After our road trip to Jerez I wanted to do homey things.  Mark and I walked to Mercado San Agustin and purchased a leg of lamb. The butcher sliced it off the bone and ground it up for the meatball recipe I wanted to make.  Then he hacked up the bones.

At the corner produce stand we bought garlic, onions, eggplant, and tomatoes.  We also picked up some sweet sherry, and a loaf of bread.

I made the meatballs while Mark made broth out of the lamb bones. He also made tomato sauce from scratch using the big ugly tomatoes. The recipe called for brandy, but we could only find big bottles.  So, a little Manzilla, some good red wine, and a bit of sweet sherry had to stand in.

Mark made an eggplant, peppers, feta, orange, and fig salad, and then we headed for the terrace with a nice bottle of red wine. I don’t know what the meatballs would have tasted like if we used brandy. Our substitutions were delicious.

Did I make too many meatballs? Well, only enough for three days.

Next up water curing the olives that are growing on the patio!

Our children would probably tell you the prospect of Donna and I taking a road trip is terrifying. It’s like they think we are two bumbling Magoos, or something. I am truly happy they didn’t witness the Magoo moments on our road trip from Grenada to Jerez and back again.

The way we measure things the trip landed somewhere between uneventful and “Are you kidding me?”  The GPS system had two basic modes…Spanish and Off. Finding reverse was a mystery, and the Peugeot’s owner’s manual was the Spanish only version.  Parking on an incline with the wheels turned towards a nonexistent curb caused the steering wheel and ignition lock up.

Fortunately, Spanish road signs are extremely clear, and Donna really liked the Spanish GPS. The Spanish lady kept giving me reminders to slow down. This meant Donna could attempt to sync the Spanish GPS and Google Maps without providing any directives of her own. Well, other than, “Mark! She’s telling you to slow down!!!”

As for the reverse gear mystery? My limited Spanish language skills allowed me to determine that, “Le ante el anillo situado bajo el pomo…”  means, “There is a f-ing button under the gear shift knob!”  “Situado” and “bajo” leapt out at me. The rest was contextual guesswork. The illustrations in the owner’s manual didn’t correspond to anything in the car, but all I needed was some sort of clue.

The Spanish GPS and Google maps did really well on the freeway.   They were so closely synced it was like a rolling Spanish lesson. Once we got to the fifth roundabout in Jerez they both decided we needed walking directions. This meant insistent commands to drive into the crowds on Calle Larga. It’s a pedestrian promenade. They also dared me to try the road blocked off for construction.

We found public parking and walked to the hotel. Later we moved our car into the parking lot provided by Hotel Palacio Garvey. This mistake required a mid-siesta dash to find a parking space that couldn’t be blocked by other vehicles. A gentleman who was waving his arms around and giving staccato commands to his wife, who was expertly parking an SUV in a space designed for a Fiat 500, objected to my maneuvers. His wife was ignoring him, and I followed her lead. By morning getting their SUV out of its parking space would require rounding up five other drivers.

 We left Jerez early enough to avoid traffic and witnesses. We dodged barriers and drove through plazas and around randomly placed trees. We made several complete circles and squeezed past a truck that was hosing off the streets. Donna got out and directed that narrow passage with a contrite shrug. There were maybe two inches to spare. Once we made our escape our double navigation system started counting driveways and bike paths as exits from the roundabouts. This is a Google Maps special feature that’s gone international.

The path to Alhama de Grenada took us on a one way road that featured two way traffic. Both navigation systems happily chirped that we were on the right road. We later learned there is a beautiful two lane highway into town.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally parked the Peugeot. “I am not getting in that thing until we leave Alhama!” was part of the sighing process. Alhama is small enough that two six mile hikes took us everywhere we wanted to go, and lots of places we didn’t. Finding a tiny sheep farm in the heart of town was a welcome diversion after wandering around in the dark. The Tyrolean Sheepdog didn’t seem to agree.

Ah, but Alhama is beautiful and we hated to leave before dawn broke over its canyons. Of course we didn’t. The steering wheel and ignition were stubbornly locked. Donna read through the Spanish language owner’s manual with a flashlight in one hand and her translator app in the other. The Peugeot has features we never imagined. It does not have a magic button to lock and unlock the steering wheel and ignition.

My experience driving vehicles others have deemed not road worthy came in handy. I applied brute force to the steering wheel until I felt a little pop. The steering wheel broke free and the ignition worked. I learned the brute force trick on the worst pieces of crap I’ve driven. So much for a 2015 Peugeot with 22,000 miles on it!

