[Itinerary Page]The daily diary of a wandering restaurateur
December 1 - Ancy le Franc and Beyond
After a wild night of watching French TV ... in French (!), we were tucked into bed by 9:30pm. Margene slept until 6:30am, I was down until 8. I think we finally got the sleep thing figured out!
It was another cold morning. What was just a partial skim of ice on the canal yesterday was a completely frozen surface this morning ... but the sun was shining again, so it was all rather magical ... at least until I went out and found the car totally encased in heavy frost! The rental company in Geneva made sure I had snow tires on the car ... but a windshield scraper? Not a chance! I got the job done with the edge of a credit card. Can another trip to Auchan be far behind?
Thursday is market day in the town of Ancy le Franc, about 15 miles away, so we headed in that direction. There were quite a few more vendors than we saw in Noyers yesterday, but not a lot more shoppers. Winter has to be rough for those vendors who work the market circuit! There is a well-preserved chateau in town that, of course, was closed for the season although there was some renovation work going on.
A number of gites (rental houses) that we had considered for our trip next spring are located around the town of Montbard, another ten miles down the road. We didn't hold out much hope of actually finding any of them, but we thought we should at least see how we liked the area. As we passed through the town of Buffon, the name struck a familiar chord so we went exploring a bit and ... what do you know? We found one of the places that was on our list of possibles.
The owner, Jean Louis Gravier, was at home and gave us the full tour. His English was a whole lot better than our French so we had a nice little visit. He is an artist and a genuinely nice man. We love the property, but the lodgings are a bit primitive for our tastes. So I don't think it is a workable option for next May. However, if he ever decides to sell ...
While we enjoyed a nice lunch in a hotel by the train station in Montbard, the TGV (high speed train) to Paris passed through a couple of times. It is a pretty impressive vehicle at slow speed. At normal operating speeds (150 mph+), it is basically a blur!
We still had some daylight when we got back to Tanlay. Since it is supposed to rain tomorrow, we figured we should walk around town a bit while we could. The Chateau de Tanlay is a large local attraction, but it closed for the season a few weeks before we arrived. We checked out the few local shops and even found a couple of restaurants. One is closed for the winter and the other is occasionally open, but we couldn't figure out when.
Gastronomic animals that we are ... we passed on dinner and hit the leftover chicken in the refrigerator instead. Fortunately the wine supply is still holding out, so we were good to go!
PS: We got the windshield scraper!
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