Ou est Le Barge?

So after un cafe in Dijon Wednesday morning (which was dead) and then checking out of our hotel and having heart attacks regarding the fact that the owner of our apartment has suddenly decided to sell after 3+ years of no contact, we hit the road.


We set sail for Beaune, heading through a trail of small towns and miles of green vineyards. Such beautiful countryside.... We arrived in Beaune and parked the car for a quick stop and baguette to eat and a couple of emergency emails to put out the real estate fire that was a-blazing at home.

Basilica of Notre Dame on top of Fourviere hill in Lyon

From Beaune we headed straight to our next destination, Lyon. Ryan is brilliant at handling the European roads - I don't know how he does it but I'm in charge of navigation (which is a piece of cake, thanks Google). Anyway we high-tailed it down France's amazingly well-kept but expensive freeways to Lyon, France's 3rd largest city. We checked into our hotel (which was amazingly modern for the price) in Croix-Rousse, an old silk weaving area on top of a hill in Lyon. We dumped our bags in the room and headed down to the heart of Croix-Rousse.

Giant meringues in every flavour right next to our hotel

If you have been following our blog, you will have noticed that no expense was spared with our wining and dining in Paris and Champagne, so once we got to Lyon we did a quick budget check over a glass of vin and then had a massive freak-out so pretty much sent ourselves straight home with a quiche for dinner for Ryan, and a meringue for dinner for me.

Some more examples of the French sweets which are expanding our girths

The next morning we realised the budget was actually OK, and we could afford to continue to eat, we just didn't need to accompany every meal with a bottle of France's finest champagne. So we headed out into a cool and somewhat drizzly Lyonnaise morning in search of our routine cafe, and found a place that served little pound cake type things with the espressos (or noisette, as I have been getting)! Over the road, the Croix-Rousse markets (which are the biggest in Lyon) are open 6 days a week (quite unusual we've found, in this nation which seems to have an aversion to working). We had a stroll through them and looked at all their fresh looking produce neatly displayed in individual bowls, and Ryan found his trusty old chicken man dripping chicken juice onto potatoes underneath. It was still early so Ryan wanted to kill some time before ordering his beloved chicken leg and chicken juice-soaked potatoes, but didn't want to venture too far because sometimes these Frenchies will pack up their stands quicker than you can say hot potato.

The panoramic view from the Fourviere hill

So another "un cafe" nearby, in what was turning out to be a bit of a miserable morning in Lyon, was enough to pass the time until we could go back and get some chicken and potatoes, which has become Ryan's favourite French dish (watch out Eveleigh markets, Ryan is coming with a rotisserie van to you soon!)

View over Lyon from top of Croix-Rousse hill

Since it was colder and more les miserables than we had anticipated, we took said chicken back to the hotel to get changed, pick up an umbrella and consume the chicken (I only had some of the potatoes, and which to be honest weren't as mind-blowing as the ones I had in Paris). Better equipped, we then got the metro to Bellecour station. We were both impressed with the efficiency of the public transport system in Lyon and Ryan nearly threw himself off the top of the Fouviere hill when I told him Lyon has a population of around half a million people. (Note: get it together City Rail).

Ryan's favourite guy - homme de poulet et pomme de terre

We walked through the large square of Place Bellecour, which in the rain, isn't the greatest, then over the Saone river to the old town, which I thought was extremely pretty - little narrow cobblestoned streets which I have become a sucker for. Now I'm not a huge fan of museums (refer back to my Louvre review) but I had read about this particular one, Musee Miniature et Cinema, which caught my eye, and I must say it was some of the best 7 euros I have spent! Five levels of props from landmark movies (Bruce, if you're reading, you would have died), as well as explaining how movies are made and then a number of miniature scenes, things with tiny little props (some you needed a magnifying glass to see) - some which have been used for movies and some which have just been made for their amazing-ness!

Tilt-shift pic of Place Bellecour from Fourviere Hill

By the time we came out of the museum, the rain had stopped and the sun came out, hooray! So we took the nearby funicular up the Fourviere Hill to the impressive Basilica, which has an amazing outlook over the whole of Lyon. So we spent some time up there enjoying the vista and taking some pics before heading back down to the river.

