Vacation from our vacation

Italy was magnificent and beautiful and awe-inspiring. It was also exhausting and expensive and heavy on the communication problems.

The worst of them was when we were on a bus from Florence to Siena and I told the Dude to get off at the first stop whilst I finished zipping up my backpack. Confused as to why no one else was departing, he hesitated, and by the time I had reached the door the bus was already pulling away. "My dear Dude, wherefore didst thou choose not to alight?" I asked, but in a bit more colorful language. He raced up the aisle and tried to pantomime to our driver that we had erred. She stopped a few hundred meters down the road and we departed, but she started to pull away before we could get our baggage from the belly of the bus. Matt raced after it and slapped the door a few times to get her attention. She herself then descended and treated us to a five-minute tirade in Italian that I'm sure was just her commenting on how much she truly loved Americans. 

 After experiences like that, it was such a relief to come back to the bosom of Mother France, where I can understand and be understood (most of the time), where there is no such thing as a 3E per person, inescapable "bread charge" at restaurants, and where baguettes are fresh and plentiful. Except on Mondays. But that's another story.

My French buddy Louis invited us to spend our last weekend of vacation at his family's cabin in Solutré (near Mâcon), which is famous for a massive geological structure known simply as "La Roche." It's also smack dab in the middle of the some of the best white wine vineyards in Burgundy, which produce Pouilly-Fuisée, among others. 

As the cabin had no heat and the early March night temps were hovering around zero degrees Celsius,  first order of business was to build up a roaring fire. Luckily, the Dude's half-Canadian (many moons in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area counts, right?), and had coaxed some life-giving flames in no time.

The next day, after a very grasse matinée (fat morning), we were joined by some other Charollyians for a hike up La Roche. It was pretty durn sweet... a perfect way to wind down from the whirlwind and get reacquainted with La France Profonde, annoying boulangerie hours notwithstanding.