[Itinerary Page]The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
Semur-en-Auxois
The sun is out! The sun is out! It is still cold, but it is brilliantly sunny for the first time since we arrived. We had thought there would be a street market in Nolay today but I guess it was canceled because of the holidays. In any case, there was still a real urge to get out and take advantage of the weather. Margene is definitely solar-powered so the sun was a great incentive ... meaning we got out the door by 11am!
The first question was where to go. There were possibilities to the north and to the south. But the first task was to fill the fuel tank on the car ... and since I knew of a station with a good price to the north, the decision was made by default. Northward it was.
Lest I appear a cheapskate on the fuel thing, I should point out that the difference in the price of diesel from the station at the supermarket on one side of town and the regular station on the other side of town is about 80 cents a gallon! If I had one of those chip and pin cards I mentioned yesterday, I could fill up at the supermarket, but it is an automated operation ...
So we headed for Semur-en-Auxois, another of our favorite towns in Burgundy, stopping to top off in Arnay-le-Duc. The price was about 20 cents a gallon more than the Nolay supermarket. As it was, it took almost US$75 to fill the tank. Diesel cost me $6.40 a gallon this morning. If the car ran on gasoline, I would have been looking at $7.50+ a gallon (and much lower fuel economy). Yikes! The message: always try to get a diesel car in Europe.
The sun was shining, there was nobody on the road and we rolled happily along ... until we got close to Semur. I will let the photos show you what happened then. We got there, though, and it didn't take long to see the difference between coming in january and being here in the spring!
We did manage a nice lunch in the one restaurant that appeared to be open and returned happily to Nolay ... and sunshine. Once again our "work" for the day was about four hours. Gotta love a schedule like that!
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