Ryan enjoying un vin on the Rhone on Le Barge

Lyon is situated on and around two rivers (the Rhone and the Saone) which converge just south of the heart of Lyon. I had read that there were some barges which had bars and restaurants on the Rhone river, and so after heading over to the Rhone and randomly looking for some barges, we found one (called "Le Barge") which was situated literally on the water and serving drinks and tapas, which is all Ryan and I ask for in life (watch out Sydney Harbour, we are coming with a le barge bar to you soon!)

Crepe Suzette (flambe!) for dessert

After a lovely evening drink on Le Barge on the river, we headed back to our neighbourhood where I had read had a great crepe place. I'm glad I'd done my research because it was out of the way and pretty quiet, but cheap and delicious! Better crepes than we had in Paris actually (which are meant to be Paris' best!) - just the right amount of crepe to filling ratio! And that was the perfect end to day 1 in Lyon!

No you're a moutarde

On Monday morning we were pretty sad to be leaving Epernay, our champagne caining headquarters and home to the best street ever. You can have your Champ de Lyselles, your Broadways, your Abby Roads, your Sesame Streets, your King Streets, my heart will always be in the Avenue de Champagne.

Best street: world.

We met Dan Smith for un cafe and then went driving around the champagne region in search of some places that would let us degust their champagnes.
There are so many small towns in the area apparently each of these towns can have a couple of hundred winemakers using the grapes from it. The some of the areas having been designated as grand cru have little tombstones in front of the vines that belong to that champagne maker.

We found a champagne house called Paul  Goerg that seemed deserted at first, but after a bit of back and forth in broken French and English the lady realised that we wanted to cain the champagnes. Its not like Australia where they have cellar doors and it's expected that you drop by and taste everything, the houses are kind of more like offices and they're probably trying to run a business before we barged in through the front door. I think you're supposed to book at the very least. Anyway we tried some of the champagnes and felt bad that we had rocked up unannounced so we purchased a bottle of one of the blanc de blancs for around 16 of the euros.


The lady at next place Larmandier-Bernier was particularly worried that we hadn't made a booking but fit us in for a tasting anyway. We tried their brut and also their 2006 vintage single vineyard grand cru blanc de blac. The vintage one tasted awesome and I had to have a bottle. So I said immediately I'll take that. Probably should have checked the pricing first as it was 40 of the euros. I guess we'll have to save that for a special occasion. Luckily Heidi's birthday is coming up soon.


After that purchase our champagne budget was done and we headed back to Epernay. We went back to our favourite champagne tasting bar C. Comme and had another glass then said goodbye to Dan and went onward to Dijon.


We navigated our way to Dijon without too many troubles and checked into the hotel. Dijon is a relatively small town and there wasn't too much going on when we arrived. Anyway after a bit of a wander around we found some people having their afternoon wine at a bar called La Comedie. This bar was quite buzzing and served carrot sticks with aoili with every drink round which is probably the healthiest meal we've had all trip.


Hunger was getting to us, so we went off in search of a dinner. We came across the main square which is quite spectacular after you've walked around a pretty quiet town. Also we managed to score a pizza and bottle of rose for 25 of the euros. 

Panaramic of the main square.

The next day we went out to get un cafe and the town was swarming. The markets were all setup and every man and his street pooing dog was out and about. We just had a couple of coffees and people watched until it was a reasonable hour to order some vin ie. 11am. Then we went and got a wine from the middle of the markets at a wine bar.


In Dijon there's an owl trail, which is a walking trail to view all the sights. The architecture in Dijon is interesting, they have kriss kross thingys through a lot of the houses in the inner city. Its pretty fun trying to find the owls embedded in the side walk especially once you hit the areas they're digging up to put in the new tram transport system. After we lost the last owl we came across a wine merchant who did tastings. He specialised in the Burgundy region, so gave us a lot of insight into the styles areas and grapes used. Also how "grand crus", winemaker and grapes are all attributed to the taste of the wine.

They love their XXXX so much in france their buildings are a tribute to it.

This was an owl a while ago but I think everyone rubs it for good luck 

For dinner, we went to a quiet place and had some snails for entree. They were pretty tastey, but to be honest soak anything in parsely, olive oil and garlic and its hardly going to taste bad is it? 


So one last thing we found out they do call Dijon mustard(moutarde) "Dijon Moutard" here too.

More Champagne!

After a restful night of sleep, we had an average hotel breakfast followed by meeting the boys at a cafe, appropriately for un cafe, and then headed down the Avenue de Champagne where the cellars of Moet et Chandon, Mercier, Perrier Jouet, Pol Roger and many more are found.

