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Welcome to Lyon

Lyon I will always remember for the bouchon. Xianyi read about a special kind of down-home restaurant that lives only in this city, the gastronomic capital of France, and so we found ourselves one night in a small, red room with a bar and eight little tables. There was no one else there, although it was nearly eight o’clock, surely a reasonable hour for dinner, no? we thought, as the young but solemn waitress seated us in a small table by the end of the bar.

We were surrounded by pigs. Hung from the ceiling and sticking out of the walls were pigs, large and small, in the pictures and on the wallpaper. As I was about to learn, bouchons are all about meat, and not just pork chops – tripe, gizzards, hoofs and cheeks.

“Apertif?”

If I had done my homework, I would have ordered a communard, a mixture of red wine with blackcurrant liqueur which the guide book spun a romantic tale about, but I hadn’t seen that yet, so we had local red wine, and together with that the girl brought us a basket of breaded, deep-fried pig fat – tablier de sapeur, pork rinds. Oh, stupendous wonder! Wine and salted fat!

We hadn’t ordered a thing besides the wine, but very quickly she came out with another dish, a poached egg floating in a deep red soup which may have been wine and blood for all I know. It was rich and salty; I drank it down and ate more breaded tripe. This is going to be good.

Then, it got better. A dozen boisterous men walked into the place, and they all had the same look on their face, the look of a man who’s about to sit down with 11 of his buddies, eat a good meal, and get hammered. It was on!

The 2 waitresses jumped to life in an effort to mash tables together for these guys, and then they just started bringing out the dishes and bottles, passing everything down the line because there was no room to even walk around their party. The men bellowed a singsong of conversation and laughter at each other and flirted with the waitresses, drinking and clinking and shouting and pointing, not a word of it intelligible to us, but all of it making perfect sense and perfect comedy. We were at a great party!

The chef came out and spoke with us. It turned out that his son lives and works in New York, and he has visited. He gave us a small dish with two meatballs. I wish I had one of those meatballs right now, it was so good. The chef, who spoke fairly good English, did not know the word for what was in the meatball. He struggled. Then, Aha! he reached behind the bar, and pulled out a stuffed pig’s foot, complete with black hair. I couldn’t believe it. Where was the meat on a pig’s foot that could make this much meatball? I never liked pig’s feet in China, but this meatball was something else.

The chef then listed for us, from memory, tonight’s menu. There were about six delicious-sounding choices, and I felt limited to choose just one, but I chose the blood sausage with baked apples, because I’d never had blood sausage before, and Xianyi ordered the cheek. Mine was really good, although I could have had less of it (I did eat it all, though!); hers was better.

After we polished those off, they asked if we’d like some cheese. Sure, why not? They bring us a cutting board with five big hunks of different cheeses and some bread, plus a big bowl of fresh cottage cheese! We looked at each other like, Are we supposed to eat all this cheese? Well, we did our best…

There was still room for dessert, of course. Xianyi had a pear, drowned in red wine and sugar, and I had a coffee ice cream. And naturally there was espresso to finish. Total perfection.

***

Another day in Lyon, we went for a long walk to find the cathedral at the top of the hill that overlooked the city. You can see it from anywhere. It’s right near the imitation Eiffel Tower. Walking across the city, to the base of the hill, was no problem. It took about 30 minutes from our hotel. But from there, we had to go nearly straight up. We walked in the sun up a long hill, and some cars and scooters were driving down, at high speeds. It was a tough slog. Along the way, a man was sweeping the street. He tried to say something to us, but we didn’t understand. He repeated himself, but a car drove by in between us, and we couldn’t hear. He crossed the road and spoke to us, but we said we didn’t speak French. He said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I was just asking if you’d like a glass of water.” How nice!

Turned out he was not actually a street-sweeper, but was cleaning up outside the hostel of which he is proprietor. He invited us in and poured two glasses of ice-cold water, much appreciated at the moment, as we had been sweating and climbing up the steep hill of the road. He led us out to the back porch, which overlooked the entire city. We sat and cooled ourselves, enjoying the view, and thought about the kindness that we were experiencing. Then we thanked him again and continued on our way.

