Friday, May 23, 2014 - Day 1

Wow, what a long day. We were up a total of 32 hours straight, with me only sleeping about 20 minutes on the plane. Quite the lovely plane ride it was too, with a little kid about 20 feet away crying constantly. Apparently noise canceling headphones haven't quite figured out how to mask that particular octave.

We grabbed our car at DeGaulle airport and started towards Provence. It took about an hour to get from the airport to the other side of Paris because of bumper-to-bumper traffic, so that added time to the trip that wasn't planned. So we hit our planned destination closer to 4pm.

We stopped halfway to Provence since we don't get the house until tomorrow. We're staying at the Chateau de Chailly, a 16th century castle converted to a hotel in the sleepy little town of Chailly-sur-Armancon, on the northern end of the Burgundy region. The castle is incredibly cool, with huge ceilings and stone floors and walls. There's a great looking golf course attached, but unfortunately we don't have time to play.

We had a brief repast of local soft rind cheese and a glass of white Burgundy. The cheeses here are incredible. Being made with raw milk, the flavors are amazing and far exceed what can be done with pasteurized milk. It's also great to have local cheese with local wine, as the flavors just somehow blend together after being developed over the centuries.

In searching for a dinner spot, we ended up in an even sleepier town of Mont Saint Jean. Our original target restaurant was closed for a few days, but we found this really cool place called Chateau Les Roches. It's a B&B in an old house. The restaurant turned out to be great. It's very tiny, with seating for 12 only. But the food was great, and very well executed. The wine list was small given the great wines in the area, but we found a great red Burgundy, 2009 Pommard Premier Cru "Les Pezerolles" by Domaine A-F Gros.

Not many photos today. The slide show is here. If you move your mouse on the screen while viewing it, you'll see the description of the photo. Now, it's off to bed!