Moet et Chandon

Most of these champagne houses require a booking to see the cellars and taste their champagnes, but Moet (pronounced mo-wette), accepts walk-ins, so we booked tours for an hour later, and killed some time after finding a little champagne house, Champagne A. Bergere, where we could taste 3 champagnes for the bargain of 5 euros. Their blanc de blanc naturelle (no sugar added) was a winner, and most of the bottles sold for under 20 euros which was great value!

Moet for everybody!!!

We then headed back to the other end of the scale, to Moet et Chandon. Moet is part of a massive multi-billion dollar company, LVMH, which seems to own half the world. So we joined the tour, along with at least 20 other people, and learned about the company's history and watched a video (oddly narrated by Scarlett Johansson) which was supposedly about the Moet story but was in fact a glorified 3 minute ad. We went down into the caves - these wind for 28 km! - followed by tasting their Brut and rose in a tasting room full of pictures of Scarlett Johansson in various seductive poses. Then we got kicked out the other end (I literally had to chug the end of my rose) into their gift shop where you could buy Moet cushions and deck chairs and various other paraphernalia not related to champagne.

Beef carpaccio - delicious!

By this time we were hungry, so went to the brasserie opposite the brasserie where we had dinner the night before, and keeping up my raw meat theme, I had the beef carpaccio, which was yum! Oh, and we all shared a bottle of Pol Roger. Meanwhile, we all had a dream of sharing a magnum (ie. big bottle) of champagne in the park. So we went back to the place where we had tasted some champagne and foie gras the day before, and even though it is near impossible to buy cold bottles of booze in this country, the nice man had a selection of cold magnums for us to choose from! We decided on one, and then asking if he had any plastic cups, he offered us 5 champagne glasses if we brought them back afterwards! Perfect! We were set!

4 guys, a girl and a magnum

We found a nearby lovely park, and the sun was out, so it was perfect magnum consuming conditions! We were all obviously a little excited about the magnum, because before we knew it, it was gone! Dan and Ryan then slipped away, and then came back with..... another magnum!! And not only that, but they bought some foie gras from the man who also provided them with a knife and a baguette! So it was a very happy afternoon!

Vineyards at the end of Avenue de Champagne

By 4pm or so Laci and Paul had to get the train back to Paris to get the Eurostar to London, so we waved them off while us and Dan wandered back down the Avenue de Champagne. It was a lovely sunny afternoon so we walked the entire length and towards the end there are actually some vineyards. On the way back we found a cute champagne house called Paul Etienne Saint Germain which had a sign saying tastings outside. So we knocked on the large door and a friendly man greeted us and took us into the little tasting room where he and his wife told their story of their dream to one day make champagne. Having grown up in Epernay they built their company from the ground up and now have their champagne served in Michelin-starred restaurants around the world. They were so cute!

Paul Etienne Saint Germain

So after that we walked around town a bit more, which being a Sunday was pretty dead and not much was open, but we found a little place for dinner where I had the steak tartare again. I now prefer my meat raw. After a long day I hit the hay after dinner but the boys kicked on for one more and watched a Eurocup match. I must say the weekend in Champagne was one of the best of my life and we were lucky to be able to share it with friends!

From grape to glass

After a long and late night of eating and drinking our way through the Marais quarter of Paris with our friends from London, Dan, Laci and Paul the night before, we had to wake up fairly early the next morning to check out of hotels and make our way to Champagne country. Laci and Paul got the TGV through to Reims, while we and Dan hoovered down some cafe au laits and croque madames before getting the train to Paris CDG airport to pick up our little Dacia Sandero car, which will take us from Paris all the way through France, Spain and Italy and will be dropped off in Rome.

Champagne caves of Ruinart

We picked up the car without too much drama and Ryan got behind the wheel and quickly adjusted to the left hand drive and manual gears  and 130km freeway speed limit on the. We arrived in Reims, Champagne country where we met up again with Laci and Paul and got a quick bite to eat before heading off on some champagne cellar tours - Ruinart for us and Dan, and Taittinger for Laci and Paul (as they had already seen Ruinart). The tour was great - only 10 or so of us being taken around the dark and damp caves of Ruinart (the oldest established champagne house) where the chalk cellars wind for 8km and 38m below ground, and they were quite beautiful, not to mention full of millions of bottles of champagne literally in the making. We finished off the tour with 2 glasses of Ruinart (a blanc de blanc and a rose) outside in the warm sun in the gardens while chatting to Sebastian, the friendly and enthusiastic guide and another couple from Paris. It was a pretty enjoyable afternoon to say the least.

