Toasting in the New Year with Kir

Animesh made me dinner tonight. We started with Kir, an aperitif made with Raspberry Cassis and Aligote, a white wine from Burgundy. He followed that with salad and Coq Au Vin, slow cooked to perfection in a thick sauce of red burgundy. He coupled that nicely with the same red burgundy as is customary and appropriate. It was all wonderful. And I understood that we too had become france-o-philes like almost everyone who has been to that country.

We started for our vacation on Christmas eve and reached London early on Christmas morning. Dhiru picked us up and the airport and took us home, where we met his wife, Suman, for the first time. There really isn't anything one can do in London on Christmas day. Everyone is presumably at home eating christmas pudding and being British. So anyway, we went for a drive to Stonehenge, which is two hours southwest of London. I'm not much of a history buff, so I cannot relate too much of what Stonehenge is about. But I love the area where Stonehenge is located. It's surrounded by rolling hills and the weather is always misty and gloomy (I've been there in summer once). The nearby villages look like the quaint English villages Enid Blyton used to write about... complete with thatched roofs and ivy covered walls.

We even went to Dover to see the famous white cliffs. It wasn't a particularly clear day, so we couldn't exactly see France, but it was exciting to see the ferry boats coming and going. The cliffs of Dover are quite remarkably white. I could write more, but a picture is worth a thousand words.

We flew to Nice the next day. When we reached, a little past 11pm, no form of public transportation was available. Lucky for us, we had practiced how to say "Je voudrais aller a 41 Rue Massena". The hotel room in Nice was tiny, and the bathroom small and slightly unkempt. I was getting ready for a vacation of dissatisfactory lodgings, but I am happy to report that all our other hotel rooms were quite good. Nice just wasn't that nice :-)

The first thing we did the next morning was go to the Marche aux Fluers (flower market) which despite its name is a regular market with some amazing displays of olives, spices and a Nicoise favorite, glazed fruits. After taking a dozen pictures and trying some sickly sweet glazed grapes and pears, we walked into a part of town called vieille ville (old town). Like all old European towns, this part had narrow cobbled streets that were lined with colorful shops and restaurants. I noticed two shops in particular; a dark cellar type olive oil store (the customers seemed to stand around and taste oil and vinegar like it was wine) and a confectioner's store (with sacks full of colorful marzipan sweets). The more interesting streets had houses that were brightly colored with calcutta-style wooden shutters on their windows. Close to the old town, and a short hike up a hill, is the Chateau. I think the Chateau itself is closed to the public, but the gardens offer magnificent views of the Nice Harbor. In fact we saw a few big ferry boats headed for Corsica and it made us think of Asterix and Obelix (Asterix in Corsica). In another comic (Asterix and the great Banquet), Asterix and Obelix set out to find the best foods from Gaul to bring back to their village for a banquet. From Nice, they took back some Nicoise Salad! And salad really is the most important food of Nice. All the way in Burgundy they were serving Salade Nicoise, a bright mix of lettuces, tomatoes, olives, anchovies and lots and lots of tuna. It's served as a complete meal, and let me tell you, it's the best salad I have ever had. Later that evening, we walked up and down Promenade Des Anglais, a wide boulevard in front of the Bay. This part of Nice looks and feels just like Florida with a Casino and an American Barbeque restaurant called "Mississippi".


