Vive le France!

Our last full day in Beaune just happened to be Bastille Day, 14th July. Shows how far behind on blogs I am, huh?

We celebrated with some French toast a la Tom...

Went to a class that taught us how to read wine labels... Tom has his French swilling technique down pat.

Admired the pretty town of Beaune yet again...

And went to the Chamber of Commerce to enjoy a very enjoyable olfactory display.

They have various products sitting inside these big glass jars to demonstrate all of the different smells in wine.

The citrus one...

The berry one I think?

The mossy, mushroomy one...

The coffee one...

The vanilla one...

The actual room the display is kept in is amazing.

And then, we decided to celebrate Bastille Day with our first proper (and horrendously expensive) lunch at a Beaune restaurant.

Carpaccio de boeuf...

Escargots...

Some kind of duck...

And of course, boeuf bourgignon (a specialty of the region)...

A palate cleansing cheese platter (if cheese can be considered palate cleansing)...

A berry and mango panacotta...

And a fig and pistachio slice.

We rolled ourselves out of the restaurant only after I revived Tom who had fallen in a dead faint over the size of the bill (just kidding).

And then we made our way to the little tourist train that rides around the town giving a commentary on everything.

As it turns out, we'd already seen practically everything there was to see in Beaune!

The bus took a little detour out to the outskirts of the vineyards... seen those by bike!

We admired the French-ness of a lady having a conversation with a friend on the street from her be-flowered balcony with her hair in rollers. The same balcony in fact, that we saw the previous evening!

The route then took us through a slightly less picturesque carpark (where we interrupted a bus driver's nap)...

And then back into town again for us to disembark.

Having discovered that there weren't going to be any official celebrations in central Beaune for Bastille Day, we headed back towards our little house.

I had to stop and have a chat with a statue along the way...

We walked through a garden along the way that we'd only walked past previously. It held a really interesting plant exhibition by local school students (and some kids playing with little fire crackers, but I didn't take a photo of them).

And then we enjoyed a peaceful evening at home, listening to the very distant sounds of fireworks going off.

Tom decided to amuse himself very usefully by repacking and clingwrapping our luggage.

Tom prepared some lovely cheese and salmon toasties...

It was up bright and early the next morning for our train to our next destination. We waved goodbye to a bright and clear Beaune...

And prepared ourselves for the not-very-fun task of getting our mass of luggage onto the train. With less than a week to go until we would return home to Australia, we figured we could put up with the pain for a little while.