't kill you. On to Strasbourg.

Strasbourg lies at a geographical, political, and cultural intersection between Germany and France.
It looks German, smells German, and feels German, but it sounds French. We booked one night at L'Hôtel Cathédrale, just steps from the magnificent Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-Strasbourg. The 1980s era decor in our room was badly outdated, but the room was huge and the view was amazing. We took that picture to the right from our room's window. Later that night when the whole town converged on the square to watch the Cathedrale's light show, we had a front row view from our room. The show itself was both beautiful and bizarre, with multicolored lights pulsing in tune with classical music. It's the gothic cathedral's answer to Laser Floyd.

And on to Paris.

Italy, Day Seven

Every time we engage the navigation system in the rental car, it reminds us that it's not perfect and we should use common sense. In other words, don't make a left turn off a cliff even if the computerized voice sounds really confident that it's the right direction. The navigation system in our rental car has done a remarkably good job of getting us where we need to be, but yesterday it screwed up. We were about three hours into the French Alps on our way to Valle d'Aosta, Italy when the navigation system tried to send us back from whence we came.

We tried to re-enter our hotel's Italian address a few times, but no matter what we did, the car insisted we should go back to France. Slightly panicked, we resorted to a map. We found the perfect scenic mountain road-- the Petit St. Bernard Pass-- and started up the steep, winding incline into Italy. Several kilometers into the pass, we decided to try the navigation system one last time. It flashed an electronic map of our location, and said "make a U-turn as soon as possible!" We pressed on, but we had a "light bulb" moment when we passed a few cyclists: the Tour de France blazed through the Petit St. Bernard Pass the day before, so the road was closed. The navigation system just hadn't caught on that the stage was over and the road was open.

We arrived in the small town of Saint-Vincent at around 6PM and checked into our hotel. We opened up the window and gasped... we were right above the action in the town square, with views of the mountains in every direction. We enjoyed the view for a bit and then set out to explore Saint-Vincent.

We've been (mostly) satisfied with our ability to communicate basic needs and requests in French, but we were confident we'd do better in Italian. We didn't. We bombed in a big way. Italian may look like Spanish on paper, but the spoken word is Martian to our ears. Thankfully, almost everyone we encountered was willing to speak with us in the universal language: gesticulation.

We bought a few postcards from a very nice shopkeeper who spoke English, and asked him if he had a favorite restaurant in town. To our delight, he suggested the place we had our eye on anyway-- a tiny Osteria with a "menu staggioni" featuring fresh porcini mushrooms. It was a delicious, inexpensive meal, and we were happy to find a wine on their list from the producer we planned to visit the next day-- Grosjean.

Tangential aside: we had the freshest, creamest buffalo mozzarella either of us has ever seen, and we learned that the Italians call heirloom tomatoes "tomatoes". Imagine that!

We went for a walk, checked out the Church, people-watched, and then decided to turn in for the night at about 11PM. We opened up our window and listened to the soundtrack of Saint-Vincent four stories below: Children play. Dogs bark. Mothers call to them both. Fathers laugh, a bit buzzed. Water spills from the fountain. An a capella choral group practices in perfect harmony. The sounds continued for another hour or so, and then faded one-by-one until the fountain stopped and the square was silent.

Italy, part due.

After a quick breakfast at our hotel, we set out to find Frères Grosjean in the town of Quart. In a fortuitous moment shortly after we planned this vacation, we spotted a Grosjean wine on the list at one of our favorite restaurants in Portland. We'd never even heard of Valle d'Aosta wines before, but it seemed like a fun thing to trace this bottle back to its source in the hills above Aosta. With a few Google Translator-assisted emails, we confirmed a visit.

Although Grosjean bottles manage to get all the way to Portland, they are a fairly small producer, creating a portfolio of about 10 wines, all produced from grapes grown on their adjacent properties. The wines include several varieties indigenous to the Aosta Valley and rarely seen in the US.

When we arrived, after twisting and turning through narrow lanes in the small town of Quart, we were greeted by an old fellow who looked like a charicature of an Italian winemaker: dusty trousers, suspenders, a sun-wrinkled face, and toting an enormous triangular spade. He smiled, greeted us, and asked us if we spoke Italian - we said no. He asked if we spoke French - we admitted to un petit peu. He gave up, grinned widely at us, and pointed us into the winery where he introduced us to a couple of younger people who spoke some English.

A bit later on our tour we saw a family portrait of three generations of winemaking Grosjeans, and realized that the old man we'd met was the patriarch of the family: Vincent Grosjean himself. Our English speaking guides were Vincent's grandson, granddaughter, and their cousin. We took a brief tour of the winery, tasted the Grosjeans' current line-up of wines, and then hopped in their car to visit their vineyards.

Grosjean doesn't make blockbuster wines: only 25-30% of their production goes for export - the rest is consumed in Italy. Prices for most bottles were around 10 Euros. This isn't special occasion wine, it's wine meant to be consumed casually,with food and friends. And on that it succeeds very well: the wines are well-balanced and easily approachable. We particularly enjoyed trying the ones we've never seen in Portland: Torrette, Premetta, and Petite Arvine.