We left for Dijon fairly early on Dec 28th, but because we were driving past Lyon and because we encountered a snow storm on the way, we finally reached Hotel Le Jacquemart way past dinner time. Hotel Jacquemart was a real find. It is located in a quiet backstreet in an old part of Dijon that is famous for its antique shops and beautiful architecture. The building is from the 1700s and the interior is decorated with antique furniture and art that gives the rooms and the lobby quite a splendid dated look. This is one of my favorite hotels ever, and it also helped make Dijon one my favorite vacation places. The other wonderful thing about Dijon is the food. The first night we had meats cooked in a Dijon-Burgundy sauce (look up poulet dijonnaise or boeuf bourguignon ) and the second night we went to a restaurant that specialized in mussels and had their famous mussels in cream sauce and mussels mariniere. Dijon is a gastronomic paradise for foodies like us, but it also has a history (and geography) that lends itself to being the culinary capital of France (in fact, Dijon and Lyon do complete for the title of 'culinary capital of France', but since we decided to skip Lyon on this trip, we choose to believe Dijon has the better of it). Dijon, located in the heart of Burgundy, is surrounded by some of the best vineyards in the world. There is evidence that dates wine production in the area to 330 BC, but it was really the Romans and their flair for organized viticulture that gave the area its characteristic wines. Dijon mustard was made famous in the 1800s when someone substituted the vinegar with wine while making mustard. Today the mustard is famous for its smoother, less acidic taste and finds its way into many regional specialties in the form of dijonnaise, a wine-mustard sauce. I could struggle all day to find the right words to describe Dijonnaise cuisine, or I could steal the words from Fodor's guide: "It's almost unfair to the rest of France that all this history, all this art, all this natural beauty comes with delicious refreshments. As if to live up to the extraordinary quality of its Chablis, its Chassagne-Montrachet, its Nuits-St-Georges, its Gevrey-chambertin, Burgundy flaunts some of the best good, plain food in the world." I couldn't have said it better if I tried!
The next day, the 29th, we set about to see Dijon on foot. We decided to a guided tour of the city, but because it was a chilly -8C for the most part, my enjoyment was considerably reduced. Dijon's history, and that of Burgundy, has been separate from that of France since the middle ages. When the Romans came to Burgundy, they built a wall around the city of Dijon to keep away the 'barbarians' who I understood to be the Gauls that lived in the west of France. Dijon's wealth and stature as a center of arts and commerce increased to rival that of France during the rule of the four dukes of Burgundy between the 1300s and the 1400s: Philipe Le Hardi ( the Bold), Jean Sans Peur (the Fearless), Philippe le Bon (the Good) and Charles le Temeraire (the foolhardy, because he was defeated by the French King in Nancy and that ended it for Burgundy as an independent state). Our guide often repeated, in her strong french accent, that at that time "Dijon had more wealth and was more important than France".
The center of attraction was the Palaise des Ducs (The palace of the Dukes) that is now converted into a museum of fine arts. More interesting was the walk around the city, where some of the buildings dated back to the middle ages and were still in use with little or no renovation. The roofs of some were painted with a mosaic of burgundy, green and white to reflect the colors of the surrounding vineyards. There was also the church of Notre Dame, with a facade that showed four levels of gargoyles and arches and a stained glass window dating back to the 13 century. In both the palace and the church we noticed that most of the statues were defaced. This theme was repeated in the Palaise du Papes (palace of the popes) in Avignon as well. Most of the destruction is attributed to the French revolution (what was left, was bombed by the Germans during the 2nd world war.) It's a powerful lesson that political and social ideology should never inspire the destruction of past monuments.


We left Dijon on the 30th and headed out to Beaune on the route de Grand Crus. Between Dijon and Beaune lies a 30km road that connects some of the best vineyards in Burgundy that produce the premiere Grand Crus of the cote d'or region (cote d' = slopes of; and 'Or' is gold in French, but in this case, it is short for orient, or slopes of the east). The best-wine towns are Marsannay, Clos de Vougeot, Nuits St Georges and finally Beaune (there are several Grand Crus beyond Beaune, most notably the white wine of Mersault.) We drove by or stopped in each of these towns, but couldn't really experience much because the French take their lunch break very seriously and everything (and I really mean everything) is closed between 11:30 and 2pm! Every town was a little cluster of houses in the midst of acres upon acres of snow covered vineyards. There were countless caves (cellars) that advertised degustacion gratis (free tasting). We were especially hoping to visit the Chateau du Clos de Vougeot, a 12th century chateau owned by the monks who had perfected the science of viticulture in the region, studying the clos (climate), the terroir (land) and the cote ( slopes) to produce the ancestor of the Pinot Noir grape.
We had a quick lunch in Beaune and headed out to the famous marche aux vins (wine market) where local burgundy wines can be tasted for a small fee. This is highly recommended because the marche aux vins cellar really belongs to the nearby Hospices de Beaune, a historical building founded in the 1400s to provide free care for men who fought in the war. We didn't go into the Hospices, but it looked imposing from the outside. Most of the finest vineyards in the area are also owned by the hospices. Inside the marche aux vins, we were given a list of wines that were available for tasting, and small silver souvenir tumblers. The cellar was like a little wine museum, with some exotic and expensive wines from the 1940s collecting dust behind wrought iron gates.

