Although we have been in France since Tuesday, we finally arrived at our vacation home in L'Isle Sur La Sorgue today.... three days on the road... not hard driving but eating restaurant meals and suitcase living was enough to remind me of why we like to rent a place and stay for weeks at a time.
Weather has been excellent...and has steadily warmed up from Paris to Provence...Paris was 0 when we landed... and Provence today was 16...every day has been sunny although we noticed a lot of smog in Champagne and Burgundy which disappeared when we  entered Provence territory..must be those Mistral winds.

So what have we been up to? We stopped in Champagne` at a shop in Hauteviller to buy some bubbly from a young fellow Mathieu Valarde whom we met a number of years ago and  who has a store called Au 36....He represents lots of the young producers in the area and sells to the public at the same price you would pay at the vineyard....saves you all te driving to each place.Plus when you taste the Champagne it is easy for me to say I do not like it to Mathieu whereas tasting with the winemaker it would be more difficult to say "not that one"
We have bought  Champagne now from Mathieu for three years and he knows our tastes... I love the blanc de blancs...that is Champagne made solely from the chardonnay grape. It is the acid that I love...must be from drinking all that Nova Scotia wine!
Anyway, we had a lovely afternnoon with Mathieu tasting Champagne and hearing about his new baby. Some producers we bought were....Palmer,Chiquet, Agrapar, Jacquesson, plus some wines from a group of young Champagne makers who have formed La Club....they like the way each other makes their product and therefore you are invited in to the Club....wines will be shipped home to NS and maybe will be there for the summer.
At the end of the tasting we were exhausted..having been up all night on the plane and after checking in to our very nice B&B we went insearch of dinner...we had forgotten though that good restaurants do not open until at least 7 and it was only 6 so we ended up in a not so great Brassiere and had apoor meal...home to bed we went and slpet like logs. The rule of thumb is not to go to bed when you arrive in Europe but try to get onto the time of that country as quickly as possible.
Wdnesday we headed for Burgundy via the Autoroute..now I have never been a fan of the a series highways in France but my old age must be mellowing me as it was actuallya breeze. I like how the trucks stay in the inside lane and only travel 90 km/hour. They will move in to the middle lane if they are passing a slower truck but only then.The outside lane... the third lane is for the fast guys..yikes.. the speed linit is 130km/hour but i am sure some are going faster than that!!The driver must always move in to the right hand lane if not passing...yo cannot hog the middle lane...all the movement actually keeps you alert!
In beaune we were looking for some  special candle holders called Rats de Cave and visiting some old haunts and a special restaurant called Le Ciboulette...we had a superb lunch here and a special bottle of St Aubin pinot 2009 from Domaine Roux Pere et Fils...
One of our missions in Burgundy was to visit St Aubin and taste some wines at their Cave.. sort of like a coopertive selling house for a number of winemakers. I had had wines from the winemaker Hubert Lamey and was ken to bring some home. St Aubin is a lesser known appelation and so better priced than thos in the Cote D'Or....but still great tasting. Lamy is well known for his chardonnays..my favorite. We tasted a number of his wines and settled on his plain Burgogne.
While there we tasted a number of other wines an and we  found this great pinot from Pernand-Vergelesses  and the Domaine P.Dubreuil-Fontaine Pere et Fils 2009 Premiere Cru... with a stiker that said it had won an award as the best wine by a female winemaker amongst the Burgundy female Winemakers group..yippee... you know how much I love to support female winemakers.
I am going to stop now... I have reread this and notied a number of spelling errors but I am using my small Acer compter and it is not allowing me to go back easily and correct them.. so please bear with me...it was also difficult getting on to the google site... all in French..funny how it knows where I am.
So many things to talk about... like how none of this travel ina foreign country scares me at all... even when we have no clue what people are saying to us...and we are in a line up getting off the freeway and have npo ticket...now how did we get on and not pick up a ticket... and then the machine will not take our money..eros.. and the voicebox..no one in the booth..is yelling at us...piece of cake... anyway a story for another day   i am off to my book.. The End of Your life Book Club....XX All