More Frenchy Stuff

Alright- Here's my final post about France. About time too, seeing as though I've been back in Austria for over a week.

One of the best things I did in France was a tour of a winery. First some background on the people. Alice has a good friend, Caroline, who is also from Dijon. She is married to an American, Connor. They live together in New York, but were in France for the holiday. Caroline's mother drove, and she arrived with Connor and Caroline to pick us up. Then we drove for about 45 minutes to the village of Beaune, which is south of Dijon.




Here we are trudging through the snow in Beaune.



Here's Caroline, myself, Alice, and Connor (decapitated) in the museum.



The coolest part was the celler, which consisted of a five kilometer (!) labyrinth with bottles of unlabled wine as far as the eye could see.



Each section had a slate label with the vintage and type of wine written on it.



Now here's the good part- wine tasting! We each had a little silver cup to taste about eight or twelve (I don't remember) different kinds of wine with. Connor kind of gets on my nerves, I must admit. He's one of those people that thinks he knows everything. He speaks a little bit of French (not very well), and Caroline's mother speaks very little English. At one point he tried to tell her that the particular wine we were tasting was "easier" (plus façile) than the last. Me, being the lush that I am, blurted out "Ils sont TOUTES façiles!!" (They are ALL easy!!) Everyone laughed. I'm so glad I took French in High School.



Having survived wine tasting, it was on to New Year's Eve. Caroline held a dinner party at her mother's house. Here we are at the table.



Mmmmm.... Snails! The French have a very interesting idea of what sort of things are edible. From extremely stinky cheese to snails and frog legs... it's a little disconcerting to your average foreigner. Having been served a platter of snails, I decided to make the best of it. I named one of the little fellows Pierre, and then I ate him! He was so delicious, I unceremoniously ate five of his brethren without naming them. I still kept Pierre's house as a souvenir though. It's sitting next to my computer right now! Hey, don't knock it until you try it.



Ok this picture is a bit ridiculous. Alice's father, Gerard, has a bunch of old helmets and hats from the second world war. Alice and I were playing with them and he took a picture. I believe these ones are American.



And then it was time for me to catch the direct TGV to Charles de Gaulle airport. I ended up with a first class ticket through sort of a fluke. They offer discounted tickets for people under the age of 26, but only a limited number. The discounted second class tickets were sold out. So, I could buy a regularly priced second class ticket, or a discounted first class ticket for only 30 cents more. I chose first class, naturally. It was less stinky and more comfortable, with big wide cushy seats with electric reclining funciton! Whee!

That was fun. I might have to do it again some day.