We arrived back in Grenada in one piece. The clerk checked over the Peugeot and beamed, “Everything is Ok!”  At that moment she was absolutely correct.

And for our next road trip? We’ll take a bus, a ferry, and a train!

We experienced our first Grenada rain.  The temperature dropped from the 80’s at night to the low 60’s. I closed the shutters, added a blanket, and slept in until 9:00 AM.

After getting up I headed to the bath. Mark brought me tea and toast with tomatoes, cheese slices, and olive oil. After tidying up the house and hanging the laundry outside to dry we walked to Plaza Bib-Rambla.

The shoes I brought were unraveling. I needed another pair. I probably didn’t need the green leather boots I bought. They were a splurge. I could have made do with the pair of 15 euro flats. I bought those too.

 

After buying shoes we headed for SuperMercado-Sol. It’s like a smaller version of the Met Market. On the way we meandered down Calle Navas and Rosario. It’s a walking path filled with small shops selling wine, olive oils, stationary, and handmade guitars…handmade Spanish guitars.

Mark had paused at the guitar shop several times before. Once at night when it was closed, and again when our arms were full of groceries. This time we went in. Mark played several guitars. He left with the one that had been calling to him when it was in the window. He was one happy man!

All this shopping made us hungry. So, we stopped in at Taberna de Jam. We ordered white wine and as is the custom they brought out a Tapa. In this case it was a crispy calamari sandwich. All this cost 6 euros.

At the SuperMercado we picked up cleaning supplies. Mark went back to the meat department and got four fat chorizo sausages for less than 1 euro.

Back home Mark played his guitar and I read. I like the guitar’s sweet tone. Mark likes the percussive effects a flamenco guitar produces. “It goes ‘chuff’!” I don’t know what that means, but it does go “chuff”.

Later we walked up to Plaza Larga and took our new short cut. Somehow it deposits us at the top of the hill without any noticeable climbing. The Albayzin does things like that. Up at Placeta de Fatima we checked out our dream house again. We then decided to try the neighborhood bar. The bar is a meeting place for parents and their children. We enjoyed watching toddlers play while their mothers enjoyed adult company, a coffee, or a beer.

Mark then picked up a red onion and a bottle of biodynamic wine at a tiny natural foods store. Back home he cooked up the sausage and used the rest of the contents of the fridge to make dinner. Red and green peppers, watermelon, olives, plums, and two tiny potatoes soon found their way to a plate. As always dinner was fabuloso!

While polishing off the bottle of wine Mark pulled out his new guitar. We sang Cripple Creek in the kitchen. The acoustics were great.  I’m sure the entire village heard us.

To finish off the day we walked two blocks down to the nearest Gypsy cave. There we watched flamenco dancing with a bus load of tourists.  It was a perfect ending to a perfect day!

 

While we were stuck in Germany I started thinking about a phenomenon I’ve been calling the “binary mind”.  In Frankfurt, and again in Grenada, dealing with employees sitting behind a computer screen put us in a hampster’s wheel. We found there was a profound inability to deal with occurrences that deviated from the norm. Again and again the answer was, “I can only do what my computer lets me.”  It is becoming a universal.

This is the use of technology to more efficiently and accurately tick off boxes. The problem isn’t technology though. There is a kind of binary thinking that pushes us towards abandoning nuance. Coupled with technology the tendency becomes more evident.

Our phones are our constant companions. They record our lives’ minutiae and bear silent witness to atrocities. We are frequently told what we think we have seen is not what we have seen. We participate in a societal testing regime where we begin to reject the notion that there can be credible answers to poorly constructed questions. In this world we seek convergence rather than divergence. We seek the static and predictable instead of the dynamic.

I have noticed this convergence while engaged in taking travel photos. We come home from our adventures with nearly identical postcards. Herded into the footsteps of others, where we recognize acceptable compositions, we snap our photos.

This began well before the proliferation of pocket sized cellular devices.  A lifetime ago I took a picture of the Pueblo in Taos, New Mexico. I liked it enough that I had it professionally framed. Since then I have seen nearly identical photos in dozens of places. It is a photo of the Taos our preconceived notions seek.

There is a much better photo from the same road trip. I took it several hours after my nasty heat-fueled refusal to eat lunch anywhere near a caged and catatonic wolf in the Roswell, New Mexico Zoo.

