Chateau de Chamirey and Lyon- to be continued...

After Avignon, we drove to Lyon on Sunday (about a 200km drive). But I will have to blog about Lyon another day, as I'm waiting for photos from the friends we were travelling with (our camera batteries needed charging!). By the way, I use a Panasonic Lumix camera (Ying was asking). Don't ask me what type/model etc. I'm the most illiterate tech person.

There won't be too much to say about Lyon, mainly because it was a Sunday. And if you have been to France, EVERYTHING (maybe except churches and markets) is closed! Including many restaurants, can you believe that? And on Mondays, many shops do not open before noon. And they also take long lunch breaks. The French really know how to have a chi-lax lifestyle. The best thing about Lyon was visiting Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, which sits ontop of a hill. If I may say so, it is prettier than the Notre Dame  or Sacre Couer in Paris.

So after the L'Isle sur la Sorgue Market and a 3 hour drive, we checked into our B&B and headed to Lyon by the evening to walk around and have a quick bistro dinner. The B&B was situated in a winery and was very affordable, but not as personal or as pretty as Le Mas Cache. The place was called The Tower of the Beautiful Mother Vineyard. This was the room we got for 66 Euro per night. The view was quite nice though...

In the morning, we travelled to Beaune (wine tasting city- Bern was grinning alot!). Along the way, in the Burgundy (Bourguignon) region, we randomly picked a winery on the GPS and it was Chateau de Chamirey. As we got to the Chateau (and later found out the Devillard family lives there), we were kindly told by Mrs Devillard that the wine tasting was moved as they had a recent fire to their wine tasting site next to the Chateau. The fire was lit by a worker they recently hired (who happened to be a pyromaniac, which I'm sure he did not mention in his resume). So we headed to the office(next to the winery) and was given a tour of the place by Amoury Devillard (owner) himself and was treated to free wine tasting. A bit of a random chance on our part, but this little detour really made our day. The Devillards were really friendly and Amoury was so gracious to spend at least 2 hrs explaining (and drinking) his wine with us.

Can you imagine living in this property? I think Amoury mentioned there were 17 rooms...

(GQ, I change my mind about the THIS IS IT house. This one trumps that anyday!)

I also learn that most wineries would also use the grape skin (or marc) to make a very strong liquor (prob 40% alcohol. At Chateau de Chamirey, this is the Echezeaux Grand Cru at 99 Euro a bottle. however, 

most of the wines ranged from 12-40 Euro. They also made some lovely whites, but it was mainly Burgundy reds. We were thinking of getting some and having the wines shipped back to Melbourne, but the cost of the shipping was going to be way more than the cost of the wine...

All I can say was that the wine tasting trip really made my day and I have learnt alot...