by Keith Talent
We aimed ourselves at Châteauneuf du Pape with stops enroute in Vacqueyras and Gigondas for tasting and buying for the next couple days as we went. Not a bad day’s wine touring, and nothing, and I mean nothing, will make you as green with envy as the assorted Mercs with Swiss or German plates, popping down to the south for a short holiday and loading the trunks with cases to take home. Bastards! Châteauneuf was a very quaint little town studded with caves to slake the tourist’s thirsts. On the way out we made a pilgrimage to the wine drinkers Mecca, assuming one worships at the church of Kermit Lynch, Vieux Telegraphe. Situated outside of town proper, the five km trip winds one through the famous vineyards set on boules-sized stones. We get there and it’s empty – closed up for the season. A young girl is loading a pallet of wine on a truck and tells us she’ll be right with us. This charming, vivacious, tres fashionable even-while-driving-a forklift girl finishes her duty and leads us to the tasting room. Yeah, Worksafe BC would probably take issue with a long flowing scarf on a lift truck operator…
She leads us through the current vintages and apologizes for not having any Vieux Telegraphe to taste as it’s sold out for the year. They do have the remnants of a 1999 they were drinking with lunch if we care to sample. Angels sing. A holy light surrounds the saint.
We leave the property, which in actuality is far closer to a private home with some wine in the basement rather than industrial scale Napa Disney-esque shrine-to-vine.
Up towards Lyon a day early, we figured an extra day would see us at Les Halles in the morning rather than having to rush (in retrospect, this was our only error – Chateauneuf was so pretty we should have stayed the night at a little farmhouse B&B in the vineyards. Pull into Lyon a little later than intended, get lost looking for our hotel in the maze of closed-for-construction and one way streets, and finally pull in. They’re full for the night. Shit. It’s too late and we’re too tired to navigate the old city any longer. Head back to the freeway knowing that F1 motels ring the cities of France. We’ll inevitably find one ten KM outside town for the night, make our way back in the morning. I’ve always wanted to stay at an F1 in France, except they universally look dodgy, kind of like a Gallic Motel Six. When push comes to shove, however, I chicken out and opt for the sleek Scandinavian Airlines-owned Park Inn on the outskirts. Dinner was at the local Buffalo Grill, a France-wide chain of Wild West-themed steakhouses. The less said the better.
Get up and head into Lyon. What a stunningly attractive city! Vancouver’s beauty is all macro-view mountains and ocean, whereas Lyon has taken the opposite tack and made the details as stunning as possible. The bridges are lit immaculately; the town’s grand boulevards truly grand; the cathedral perched out on the clifftop over the city as if it sees all, a giant golden Virgin Mary with her arms outstretched at the highest point; a mini Eiffel tower in the background.
Lunch is started at an outdoor market
A quick lunch and then check-in, drop the bags (which are in the car which is in a parkade which is surrounded by youth that look like I’ll be needing the insurance policy Visa touts for travellers with stolen baggage), and then off to explore. The Roman amphitheatre on a hilltop; the city below the stage like a set; innumerable pedestrian bridges over the flooded Rhone, each more spectacular than the last. Back to the hotel to relax and rest before dinner. Ask the (now) always reliable front desk clerk for suggestions. She recommends we go to the heart of restaurant row – a street we’d walked earlier – nothing but dining spots, one after another to a specific bistro. We’re to be careful to get the right one, it’s poorly marked and in the heart of some tourist dining spots. We locate it and secure a table in the covered arcade, heat lamp nearby to warm us against the Vancouver-like rain falling outside. C’est magnifique! Unpretentious traditional cooking executed with precision and skill. An amuse of four dishes, a Lyonnaise potato salad, a terrine, white bean salad and lentils so spicy with mustard you’d swear they were a fusion dish with too much wasabi. Excellent.
A Lyonnaise sausage to start, boiled potatoes and more of the nuclear mustard followed by a pigs foot stuffed with parts of the animal you’re probably happier not having described and gratin potatoes on the side. Delicious. And if you’ve detected that Lyon is all about pig and potatoes, you’d be right. If the worst part of your day is eating too much swine and pommes de terre, you’re having a pretty good day.
Woke up to a Mistral-cleared perfectly blue sky and off to Les Halles for the morning. It’s big, clean and interesting, but not quite the nirvana I’d hoped for. We started the day at one of the tasting bars, all set up with a dozen oysters and shots of cheap and crisp white.
Spent the day shopping, and trying unsuccessfully to rent a bike from the automated kiosk on virtually every street corner. They’re intended for locals to use to commute around town. The first half hour is free, just a Euro per hour after that. Pick up and drop anywhere. Brilliant. But our crappy North American antiquated credit cards didn’t have the security features required to rent one.
Went for dinner at a massive and famous brasserie. The place, according to my quick calculations, sat at least 500 people, and it was full. In operation since 1836 and housed in an art deco temple, it was everything old-is-new-again personified. A squad of waiters took care of you, each with a different uniform that told you where in the hierarchy each server fell from Captain to lowly busboy and about ten in between.
Started with oysters and beer, moved to French onion soup (when in Rome as they say) and had a ridiculously large portion of choucroute for my main. Perfect and uncreative but made to a standard, you get exactly-what-you-expect (and want) cuisine.
And then on to our flight back to London the next day.