We fueled up at a Roswell Texaco and were coasting on vapors before we found anything remotely resembling civilization.  There I snapped a photo of an abandoned cafe and a burned out tree.  The photo is preserved in a cheap plastic frame.  There is a novella locked in that frame. Binary decisions made on a long road to, “No.”

So, as I stand with other travelers snapping postcard visions I sometimes choose to let pieces of graffiti drift into my focus. Some are sly and winking. Others resist notions of, “Yes, or No.”

There are pieces of graffiti that go beyond acts of territorial pissing. They exist to be both dynamic and ephemeral. There are stories contained in their thin layers of paint. A communal scratching of the surface in shades of black, brown, and white.  A burst of color. Riot Dogs, and short-fused bombs.  They tell us a story, but the James Joyce walking tour isn’t really necessary.

The temptation is to find a piece of graffiti worthy of framing, or posting.  To actually do so is an act of defacement.  It moves the graffiti out of the dynamic and into the binary world of, “Yes, or No.” The graffiti then becomes defined as being good enough to be something it was never intended to be. Artistic pretentions be damned!

A thousand snaps of a bride kissing a groom, or tossing a bouquet over her shoulder.  Binary decisions on a long well- worn road where we are taught to forget…“In the beginning was the word, and the word was ‘Yes!’  What else could it have possibly been?” ~ Antonia

 

You should really be here! Your mood would improve, or at least prove unremarkable. Your diet would be healthier, and exercise is inevitable. For a person like me, with Type 2 tendencies that threaten increasingly higher doses of medication, this is good.

I find we are spending the morning shopping. Then during the heat of the day I am in the kitchen. In weather that has ranged from 90 to 102 degrees the kitchen is the coolest place to be. The terrace off the kitchen is shielded from the sun and brings a flow of cool air in through the windows. The two industrial range hoods remove the rest of the hot air. Although, when their noise finally gets to me I find myself cooking bare footed and shirtless while wearing swimming trunks.

My cooking supplies are minimal. Olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika, and Vinegar Jerez. The fruits and vegetables we found at Plaza Larga up in the Albiacin are on a whole different level. The oranges and lemons deliver streams of juice with even a gentle squeeze. At home we are mostly buying pulp. The big ugly tomatoes from the market are addictive. It is no wonder many Spaniards eat them for breakfast, crushed on toast with olive oil and garlic.

Going out for dinner, while always satisfyingly delicious, tends to inspire me to cook at home. I am trying to perfect my own version of Gazpacho. The big ugly tomatoes got me closer. Donna suggests the addition of feta cheese. We spontaneously agreed that adding some Manzanilla wine might provide the missing note. Tonight we’ll try both!

Tomorrow night we’ll try one of the celebrated restaurants in our neighborhood. The choices are many, and since most diners are eating al fresco we can check out their plates before sitting down to order. Restaurant reviews are helpful, but highly subjective. Seeing and catching a whiff of the food is always a more reliable guide.

Oh, you should really be here!

The Albaicin is exhuberently alive. The church bells ring on the hour…every hour. Dogs bark, roosters crow, children giggle and get into scraps well into the night. Loud expressive conversations occur at all hours. A happy drunk sang a soul song as he wandered through at four in the morning.

All this is mirrored by the view. Roofs tumble down the hill. The Alhambra overlooks us all. Even at a blistering 102 degrees we are surrounded by greenery.

The house exceeds expectations. The views are breath taking. The kitchen is a gourmet’s delight. The first night we ate dinner on the rooftop terrace. Then we moved to the balconies off the bedroom and watched night fall as we polished off a bottle of wine. The jetted soaker tub washed away the stress of travel. We slept with the windows open and immersed ourselves in the fresh air and night sounds. The orchestra was warming up and you can always count on the trumpets and drums to make themselves heard.

In the morning we’d discover a host of small annoyances. No coffee maker, no hair dryer, no Internet, and no phone service. Realistically paradise should not include these things. Practically speaking??? We found a cafe with Internet service. We are using it for social media and Google searches. Bill paying is another story. The hairdryer found its way to the bottom of the list. Scarves and hats will do nicely. We found Mercado St. Augustin and then a French press. Coffee in the morning makes Paradise a little sweeter. Secure Internet??? Maybe tomorrow!?!

In the meantime the church bells still ring on the hour. The dogs bark, the roosters crow, and lively conversations strike up anytime day or night. The roofs still tumble down the hill and the Alhambra stands guard. Paradise always comes with its own terms!