Having a taste of Ruinart (>$130 a bottle) post caves tour

After Ruinart we met up with Laci and Paul, and all squished into the little Dacia Sandero to drive on to Epernay, a 20 minute drive away where we were all spending the night. Reims is quite a big town/city, so Epernay seemed a nice town to spend a day or two where we could just walk around. 

The view from our hotel window!

We checked into our respective hotels, and to my delight our little cheap hotel had a great location, and although we had to haul our bags up 2 flights of stairs we had an amazing church right outside our window! Not bad for 55 euros a night.

Champagne tasting accompanied with foie gras

After meeting up again with our mates (post glass of Mercier of course - this is how they roll here) we then went through a wander around Epernay which we grew to love. We all decided on a place to settle in for dinner, and had steaks in various forms - for me I had my first steak tartare which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Heidi's first steak tartare

So we all enjoyed some French brasserie fare......  and then all went home via a night cap at the bar just near our hotel after what was a great day of champagne tasting.

Not too chablis

Coqueliqot provided a great breakfast yesterday so we decided to hit it up again. Unfortunately by the time Heidi's smoked salmon on toast arrived I had finished my not so petit dejeuner of bacon and eggs. The waitress seemed unfazed and we realised that most french waitresses seem to have the air of the honey badger ie. they don't give a shit.

Heidi didn't know which to be happier about, her wine or  the fake flower archway down the boat.

Unless it was Paris this bridge would be considered completely tacky and look like someone designed it with the ghost of christmas tree past in mind, but hey its Paris and this is completely normal.

With that we caught the RER to Notre Dame which was near the docks for our boat ride on the Seine. The boat ride took us along the Seine past the Louvre until the Eiffel tower, before doubling back past the smallest house in Paris just past the last island in the river.

During the boat ride we went under a lot of bridges, they were all pretty fancy and most had a story behind them. One in particular was built by a king as a sorry gift to the people after throwing a ridiculously expensive costume party which the common folk were upset for the excess. This is where the phrase "build a bridge and get over it", was coined.

One of the other bridges had some kind of weird faces just underneath it. The tour guide told us these were the faces of people in mock expressions that didn't believe that the bridge would hold up. Apparently the guy in charge of making the bridge put them there in stupid poses. This is where the phrase "what up bitches it's still standing", was coined.

Shun the non bridge believers shunnnnnnnnn

I guess we look pretty silly now this bridge is still standing hey Jacques

After a few more bridges we docked back near Notre Dame and went to a wine bar called Taverne Henri IV. This was closed when we tried to come here and was on Heidi's list of things to do. The service was great and friendly. We got a vin blanc and rouge and orded some lunch. Heidi had a tartine with prawns and I had a tartine but with smoked duck, fois gras and more smoked duck topped with molten cheese. It was obscene.

In the afternoon it was time to meet one of our Champagne travelling companions, Laci. We waited for him at a bar near his hotel. The bar had a chalkboard outside that said it was happy hour from 4-10pm, I suspected it would be my kind of bar. My suspicions were confirmed when a man who was a David Carradine look alike sat down at a table next to us with a purple satin shirt. I thought he was another patron but he later hopped up started playing the guitar near the bar providing the live entertainment.

When Laci arrived we tried ordering a bottle of petit chablis with 3 glasses, but our broken french meant that we just got 3 glasses of it. After a couple of rounds we sorted it out and started getting bottles which was better value. By the time the other part of our Champagne tour rocked up (Paul and Dan) we were nearly completely chablis. They informed us that they had drunk the booze cart dry of champagne on the Eurostar from London so everyone was in good spirits.

We trotted off to dinner at Des Gars Dans La Cuisine. It was tres bien, Heidi had the linguine vongole which would have been the healthy option except for the mountain of parmesean cheese over it. I had a scotch steak which I was pretty excited about because not every restaurant including steak houses offer that cut which is my favourite. The steak when it came out though had the typical scotch steak fillet plus an extra 50% bonus meat all arount the edges making it a pretty massive steak.