After Beaune we tried to take a quick look at the chateau at Mersault, but there was a snow storm and the Chateau's cellar closed without warning. We then made our slow and dangerous drive to Annecy, a small mountain town between Lyon and Geneva.

Stopping at Annecy and Chamonix was a part of a miscalculation on our part that we could zip into the French alps, ski a few trails and then zip back out. The weather was incessantly unpleasant during our stay, Chamonix is beautiful, but confusing and not very well organized, and lets face it, Animesh and I are not expert skiers. So Chamonix, especially, was a real let down. We drove all the way, trudged through piles of snow and sludge and didn't even get to ride the famed cable car to Mont Blanc.

Annecy, on the other had a lot to redeem it. The town has a lot of history and correspondingly some spectacular old architecture. Right by the hotel du Palais (where we stayed and which I highly recommend) is the 12the century Palais de L'Isle (Island Palace) which sits right in the middle of the river Thiou. There were also a couple of beautiful old churches from the same time, and a spectacular chateau d'Annecy, all of which overlooked the pristine Lac D'Annecy (Lake Annecy) and the white peaks of the French alps that framed it. It reminded me of Montana, only more beautiful and with a lot more history to it. At Hotel Du Palais, I chatted with the talkative concierge who was thoroughly amused by my plan to ski in Chamonix. "If you are a beginner, I say! No no no! You will not come back at night!" It would have been cryptic had he not been laughing snidely the whole time and shaking his head every time he said 'beginner'. I understood that he was, of course, an expert skier. On the other hand, he did recommend a fantastic Fondue restaurant for the night. Annecy is very close to the Swiss and Italian borders, and the cuisine shows some obvious influences. The Fondue was served with three different local cheeses and cepes (a local French mushroom with a strong and meaty flavor). It was fantastic. We were so pleased with out new year's eve dinner that we went to bed promptly at 11pm. At midnight, we woke up to the sounds of fireworks and general brouhaha on the streets of Vielle Ville Annecy (old town Annecy). The french television shows were doing all the same variety shows you would find in the USA... only they did theirs in French. So happily, despite the title of the blog, we didn't toast in the new year, we peeked out of the window and fell right back to sleep.

The next day, we were to drive to Avignon before sunset, but it was bright and we decided to drive around Lake Annecy instead. We drove by picture perfect towns like Talloires, Duingt and Menthon St Bernard, all overlooking the lake and each sporting a Chateau or two. We came back to Annecy in time for lunch so that Animesh could get his fondue fix once again. I decided to go healthy and ordered a regular fish soup. It was then that I was introduced to the magical Le Rouille. Rouille is a saffron colored sauce made of mayo, garlic, mustard and saffron or pimento. It is a superb compliment to fish and I wanted to buy myself a jar to take back home with me. That was easier said than done, because I could never pronounce the 'Rouille' to the satisfaction of the shopkeepers (Rooi-ye? Hooy-ye? Khooy-ye?).

We reached Avignon late in the evening on the 1st and were quite taken aback by the imposing structure of the Palais des Papes (Palace of the Popes, pronounced paley-dey-paap). A little has to be said about the history of Avignon to make sense of its architecture. The town came into prominence in the 1300s when seven exiled Popes set up camp after fleeing the corruption of Rome. So Avignon became the center of Christiandom between the 1300s and the 1400s. It must have been a time of great political unrest and religious uncertainty, because the city and the palaces they built were not spiritual as much as imposing and inspiring fear. The Palais des Papes, especially, is enormous and fortresslike, complete with watchtowers and lookouts. The entire city is enclosed within an enormous stone wall built in the medieval times. We took a self guided tour of the Palace and we were not disappointed. Apart from spending on construction and security, the popes also commissioned artists; most notably Matteo Giovanetti, whose frescoes can still be seen on some of the walls and ceilings. Most of the tapestries, paintings and other art disappeared during the French revolution, but it is clear that the popes lived well, ate well and certainly drank very well. Some of the best vineyards of the Cote Du Rhone region were owned and operated by the monks (most notably the chateauneuf-du-pape which we visited the next day) and even today, the palace cellar offers a taste of some of the best wines of the region.