By the time we get on the plane to Grenada, Spain we will have been stuck in Frankfurt for 52 hours. The label on the sparkling apple juice Lufthansa was passing out says it all, “Gold Hell!” At one point there were 7,000 of us stranded here.

It started with one of those muffled airport announcements. “Due to security concerns we ask that you exit the waiting areas A and Zed.”  A few random security guards herded us away from our gates. Someone said a woman forgot something in a cafe. She decided to bypass security after retrieving it. Old hands expected this adventure to last two hours. No one was in a hurry to swarm out of the building. No one wanted to go through security again.

The initial announcement was repeated with regularity. Armed security personnel wandered through. They shrugged their shoulders when asked what was going on. Every once in awhile an aggressive pair of guards would herd more people into the already packed space. No one was exiting the secure area. The thinking was that this was going to wind up being a minor inconvenience. We’d soon be on our way.

Just when most passengers figured this was a routine false alarm, new armed personnel came along to drive us out of the secure area. It never felt like there was a threat. It seemed like we had been asked to comply and failed to do so. We were going to Obey!

As soon as we were herded together into one huge soft target, thousands of us were asked to go through security again. Every once in awhile a very quiet person without a megaphone would mumble directions to the assembled crowd. People hushed to hear. Hearing  was impossible. Conversations resumed.

In the meantime we got phone messages informing us our flight had been postponed, and finally cancelled. Once past security we checked the flight board. Yes, our flight had been cancelled. A very long line had formed to rebook flights. We tried the abbreviated process at a machine. We were on standby for the next morning’s flight. We booked a hotel and caught a cab.

The people who waited 8 to 10 hours in line to rebook got put on standby too. They got food and hotel vouchers. Some were actually able to use them.  We met Peter who was going to Romania to build his retirement home. He waited in line for 9 hours, took a cab to a hotel and waited another 45 minutes. He was told there was no room at the inn. He slept on a bench in the airport clutching his unused voucher.

We arrived at the airport early after one of those fitful jet lagged nights of what can’t really be called sleep. We’d been told standby would be on a first come first serve basis. We were second in line. I tried to confirm our status with an attendant at another gate. “We are really not supposed to do that. I can only share information for the flight to Milan. You will have to wait.”  

This was to be the pattern. There was a protocol and it would be strictly adhered to. Information was difficult to get and contradictory when you did get it. Get ten stranded passengers from the same flight together and you’d get ten different versions. What we were really being told was, “I have no idea. Maybe, but probably not.  Let me send you to the other side of the building.  Go bother someone else for awhile.”

Our attendant finally arrived and told us there were 60 people on the waiting list, and only ten available seats. “Don’t waste your time here. You are not getting on this flight. Go out to the front desk and rebook.” We did. Everyone was told we’d get on the next flight. We were on standby, but don’t worry. Several passengers were told a second plane had been ordered.

We didn’t get on the next plane. The second plane had been cancelled. So, we waited several hours and got food and hotel vouchers. We also got confirmed tickets on a confirmed flight. 52 hours after our arrival we’ll escape Frankfurt.  Although, I won’t actually believe it until our plane takes off.

 

What does a newly retired teacher do when the first day of school rolls around. My old friend Ralph hit his favorite BBQ joint and ordered a plate of meat and a pitcher of beer. I volunteered to help kindergarteners find their classrooms. The first day of kindergarten is important.  I remember coming home after mine with a list of demands, and profound disappointment in discovering another place adults forced kids to take naps. Donna has other plans for the first day of school this year.  We will be in Grenada, Spain drinking wine and eating tapas. Donna is retired…absolutely, finally.  No half measures for Schwendeman!  Spain is a bucket list item.

Grenada will be our home base for a month, and then off to Italy.  We have done the grand tour style of traveling before.  Driving from one end of a country and back again is one way to immerse yourself in a place.  “We saw this, and this, and this, and then we drove all day and saw this, and this, and this!”  It leaves you breathless and exhausted.  Canal cruising taught us the advantages of not living out of a suitcase.  Just unpack and nestle in.

Why Grenada?  The Alhambra, real tapas, flamenco caves, the relative proximity to the coast, and a great deal on a place to stay.  It came down to two VRBO finds.  One was tiny.  It had a great location, great views, a nice terrace, and authentic Spanish charm.  The other had two kitchens, a similar location, a sweet view from the bedroom, a smallish terrace, and authentic Spanish charm.  This place had some elbow room.  It also was considerably more expensive than the tiny place.  Casa dos Cocinas had an owner who was willing to negotiate though.  In short order Schwendeman secured the larger house for the same price as the tiny one.  Grenada was locked in.

