France 5

I thought I best start this post with an update on the coffee situation in France, since Paul had raised the question in the comments in the previous post! As I said to him, we came with a few kilos of my coffee so it was not an immediate issue to find decent coffee! I had already noticed when we were out and about that the coffee available in bars and restaurants was not very inspiring! I am not sure how they manage to make it on normal espresso machines as they have, but if I order an espresso I get an double espresso volume of something like a very small long black, very little crema, thin, no real mouth feel, not unpleasant but not at all an espresso!

As I ran out of my coffee I started looking for a suitable roast from local French roasters and it was soon apparent they suffer from the same disease as so many Australian roasters, very light, under roasted beans with a horrible acidic, fruity flavour profile. Its almost universal here and they looked at me with some distaste when I expressed a desire for a darker roast!

So in summary, the coffee is deeply uninspiring! I have managed to find one roaster so far, in Voiron, which is only about 20kms away, and they do a medium dark roast that I find is drinkable, so we have stocked up on that now. As far as the espressos go, I am wondering if the typical extraction is not a single shot espresso, over extracted to the volume of a double shot, thats one way I think they could end up with what most places serve. Anyway, if you want good coffee in France, drive over to Italy!!

Ok enough of the coffee talk! Last week we drove up to Lyon with Dominique, Arne and René-Claude for a few days exploring, we stayed in the College Hotel as recommended by René-Claude which is located in the old city beside the Saône River in Vieux Lyon. (Old Lyon). Its the 2nd most populous city in France and Sal & I found it a bit hard to adjust at first to all the people – especially all the tourists. We were definitely reminded why we are travellers and not tourists. The hordes of tourists just ticking off places to be seen for the Farcebook or Instagram accounts is horrifying and its easy to see why so many places around the world are becoming increasingly anti-tourist. We quickly grew to love the city though, and as soon as we ventured out of the touristic parts and found the local scene, it was a really beautiful and delightful city, in fact i would go so far as to rank it one of the world’s great cities, with the Saône and the Rhone running through the middle of it and the fabulous Italian influenced architecture of much of the city combined with its reputation as the gastronomic capital of France, its got a lot going for it!

I wont bore you with the history, suffice to say Lyon dates back to the Iron age and was a settled Roman city by around 50BC, so its got lots of old stuff, it was the capital of France for a long time, and heavily influenced by Italian silk traders. You can do your own research if interested!

So rather than banging on much more I will just post lots of pictures!

We went to an amazing local institution for dinner the first night, Brasserie George, which has been open for nearly 100 years! Its absolutely huge, I think it can do over 700 guests per service! Its unsurprisingly very noisy and vibrant! We had an enjoyable meal there and while the food was nothing special, the atmosphere made up for it!

Sal & I went exploring the other side of the Rhone and found a superb little bistro for lunch. The streets in this ‘newer’ part of the city, are reminiscent of parts of Melbourne, with their shady trees lining the streets.

The College Hotel had been an old school and they modelled the hotel on a school right down to the old school desks in the rooms.

As well as being regarded as the gastronomic centre of France, Lyon was also home to the late Paul Bocuse, widely considered to be the father of modern French gastronomy. I have long admired his contribution to modern food and had not thought I might one day eat at one of his restaurants, but being in Lyon, René-Claude decided thats what we needed to do and booked us into Brasserie Le Nord. It was an interesting experience, great service, very proper French dining, but I found the food somewhat underwhelming. (I will leave a post on French gastronomy for later in the trip, but I have some thoughts.)

For our last lunch Sal & I found this little place not far from the Hotel, once again you could sort of see the boundary of where the tourists will venture, as in the first photo, then a bit further down the road, a bustling little bistro, filled with locals and pumping out yummy food!

Just before leaving to drive home we did a walking tour with a private guide to see the Traboules and other hidden secrets of Lyon. Most of these pics are from that.

We got back from Lyon & Sal & I had to do a dash to Voiron to get more coffee beans, as she hadnt been before we went for a wander around the town centre and then found a funky little cafe that just had one dish per day so we stopped for lunch.

I cant believe its still the same week! We have been busy, next up a simple dinner with an amazing wine at home. The wine is made from a rare grape, Savagnin from the Jura region. Its a white wine called Vin Juane that is typically aged for over 20 years, it spends the first 6 years with a yeast must lying on top of it! You can read more about it here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_jaune

This one was a 2000 vintage, so 25 years old, it has an aroma like a sherry, is a pale brown colour, very dry and very unusual!

The veal roll we had for dinner has an interesting story, René-Claude’s mum, went to the local boucherie (butcher), 50 years ago, and asked him to make the stuffed veal roll to her specific recipe, the boucher did so, and called it Pain de Viande. (bread with veal). Now his son runs the business and still makes her Pain de Viande!!

 

Finally, for this week we had the Rosiere at the local town, Vinay, it was the 132nd Rosiere, a festival held each year where a local girl is picked as the princess of the Rosiere and crowned during a weekend of non-stop celebration and partying! The origins of the Rosiere are very old, originally a sort of dowry that was awarded by a wealthy nobleman to a deserving young woman of insufficient means in the village, its now an endowment, funded from the estate, awarded to a deserving young woman.We went down to the village for the grand parade.

 

 

Tomorrow morning we leave Dominique and Arne and head up to Montbard, just NW of Dijon where friends from home, Denise & Rob have a house, we will stay with them a few days, then they fly home to Gove but they have very kindly offered us their house for the rest of our stay. We are not sure how much of that time we will spend there, we will come back here to stay for a few days before we fly out at least. So new adventures await us!