Last day in Burgundy

It was our last day in Beaune. This is a picture of the scene just outside our front door, as we waited for Alain le taxi to appear - he'd kindly agreed to look after our suitcases for the morning.

Then we grabbed ourselves some pain au chocolat and some other local speciality in ACC's case, and took them to the "locals' bar" for coffee. This is a very nice place to spend a quiet half an hour as old men read newspapers in silence. You even get a mini toblerone with your coffee! (I'm easily pleased.)

Breakfast out of the way, it was time for some shopping. I was devastated to find that Mon Millesime was closed, as I'd been looking forward to a good mooch round there, but never mind. The next stop was a new wine shop which seems to be owned by the same bloke who owns La Boutique Des Domaines directly opposite. I was hoping to pick up some old Dujac Marc de Bourgogne. Sadly he was out of stock. My morning wasn't going too well. Fortunately it rapidly improved.

We visited another new shop, this one attached to a rather fancy restaurant on Petit Place Carnot, which sold me a bottle of Roulot Marc so that I could recreate part of the Le Montrachet experience at home. Admittedly it was in a paper bag with a string handle which later made a bid for freedom.

Next up was the cheese shop. I braved this by myself and had prepared a sentence in French in my head to ask for it to be vacuum packed but the brusque young man who served me didn't have time for any of that. Get on with it woman!

At least I got a photo of the laser guided cheese cutter. And I did get the cheese vacuum packed after asking again, but all in one bag together which seemed a bit weird. All in all, it wasn't the best customer experience ever. But worth it to get my hands on some Regal de Bourgogne.

Then it was on to the chocolate shop to pick up some presents for home.

At this point I received an exciting phone call. ACC was in Magnum, literally next door, and they had just taken delivery of an exciting parcel including some old Marc! I wasted no time in getting there and cut a deal which I was very happy with. It made my morning! All that remained was for ACC to visit the cassis shop, and it was time for lunch.

It's becoming something of a tradition that we have our last lunch at Loiseau des Vignes, which is always great. This time we were slightly caught out in that having taken our order the maitre d' reappeared to tell us that the menu we had chosen from wasn't actually available - 1st November is a saints day and so we were required to choose from a more expensive set menu instead. We rationalised this to ourselves on the grounds that it also included the cheese course which we would have wanted anyway...

We had an excellent lunch and this beef Wellington thing reminded me strangely of a Ginger Pig sausage roll, in appearance at least. To drink, we were able to have a variety of things as they specialise in wine by the glass.

For the cheese course, we were offered a choice, "assiette ou chariot?" to which there was only one possible answer, and the variety of Epoisses-style goodies had to be seen to be believed. If only I had a cheese chariot!

Finally it was time to depart. Alain le taxi collected us and whisked us back to Beaune station for the train home. Another magnificent trip had come to an end. Thanks very much to ACC and I hope to do it all again next year!