This was another wonderful visit, and as we walked through the vineyards with the younger Grosjeans, we realized something: every winemaker we've encountered in Europe is far more animated in the vineyard than in the tasting room. Perhaps it's because we've chosen to visit producers who make unspoofulated wines, but they really do seem to treat wine as a natural agricultural product and not a chemistry experiment.

We thanked the Grosjeans for their hospitality, and pointed ourselves down one mountain and up another. Next stop: Zermatt, Switzerland.

Beaujolais and beyond, Day Five

This morning we bid a sad farewell to Burgundy and drove south to the tiny village of Villie-Morgon for our 11AM appointment at Domaine Marcel Lapierre. Villie-Morgon was a surprise to us. We tend to associate Beaujolais with Burgundy, but it could not be farther removed. It looks and feels far more like the Mediterranean here than the Côte-d'Or! We were very excited about this visit, because year in, year out, Lapierre Morgon is one of our favorite 'everyday' wines. We were supposed to meet with Monsieur Lapierre's English-speaking son Mathieu, but Mathieu and the Lapierres' english-speaking employee were both very busy with winery operations. Rather than pull them away, Monsieur Lapierre decided to give us the tour himself. He warned us at the beginning that he does not speak much English, but his English was actually quite good.

We started at the winery, and walked through the cellar, the fermentation and crush facility, and then the bottling line. Right now, the wine's being bottled and corked, then allowed to rest (albeit very briefly) outside in pallets on a warm day while the corks expand to seal the bottles. Then the bottles are quickly loaded into a climate controlled locker so the wine won't be damaged by the summer sun.

After showing us the winery operations, Monsieur Lapierre took us on a tour of the vineyards. He showed us the granitic soil, and then explained to us that he was pulling some grapes (and a few clusters) off the vines because they were damaged by fungus. 2009 has been a wet year here so far, and immature fruit is far more susceptible to fungal damage. Since the damage is not extensive and it's already July, Lapierre considers it a small problem and is not concerned that it will significantly compromise the vintage. One of the things that's really fascinated us (well, Steve anyway) is how specialized the equipment has to be in a winery or vineyard. While we walked up and down the vineyard rows, we watched a special machine move through the rows ahead of us. It was designed to fit perfectly between two rows, and had two functions-- the front trimmed the wines to let more sunshine reach the grapes, and the back cultivated the soil and removed weeds. From the top of the vineyard high above Villie-Morgon, Lapierre pointed out each of the Beaujolais Crus to us, and explained how each site's location contributes to the wines' characteristics.

After the vineyards, Monsieur Lapierre took us back to his home and set up the picnic table off the kitchen for a tasting. He, Mathieu, and Nikolai all joined us for a round of tasting. The setting was absolutely perfect and we had a great time. Several of the wines that we tasted were ones we've had at home, but we also had the opportunity to taste some wines that are not distributed on the west coast (or in the U.S. at all). Once again, we had an experience that far exceeded our hopes. We were sorry to leave, but we had an hour's drive to the Northern Rhone for our appointment at Domaine Phillipe Faury.

The GPS system in our rental car (more on this later) has been an invaluable tool here, but it was no match for the steep, narrow roads in Chavanay. We took a few wrong turns and showed up fifteen minutes late to our 3PM appointment. We enjoyed the line-up at Faury, but we were both pretty tired from a long day in the car and our three hour visit in Beaujolais. A lot of wine enthusiasts will visit three or four wineries in one day, but from now on, we'll limit ourselves to one.

If you blink, you'll miss Cliousclat.

From Chavanay we headed south to the tiny village of Cliousclat,
where we'd reserved a room at the lovely La Treille Muscate hotel. Our room has a panoramic view of the picturesque valley below. Well, sort of. It's picturesque most of the way across the horizon, but we were curious about the steam rising off in the distance to the right. Through the camera's telephoto lens, we found a landmark you don't see everyday: a nuclear power plant. With no oil resources of its own, France gets 75% of its energy from nuclear power. Hey, we're all for clean-green energy and all, we just didn't expect to vacation so close to the control rods.


Our hotel's restaurant is closed on Mondays, so we walked down into the village and found a casual place with its own sweeping view of the fission factory. We settled into two bowls of absolutely delicious gazpacho, a charcuterie plate, and a pitcher of rosé.

Tomorrow, a big detour.

Beaune, Day Three

At some point this afternoon, we had the unmistakable feeling that we were dreaming. We were bouncing around off-road in a Renault Expert amidst some of the most famous vineyards on the planet with the sun shining through intermittent clouds, a panorama of Burgundy spread out beneath us. It seemed almost too good to be true.

We woke up early this morning and decided to make haste from Reims to Beaune in order to catch the last hour or so of Beaune's extensive Saturday market. We zoomed out of Reims at around 7:30 AM and motored south, following the prompts our our invaluable GPS system. After a couple of hours of driving through one village after another, we discovered that our GPS directions were set up with an option to avoid toll roads. Normally we prefer the scenic route, but in this case we really wanted to cover the 200 or so kilometers between Chammpagne and Burgundy in as short a time as possible. Shortly after we changed the GPS options, we found ourselves roaring along a French toll road at 130 k/h, making far better time, and ultimately reaching the center of the Burgundian wine region shortly before noon.