After a month in Grenada we’ll go back to Italy.  We skipped the tourist must do’s last time around.  We figure the crowds will die down by October.  So, Rome and Florence will be seen.  Then we are going back to Bologna for a longer stay.

If the question was, “If you could go back to Italy, where would you go?”  Bologna would be the first name to cross my lips.  It’s a foodie paradise.  It isn’t overrun with tourists and tour groups.  It is a short train ride from Modena, Parma, Ferrari, and Venice.  Then too, I really want to go back to the cathedral by the food market and photograph the Shaggy from Scooby Doo Jesus.

Sure, we could have gone out for BBQ on the first day of school.  That would have required flying to Llano, Texas because only Cooper’s will do.  We could have volunteered to help new students find their classrooms, but that would have earned me an incredulous look.  Nope, no half measures for Schwendeman.  We are leaving the country altogether.  Spain and Italy here we come!

 

 

 

 

 

Traveling by boat down the canal, the beginners’ canal, you travel through towns that aren’t of particular note.  When you mention Cuffy, Lere, Fleury-sur-Loire, Apremont, Briare, Chatillon, or La Charite you get blank stares.  There is Paris, Lyon, Nice, and maybe Dijon. Everything else is a fogged over dream.  It’s flyover France.

We met Jan in Paris.  Her daughter in Seattle recognized our Parisian flat on Facebook. Jan was staying in an identical flat just up the stairs from us. She was fulfilling her dream of living in Paris for a year.  She shared that a friend always asks why she chose Paris.  “Jan, Paris is not France!  There is more!”

Paris is an unexpected jolt of caffeine when you didn’t know you needed it.  The Eiffel Tower exceeds all expectations.  It is massive and magnificent.  The Seine night life buzzes and sizzles.  That backstreet cafe is truly romantic.  The light is magic.  The sights of Paris are impossible to see or digest in one visit.  Maurice Chevalier’s sly wink of a song is close to perfect.  It is easy to love Paris.

The places between Paris and Dijon have their own charms.  They burble up like a hidden stream.  A slow boat on the Canal de Lateral captures a different essence, just as essential.  Paris is Paris like San Francisco is San Francisco.  It is a thing unto itself. La Charite and Apremont and all the places without a dot on the map are the components that fit together to make the country.  Baguettes and croissants are just as necessary to the flow of small town life.  The tiny restaurants that are closed on Mondays, or maybe Tuesdays, or Wednesdays are an important part of France’s complexion.

Jan’s friend is correct.  Paris isn’t France.  Paris is its own creature.  Jan is right too.  Paris is where people tend to fall in love with France.  Donna and I barely scratched Paris’ surface.  I can’t tell if it’s love or infatuation, but Paris continues to call.  The canals call too.  So does Italy and Spain.

For me the romance of travel is seeing the places between, hearing cuckoo calls echoing in the woods, watching the heron’s low sweeping flight, and being immersed in the ever present songs of birds.  Finding the rhythm of the locks, and being there when morning breaks in a shuttered town are the moments I look forward to and back on.  Paris has its own delights, but nothing compares to sitting at the helm of a canal boat with a mug of coffee and heading around the next bend.

 

Traveling down a canal with a dog and grandchildren is a trip I can imagine.  The children we saw were perpetually delighted.  They rode bikes along the path that followed the canal.  They leapt into action hopping off their boats and pulling lines to bring their boat to shore.  Not once did we see an electronic device, or hear a temper tantrum.  You could hear quiet conversations and laughter into the night. On the canal you discover the spirit of Huckleberry Finn resides in us all.  That spirit only needs an open stretch of water to be revealed.

whilethegoingisgood.com

The expected heat wave arrived. It was 102 degrees. We explored Decize, ate at the celebrated Le Charolaise, and I even got a haircut.  Then we spent a day swimming in the Loire.  We also had the shortest conversation of the trip. “What do you think about???”  “…finding some air-conditioning in Dijon?”

Within fifteen minutes Donna secured what appeared to be the last air-conditioned room in Dijon.  I hooked a ride to the train station and bought the tickets. One more sweaty mosquito swarmed night on the boat and we’d be heading to the air-conditioned bliss of Hotel Vertigo

Hotel Vertigo was described as being a boutique establishment with plenty of high-tech features and exquisitely tiny rooms.  We’d reserved one of the tiniest.  It was billed as “The Cuccoon”.  We didn’t care.  We’d sleep in a closet if it had a button that sent in cool breezes.

