Paris – Tour Day 3

“Hi Mona, I’m Kevin!”

Our day started early, we had to be in the lobby, bags in hand, by 8:45am. We set our alarm for 7:30am, finally drug our tired bones out of bed at 8:05am and were downstairs in the lobby by 8:38am…plenty of time for breakfast! Kevin had the hotel pastries and I walked to the bakery down the street and bought 2 fresh pastries for the road. Mmm.

We (miraculously) all made it the two blocks to the bus with our luggage in tow and were on our way to meet Mona shortly after 9am. Getting on and off of the bus is quite a site. All 28 of us follow our momma duck Colleen down the street with our luggage in tow, wheels rumbling the entire time. We are a parade of tourists! See, the tour bus is so big that it can’t fit down many of the streets where we will be staying. So, instead, he parks nearby and waits for us to come to him. The walks today weren’t that bad, though I’ve heard that some can be upwards of 15 minutes! Oye vey!

The bus, oh the bus! This thing is NICE! It puts the airplanes we flew on to get here to shame! Spotless, roomy, 50 leather seats that recline, cup holders, fold down tray tables, and an awesome driver, Ben. It also has a great sound system so Colleen narrates along the way for us. Today we got a French lesson on geography, language and food. It was fabulous!

I’m so exhausted, I can hardly remember today, so if this is a bit choppy, I apologize in advance!

Okay, so first thing is first, the Louvre. The museum employees apparantly had a “meeting” this morning to determine whether or not they would go on strike today, which would close the museum, so when we arrived there was no guide there to greet us as the meeting was still in session. The clock was ticking, we HAD to be on the road by 12:30! Were we going to get in?? Were they going to go on strike? These Frenchies are famous for their revolutions, but on all days, must it be the day that we are to meet Mona? Could it be possible that we came all this way, spent 5 days in Paris waiting for this tour and now we werenn’t going to even make it through the doors?! Well, as luck would have it the Parisians decided that they would behave themselves on this particular Wednesday and so our access was granted! Look out Louvre, here we come.

You hear a lot about this museum, it is the largest in the world, it has many famous works, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah. Nothing we’ve heard really prepared us for what was in store. This place is MASSIVE. I mean MASSSSSSIVE. They have so many pieces on display (aprox. 32,000) that if you were to spend only 15 seconds looking at each piece it would take you 6 months to get through the museum! Think about that! Even more astonishing, there are 500,000 pieces that they have acquired!

We had a fabulous local guide, I didn’t catch her name, but she was a wonderfully cheerful little british lady. She was witty and informative and did her best to get us to the most famous works in the museum in the short amount of time that we had. We entered through the “moat” alongside an anchient wall which was discovered in the 1980s when they were diggin down to build the pyramid in the courtyard of the museum. I’m tired, so I’ll sum this up by saying the wall was really old and really cool.

I actually think I am going to leave all of this part of the blog up to Kevin. I love looking at the art, but the names escape me, so I won’t be much help here anyhow. In my words we saw: The Venus sculpture, The Nike sculpture, tons of amazing and huge paintings, some DaVinci sculptures, a 4000 year old Sphynx, and dear, dear Mona. It was truly an amazing museum and we could definitely go back again and again and not begin to make a dent in it!

After the tour we grabbed some quick food and met our group to board the bus.

We headed out of Paris towards the Burgundy region of France to a little town called Bueane. The ride was almost 4 hours long but flew by. The countryside is beautiful here and actually looks a lot like Sonoma County.

We arrived in Bueane around 5pm and were surprised to see that we had arrived in what could possibly be the cutest little town in the world! We made our way to our hotel (adorable!), checked in, and had 30 minutes to freshen up before we met to go wine tasting. We walked to a nearby winery which does their tasting in the wine cellar itself. But this isn’t any wine celler, it is from the 13th century! It was amazing. I took a lot of pictures, check them out. The wine was great and our wine guide was a sweet little lady, it was a pleasure to spend the evening with her. I picked up some mustard at the gift shoppe (they are known for their Dijon mustard in this region of France) and we were off to dinner. Colleen had offered to make reservations at restaurants for us if we so desired. A group of around 14 of us were interested in a “wine cellar” restaurant Colleen had told us about. She tried to make the reservation but they were booked, however, another restaurant that she had gone to years ago had reopened under new management and was able to take us instead.

We arrived at the restaurant not sure what to expect (dark, humid, cold cellars??). I was completely taken aback when we ducked through the door and down the stairs. This place was unreal. By far the most beautiful restaurant I have ever eaten in. The pictures do not do it justice, however you’ll get the idea of what it looked like. What an amazing evening. We sat in that restaurant for just over three hours, talking, eating, drinking, laughing, sharing stories…it was brilliant. And the food, simply magnificent! This region is known for their beef burgandy and so over half of the table ordered it. It came out in large iron pots and was served family style with fresh pasta. The owner was such a sweet man, he had the chef make me a wonderful vegetarian dinner of fresh pasta, green beans and potatos au’gratin. I also had a green salad with warm goat cheese, a cheese platter, and a chocolate dessert of some sort. All delicious! People in France sure know how to eat! We even shared a bottle of red wine with another couple at our table…I can’t say enough about what a wonderful time we had with everyone this evening! Oh, Colleen joined us for dinner, it was nice to see her get to relax and enjoy herself instead of having to take care of all of us! She is such a sweet gal, we’re so lucky to have her as our guide!

We strolled through the town back to our hotel and now it is time for bed. My brain feels like a badly scratched CD…I am trying to make it play, but it just keeps skipping and skipping. So, I hope this blog was somewhat enjoyable. My food coma is making it far too difficult to function.

Goodnight.

Flickr Pics (coming soon)