At a friend's recommendation, we're staying at the Jardins de Loïs. We'll be hard-pressed to stay at a nicer place during this vacation. Ostensibly a B&B, JdL includes just four guest rooms in a beautifully renovated structure. Our room is big and bright, with a terrace overlooking the gardens. Another perk is our location: we're three minutes by foot to the center of Beaune. We never got around to eating breakfast today, so after we checked out the market, we settled into a cozy brasserie for coq au vin, boeuf bourguignonne, and a cheap '93 Jadot Passe-Tout-Grains. This place was completely generic-- indistinguishable from any one of a dozen places just like it in this town, but we absolutely loved it. It was barely 60° F this afternoon, and the food was just what we wanted-- simple, hearty, and authentic. The staff made our day by speaking French to us slowly and deliberately in a way that made it possible for us to understand every word.

After lunch we headed to Savigny-lès-Beaune for our tasting appointment at Domaine Pierre Guillemot. Pierre's son Vincent represents the sixth generation of his family to make wine in Savigny-lès-Beaune with the Guillemot name. He looked like a kid to us, maybe 20 years old or so, but he's been groomed to make great wine for his entire life. He took us into his cellar and pulled fresh bottles of all of his current releases for us to try. We've only tastes Guillemot's wines back to '01, so Vincent also pulled an '86 Savigny-lès-Beaune Dessus Les Golardes and a '73 Serpentieres so that we could see how these wines evolve. It was fascinating to speak with Vincent about his family's vineyards, and how each parcel of vines expresses Pinot Noir differently in the glass. He graciously loaded us into his car and drove us up into the vineyards above the village. By visiting each site, we were able to actually see the differences in the vines and the soil. Vincent's tour gave us a sense for Burgundy that we've never gotten from books. Compared to the U.S., where a person or corporation buys a parcel of land, gives it a name, grows grapes on it, and then makes wine, Burgundy is very fractured and confusing. From the eleventh century on, Cistercian Monks identified and demarcated vineyard sites based on the hundreds of soil types that exist here. With centuries of experience, they were able to study trends, and they found that some vineyards produced consistently superior wines. Fewer than forty vineyards in all of Burgundy are classified as "Grand Cru", and the wines made from those grapes represents only 1% or so of all the wines produced in Burgundy. Over the centuries, those vineyards have been divided many times among heirs, and now a single vineyard might be owned by dozens of producers. Vincent took us to Le Corton, where we saw for ourselves how this Grand Cru vineyard is divided into many parcels, including the portion that belongs to his family.

Vincent's English was infinitely better than our French, but we discovered that there were certain concepts, like the passage of time, that he could not express in English and we could not express in French. It forced all of us to choose our words more carefully. After hours of tasting and touring, we invited Vincent to join us at a local bar for a beer. We sat outside, and he told us about his travels to the U.S.-- his impressions of cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, and his fondness for some decidedly modern-styled Pinot Noir from California (especially Etude) that's the polar opposite of his family's traditionally-styled wines.

Maybe it's because we've visited small producers who are neither selling wine in a tasting room nor hosting hordes of tourists, but our tasting experiences in France have been remarkable-- far beyond what we ever dreamed possible.

We made our way back to Beaune for dinner. Several friends have told us that despite the Michelin-starred restaurants in town, their favorite place to eat in Beaune is Ma Cuisine. The menus in the window looked superb, but we were sorry to learn that Ma Cuisine is closed on Saturdays and Sundays-- the only nights we'll be in Beaune. On a whim, we headed to Piqu'Boeuf, a popular restaurant among locals that specializes in Charolais beef. We spent the rest of the evening there, with courses that featured several local specialties. There was raviole d'escargot... potatoes cooked with a very rich, pungent local "moutarde", a deeply beefy Charolais entrecôte with cèpes, and wedges of Brillat-Savarin and Époisses de Bourgogne that were fabulous with our Pommard. Again, there was not an English speaker in the place, but the staff were very gracious about speaking slowly and deliberately to help us understand. Note: it looks innocent enough, but Snails lurk beneath this pretty puff of pasta.

¡Culo ducha!

We're checked into Casa Palermitano, where our stuff will remain for the rest of our stay. It's so reasonably priced that we decided to keep the room every night, even when we're in Uruguay. This will allow us to travel with nothing but backpacks. No suitcases!

As soon as we got here, I understood why this place is the top rated Buenos Aires B&B on TripAdvisor. It's a gorgeous old house, with high ceilings, polished wood floors, spacious and beautifully tiled bathrooms, comfortable beds, Frida Kahlo prints on the walls, more closet space than I've ever seen in a hotel room, and Lorena, our charming hostess. Every B&B on Earth has a house cat or two; Lorena has a house parrot named Lucas. Lucas is a gorgeous green and gold boy. He wouldn't talk to us, but Lorena reported that he chats with himself occasionally. His primary phrase is "hola, Lucas."

Our baño has a bidet. A bidet! I've never felt fresher.