Hotel Vertigo was as described.  It was a hipster’s paradise.  All smooth well-polished surfaces and a tightly controlled color palate.  The elevator had a glass bottom to induce actual vertigo.

We were upgraded to a larger room.  It was a tricked out closet.  Smooth French Pop played on the television set.  The screen welcomed “Donna Schwendeman”.  The air-conditioning worked.  When the card was in the slot so did the lights.

The bed was the bed you wished you could afford.  Billows of white feathers stuffed into high thread count fabrics, and giant pillows.  Blue lights circled the thing.  The bed actually cuddled.  Forget the beam that cut the tiny place in half and compromised head room.  We crawled into bed and jacked the air-conditioning up!  It wasn’t even noon yet!!!

Refreshed we set out to get lunch and explore the city.  Dijon is Paris’ perky little sister.  There is a fresh lively feel to the streets.  Stylish people bustled about and popped in and out of high end boutiques.  If Paris thrums with energy, Dijon bubbles.

We hit a restaurant next to a carousel and ordered Salade Nicoise, and white wine.  This was a tourist joint, but the salad arrived quickly and was excellent.  We had ordered it in more celebrated restaurants, but this was the best we’d had.  Dijon was looking better by the minute.

We enjoyed what Donna kept insisting was “Happy Time” back at the hotel.  The drinks were strong.  The appetizers kept coming and the space was sleek and sophisticated.  We learned Hotel Vertigo got a paragraph in the New York Times and had been booked ever since.  We were lucky to get a room in Dijon’s certified hipster paradise.  Although…the bar didn’t have any hipsters in it, just oldsters like us.

The following day we took the same route and found Les Halles open for business.  Les Halles is Dijon’s farmers’ market.  You can get everything you can imagine, and lots of things you can’t.  Escargot, horse meat, pig brains, calf face, whole rabbit, chicken feet, pigeon, rooster, and fish you can’t pronounce and have never heard of.  If they can’t get it , they’ll figure out where you can.

We eventually checked out of Hotel Vertigo and into our VRBO finds.  These were decorated thematically with antiques and artificial flowers.  One room had a portable swamp cooler that dropped the temperature a single digit if you added ice and water. The second room was on the ground floor and had a powerful fan that cooled one side of the bed.  Beautiful room, great breakfast, and a bearable 80 degrees when it was 102 degrees outside.

In Dijon we ate dinner at Le Marche de l’Huitre, Le Bistro des Halles, and Pourquos Pas?.  Le Marche de l’Huitre is on our return list.  The oysters were fresh and perfectly briny.  We ordered a pitcher of wine, but got a full bottle.  The Frenchman sitting next to us assured us we had ordered well.  It may have been the best wine of the trip.

The next night we chose poorly.  Le Bistro des Halles served a slopped together burger and a salad containing shrimp that should have been tossed at lunch.  The promised avocado was watery guacamole in the bottom of the bowl.  You’re right next to a world class food market and you serve this kind of crap?  If in Dijon, Les Bistro des Halles belongs on your  “Don’t Bother!” list.  We should have gone next door and had oysters again.

Pourquos Pas?  was on the other end of the spectrum.  It is highly rated and deservedly so.  We take pictures of our food when it’s good.  When it’s really good we forget to pull out our phones and just dive in.  The food at Pourquos Pas? deserved to be photographed.  It was beautifully composed and delicious.  We managed a few shots before we started sampling food across the table.  Pourquos Pas? was as advertised.  The awards displayed on its doors were well earned.

So, what do you do in Dijon besides eat and shop for mustard.  We took a wine tasting tour.  Drinking wine in a wine cellar during a heat wave is recommended.  We also know which Burgundy wines to order, and saw where grapes that produce a $15,000 bottle of wine are grown.

The following day after our shopping was done we watched a movie in what passes for French air-conditioning.  It was The Tale of Tales starring Salma Hayek.  There is nothing quite like watching a costumed farce filmed in Italy and dubbed into French.  No subtitles were included.  There weren’t needed.  They wouldn’t have helped.  The Tale of Tales was lukewarm, just like French movie theater air-conditioning.

Younger perky sisters have their own special appeal, but Paris called again.  Just her name on your lips reminds you why songs are written about her.  Dijon is small enough to be manageable.  It’s beautiful and perky.  It just isn’t Paris!