Beaune day #12

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Today, sadly, we have to be out of our cabin by 8:00am. An entire new cruise full of new passengers embark today for their new journey. The crew spends the whole day sanitizing the ship for the new tour. Plus getting all the passengers off and assist them with transportation to whatever airport, train station or town (like us) they need to go to. We arranged a taxi to drive us from the cruise ship to hotel Le cep in Beaune departing about 9:30am, should take about 30 minutes.

So we awoke on the River Royale, had a nice breakfast of an egg white omelet, baguette, fruit and coffee. Then, we returned to our cabin, finished packing and set our bags out in the hallway for the crew to take to the reception ultimately to go with us by cab to beaune. Our taxi driver talked to us about his upcoming trip to the US during the journey. He took us straight to the Hotel Le Cep, the bellman retrieved our bags and we went in to this charming old world hotel. Check out their website at www.hotel-cep-beaune.com. It was too early to have our room ready so we went to the salon and had coffee and discussed our plans to walk through the city centre and taste wines, shop, lunch and not necessarily all in that order.

Our first stop of the day was at the basilica of the Norte Dame near the hotel. We attended the catholic 11:00am mass in French. At the beginning of the service service there was a baptism. After the wonderful service in the beautiful basilica, we wandered, got money out of the ATM from our Travelex MasterCards in order to pay the wine guides for our grand cru wine tour all day tomorrow. We stopped for lunch at brasserie le carnot and enjoyed a jambon and formage (ham and cheese) pizza with some burgundy wine. There was a beautiful fountain near the restaurant that someone put soap in for Bastille day and it had totally suds over, the kids were having a great time.

After lunch we went to a couple of wine tasting caves/rooms and tried some burgundy wines from different villages. One tasting room we went to was lovely but in the true French fashion, the proprieter said his tastings are 6 glasses for $20 euros per person , no sharing .... this is his price...basically, take it or leave it, so we left! No way did I want to drink so many glasses of wine in the middle of the day. Like in Lyon, I asked the waiter at Le Sud if I could buy one of their embroidered napkins because Jane really wanted one. The waiters response to me in the true French fashion was "impossible". Ok then, as we paid the l'addition (the check) and were leaving, he followed me out and said "no Madame, I cannot sell you a napkin" I turned and said yes I understand, then he handed me one and said "but I can give you one". How nice was that!

We went to a wine musee in town and then decided we were close to our hotel and maybe our room was ready. The reception did indeed have our room ready. The hotel has 64 rooms and they say each is different. We like our room, it is very nice and the bathroom is great with a heated towel rack and great looking shower. Can't wait to use it. I layed down on the bed and immediately dosed off for an hour, Jim did so as well. It was nice not to have to be somewhere. We decided to wander the hotel property and explore, stopping for an expresso in the lounge. We asked the reception for a dinner restaurant recommendation, she sent us clear across the city and we decided we did not like the menu so we returned to the city and made our own selection. As always, it was a win for us! We ate at Brasserie Galion and enjoyed the best boeuf bourgonion, a salad with the best vinaigrette ever, some baguette and of course burgundy wine. You never go to a restaurant in France in a hurry. Everything comes out slow and in it's own time.

Tonight we were sat next to a single gentlemen and started up a conversation with him while we awaited our dinner. Fastinating guy. He is from Australia and is riding a 3 wheeled bicycle from Rome to Paris over 10 weeks riding about 50 km per day.

After dinner, we returned to our hotel, got ready for bed setting an alarm so we are ready for the day at 9:15am when we will be picked up by burgundy wine tours for our full day grand cru tour with lunch. Woohoo. Another great day. Bonne nuit.

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