....and, pictures!

I have finally gotten to a place where I can upload photos, courtesy of another kind hostess, this time in Lyon, so I can add some pictures to illustrate my long weekend in the Dijon countryside.

I realize that this picture is not hugely demonstrative of my location, but I can assure you that the landscape behind me is full of vineyards (see below).

Another friend of Kellen's who was also staying with her in the upper dormitory-like room of home (it's not quite a chateau, but still a big country house) said to me, "It's too bad you weren't here a few weeks ago during the harvest."  I'm not sure I agree--the harvest time is, as one might only imagine, very tourist-y, with lots of visitors descending on the little villages and hamlets of the region to exercise their noses in various caveau de dégustation.  I liked the emptiness of the tiny towns (although I certainly wouldn't want to spend more than a weekend or two away there, as I am a city girl at heart), and the vine fields, even stripped of their fruit and beginning to lose their leaves, were a beautiful burnished amber.  Even in fall, the land is surprisingly verdant-looking to me, since I grew up with the surrounding the Bay Area and ringing the Sacramento Valley, which stay a the nice golden brown of a tray of muffins for approximately nine-tenths of the year.  I ran along the road from Kellen's place to a nearby chateau on a truffle farm (really!) Tuesday morning before leaving, and I was able to take in a lot of the scenery, although after a few days of some reprieve from the damp cold of Cosne it had become frigid, and I felt as if I was battling a a sharp-toothed and unreasonably-agressive wind both ways.

Looking back, it seems amazing that wine-tasting at Kellen's (which is what is going on in this picture) was only three days ago.  Since then, I have gone back into Dijon, spend almost three hours having a very French bureaucratic experience getting medically certified to remain in the country, taken the train to Lyon, and had a day of tourism and excellent food with a new friend, but that will have to wait for the next posting--I don't think my blog is ever going to catch up with my life!