A little distance outside the city wall, is the famous Saint Benezet bridge. According to legend, in the 12th century a local shepherd by the name of Benezet claimed to have been ordered by God to build a bridge across the river Rhone. A local official of the church had laughed at the suggestion and asked Benezet to lay the first stone, pointing to a heavy boulder nearby. Benezet then picked the boulder with remarkable strength and for performing that miracle was canonized Saint Benezet after whom the bridge is named. That's the romantic story of the bridge, but the bridge itself is a simple and beautiful example of medieval architecture. Only four of the original twenty-two arches remain, but its still worth the visit. In fact there is a famous french nursery song about the bridge which goes like this: "Sur le Pont d'Avignon, on y danse, on y danse.." (On the bridge of Avignon one dances, one dances...).

A short drive away from Avignon are the vineyards of the Chateaunuef-du-pape. Avignon is actually at the southern tip of Cote du Rhone, so by visiting the Chateaunuef-du-pape caves, we were hoping to get a taste of that appellation as well. The main 'Chateau' was actually bombed during the world war, and what remains is a romantic medieval facade on top of a small hill. The surrounding landscape looks exactly like the site of one of Van Gogh's famous paintings... and could well have been! Van Gogh actually lived and worked for many years in nearby Arles. The good people of Arles, of course, did not appreciate him in the least, and evicted him before his death. Devastated by the alienation, Van Gogh checked himself into an asylum in St Remy (also nearby) where he lived for a couple of years before commiting suicide in Auvers. In recent years, Arles has made quite a move to undo the past and offer 'Van Gogh Tours', but they do not have any of his paintings, unfortunately, all of which were sent back to Amsterdam. We decided to wait to visit Amsterdam for a closer look at Van Gogh's life (who both Animesh and I enjoy) and decided to skip Arles in our righteous indignation (or should I say, we really didn't have time to go to Arles at all, and justified it with righteous indignation and all that nonsense).

The next day, we drove to Pont du Gard (pO-de-gaarh), the site of a famous roman aqueduct that was built over 2000 years ago, and that looks like it could still be functional. Throughout this trip we were regularly amazed by the superiority of Roman architecture and their understanding of basic engineering principles. Pont du Gard is one of the best examples of their caliber that we have seen. Of course we haven't been to Nimes and seen the famous Roman arena... but we had to leave something for another time :-)

We arrived at Aix en Provence fairly early on the 3rd. The constant packing and driving and vacationing were taking a toll on me, because I was quite exhausted by the time we checked into Hotel Quatre Dauphins. Aix is a bustling city with a lot of history, but I didn't have too much enthusiasm to spare and so I didn't see much. I did walk along the famous Cours Mirabeau, which is the central nerve of the city an attractively decorated with christmas lights. The restaurants on either side were reportedly mediocre and meant for tourists. Animesh and I had decided by then that any restaurant that carries its menu is different languages (english, japanese etc) is probably not known for excellent food. We took the concierge's suggestion a found a little bistro a short walk away, where I had some superb cassoulet. Apart from that, I really don't have much to recommend Aix.

On the 4th, we started on the drive back to Nice, but rather than take the autoroute (highway), we drove along the mediterranean sea and stopped at all the little towns along the French Riviera. The French Riviera is achingly beautiful and I will simply have to post pictures to show how remarkable they are. There are sandy beaches and red cliffs all along the deep blue waters. Near Antibes and Cannes, we also saw some really posh villas. Animesh loved everything about the French Riviera but for me, they were a little bit of a let down. One reason of course, was that my wonderful vacation was coming to an end, and that always makes me sad. The other reason was that the towns along the mediterranean are over hyped, crowded and tacky. We could have been in Key West, FL or Monterey, CA and I wouldn't have known the difference. And the food was mediocre, which to me was the last nail on the coffin.

When we finally reached Nice, it was late again, and we had just enough time for a quick dash along the promenade. We stayed at the Hotel Felix again, and the room we got this time was in a state of further disrepair. Our flight to England was uneventful and in London we had more gloomy weather, but some excellent beer and batter fried fish and chips. By the evening of the 5th, we were back in NYC, poorer, plumper and completely exhausted.

In the two weeks since we returned, we have unearthed the various ceramic jars of mustard from Dijon, enjoyed some of the nougat from Provence and callisons from Aix. We have cooked fish with Rouille and sipped our Burgundies with greater appreciation. But our vacation was about more than food and wine (though they did play a prominent role) and so I wanted to sort through the three hundred digital photographs and write my blog quickly before I forgot all the details. This blog has taken over two weeks to write, and I hope you enjoyed it!