At the top of the hill is the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière. Check out the view:

Breathtaking View

Burgundy from the Train

Ah, Burgundy, the heart of France. Wine country. The stuff French vacations are made of.

[Note: The trip is now over, and we are safely home. But I'm going to continue the story right where I left off...]

Beaune train station was bereft of cabs, so after a 20-min wait we finally dragged our bags across town to the Hotel Foch, which is basically a pub with some rooms in the back. The guy running the place was really nice, and spoke great English. In fact, in all our travels in France, we never found one rude person. Talk about a stereotype destroyed.

Red or White?

We sat at a cafe in town that afternoon, drinking wine, which was delicious and cheap. We could hear a couple at a nearby table who were American, and whom I guessed were from Texas. They were likely in their 60s. At a certain point, another couple walked up to them from the street, and it became clear that they were all traveling together when the approaching man said:

“Ya’ll look like ya’ll’re havin’ a good time with ya’ll’s selves!”

Hearing this, how could I not have instantly recognized this same Texas guy when we saw him again 5 days later in Marseille, walking along the sidewalk near the Vieux Port?

Our first dinner in Beaune was gorgeous: beef Bourguignon, and an angel hair pasta with veal and liver. So rich! The woman running the restaurant suggested a nice red for us, and we talked with an English guy who was driving his dog, a chocolate lab, across the country.

We wanted to see a vineyard, but instead we decided to go to a cellar. Unfortunately, we didn’t really pick the most tourist-friendly cellar. Rather than walking into any of the numerous places with signs outside welcoming tourists, we went to a place where the book said locals buy wine in bulk. There was nobody near the front door, and no obvious way in once we walked up the driveway. A guy with big boots on pointed down a staircase, and then called to a woman down below who beckoned us to follow her into the basement. She had two clients down there trying wines. We waited until she had finished with them, then absolutely failed to make any meaningful communication with her about trying wines. Although there were tons of barrels down there, and it looked like it could be tapped, we ended up drinking from three bottles, two of which we bought. They were modestly priced. We drank half of one that night in the room, then left it and the full one on the train the next day when we left. Money well spent!

A random stop in Beaune was the Museum of Wine, which was somewhat amusing but sadly did not include a glass of the stuff at the end of the tour!

Dionysus in the wineless Museum of Wine

Another attraction is the Hospices de Beaune, which was founded in 1443 to care for the poor as a free hospital. It has a magnificent great building with a beautiful roof:
But it also has random mannequin nuns, tending the sick and cooking in the kitchen. Strange.

Caen Cathedral

From Paris, we arrived in Caen last week, a small city in Normandy. We stayed in a tiny 18th-century bed and breakfast called the Hotel St. Etienne. Out walking the streets in the evening, we found a small bar where a two-woman band was performing: guitar and cello. A local crowd cheered them on, and we snacked on peanuts and olives with our beer. Afterwards, we walked into a small, bustling restaurant, but were refused for not having a reservation. So instead, we ended up down the road a bit, where we feasted on shrimp and crab risotto; cauliflower soup with diced, smoked duck liver; steamed fish; and fillet of pork. Later on we enjoyed a slice pear pie from a patisserie. Delicious!

Caen Castle

In the morning we looked for a bus to Bayeux, closer to the coast, from which we intended to visit the D-Day beaches. But our planning was a little off, and our guidebook a bit outdated. The bus we were counting on had been discontinued, and we ended up walking across town with our luggage, no taxi in sight, from the bus station to the train station. Arriving in Bayeux later than expected, we then found the hostel we’d planned on staying at was full, and spent another hour wandering the streets until we found a room. It was then near the end of the day, and we had reservations in another town the following evening, leaving us no time for the beach. This was regrettable, but we found a site celebrating another legendary battle: the Bayeux Tapestry, woven nearly a thousand years ago, commemorates the Norman invasion of England in 1066. After our viewing, we bought a bottle of champagne and whiled away an hour sitting by an old mill, its waterwheel still turning after several centuries.

