Adieu Switzerland, Bonjour France

We've reached the last country on our tour, buzzing past the customs station into France late morning yesterday, heading for Paris.

France is a bigger country than you might think, so our trip to Paris needed to be broken up.

 

We stopped one more time in Switzerland, where I (predictably) forgot to use the little you-paid-one-franc-to-use-our-bathroom ticket for a discount on my coffee and snack 😐

Our lunch stop was a modern French shopping mall, where Mary and I explored the Géant (like a Target) to find yogurt, fruit, and a spinach and cheese pastry. It took a second attempt at the self checkout to get through successfully (how was l to know that we HAD to weigh and print the nectarine's little bar code back in the spacious produce section?), but we marched out victorious, clutching our spoils (we forgot a bag).

The mall ladies' room had entertaining color wheels to help us make better clothing choices. 

This was the first F for Femmes sign (Women) I'd seen on the trip. Up to this point I've been stumbling with Dutch, German, and Italian, so it's a relief to feel more comfortable with the language. Bonjour! Merci! I tried to help some fellow tour members ask questions at the pharmacy, but although I bungled it 😄 we managed to communicate somehow.

Beaune - the heart of Burgundy - was our halfway-to-Paris stop for the evening.

Beaune is a busy town full of charming shops. If our luggage weren't already overflowing, we might have tried on some clothes or found a few more souvenirs.

Merchandising 🧦

Just a beauty shot.

Mary tried to photobomb my wine press pic on our walking tour. We've been taking informal notes on photobombing and selfie-taking from Kaiessa, a college student in our group who's managed to bomb several of our pics.

The official learning opportunity of the day was visiting the Hôtel-Dieu museum in Beaune, a hospital for the poor that was established back in 1443 and continued to be used until modern times.

This beam support from inside the old hospice, which looks like a wolf, was also used on several other buildings we saw in Beaune.

We loved these mockups of what the hospital used to look like, especially the elaborate habits for the nurses. This one looks like Jenny Agutter in Call the Midwife.

Beaune is the center of wine production in the Burgundy region. Before dinner, we were treated to a wine tasting in our hotel's old wine cellar.

Mary tries the particular sipping, slurping method we were taught for tasting the wine. Notice the sort of flat, silvery tray we used to sip the wine, instead of wine goblets. It helped us to see the wine's color by candle light. 

Boeuf bougignonne is the special dish of the Burgundy region, so several of us ordered it for dinner. Apparently the official way to prepare it is to marinate the meat in pinot noir for four days. 🍷😁

Demain (tomorrow) - Paris!

- Christine