Bayeux Waterwheel

The next day we were off to Dinan, leaving Normandy for Brittany. But again we had not planned well, and we ended up spending the whole day in transit. We bought tickets back to Caen, thinking it a better transit hub, and from Caen to Dinan. But it turned out the train from Caen to Dinan went back through Bayeux anyway, and it didn’t leave until 5pm, meaning we could have left our bags at the hotel, spent the day at Omaha or Juno Beach, and caught the train from Bayeux to Dinan. Instead we spent the entire afternoon in the Caen station. The one bright note was meeting a young couple from Sichuan. The boy had been living in Caen a year, and the girl was living in Burgundy. They were going to the D-Day beaches. Xianyi was pleased to have another chance to speak her native Sichuan-hua! Seems you can’t toss a pebble in France without hitting someone from Sichuan.

Bayeux Cathedral

We wanted to see the famous Mont-St Michel castle, but learned that Dinan was not the closest place to be to see that. A couple of American backpackers had obviously done more legwork than us, because they got off at the right stop as we realized we were bound for another station, with a further transfer, and that we would have no time to see Mont-St Michel. There is a little town called Dol which acts as a transit for the Dinan line. We spent an hour there, and I went looking for sandwiches, unsuccessfully. It was 5pm and the town was closing. I asked the one open bar on the block if they had sandwiches, and they said they were done. But Xianyi went back there 20 minutes later, asked the same question, and they gave her some leftover bread. So we had a little snack.

When we finally got to Dinan it was after 9pm, but no matter; it is still light these days past 10 o’clock at night. Dinan is too small for taxis, apparently, so we hauled our bags into town on foot. While looking at the map at a turnabout, a man in a car asked us something. We told him we didn’t understand, so he switched to English and asked if we needed help. We showed him the name of our hotel, which was difficult to pronounce, and he offered us a ride. His daughter was in the front seat. The man’s English was pretty good, and when we said we were from New York, he said that he was trying to get his daughter to go there to study English. At that moment, New York felt like a long way away from Dinan.

Dinan Clocktower

We found the hotel, after asking several locals directions, and thanked the man for his help. The place is named for the old clocktower, which it stands next to, and which we climbed to the top of the next day for a grand view of the town. There is also a Roman aqueduct, and (of course) an ancient cathedral. In fact, it seems every little town in France has a grand cathedral. One wonders at the lengths to which the old feudal lords went to build these structures, which tower over the surrounding buildings, and which could have only been constructed with massive amounts of human labor.

Dinan Valley

That afternoon we were on the trains again, our fourth consecutive day of moving, leaving Brittany now for the Loire Valley, and arriving in the city of Tours. We loaded our bags into a taxi and gave him the address of our hotel, only to have him turn and say, “We’re arrived. It’s here.” The hotel was right next to the station. After checking in (which, by the way, is such an easy process in France; they don’t even require your ID), we walked down to the main part of town, the Place Plumereau, a large plaza with shops and restaurants, where all the cool kids hang out. It was a bustling Friday night in Tours. We ate at an Irish Bar/Pizzeria, which made no sense, but which made good pizza and pasta, and served delicious, cold Belgian beer. On Saturday we slept late, finally not having a train to meet. We went looking for a wine tour, only to find that the tourist office no longer booked them, so we found a tiny café where we finally got a good cup of coffee. I have not been impressed with the French coffee. I would prefer my own brew to most of the cups I’ve had here, which tend to be overly foamy and with a cheap taste. But this place had it right, and we stayed for tartines, open-faced sandwiches: a chicken curry for Xianyi, and four-cheese for me, plus two glasses of wine.

On Sunday Tours was dead. All the shops and nearly all the restaurants were closed. But we found solace in a public park, where we narrowly missed a brass band performance but saw the players in their formal wear breaking down the stage. An inflatable slide and a merry-go-round were entertaining children, and there were ducks and swans in the pond. The duck would wander onto the land to be fed breadcrumbs by the people, but several unleashed dogs occasionally forced them to flee back into the pond. There was also a group of ducklings swimming around. The sun came out and it was peaceful.

Monday morning we left early for Beaune, in Burgundy, where we were resolved to tour a vineyard…