The Trip.....Day VI: Beaune Palin!

Day VI









So Thursday night where you are watching the debate at around 8:00 CST we are in Beaune and my wife decides prior to bed that we should stay up and watch it. I know it will come on around 3:00 A.M. and as I said we had killed a bottle of wine. Instead she decided to set an alarm and we went to sleep with me confident that the alarm would go off and we would turn it off and go back to sleep. I was wrong. Alarm went off and she turned on the debate (missing the first 10 minutes) as I lay there trying not to listen, and failing.

I hate Sarah Palin. Let me say that from the outset. I do not know why but I think it is her morally superior rhetoric of small town America and her scolding tone when speaking of those who do not line up behind Senator Mc Cain. I think she was an awful choice, not just because I do not like her, but because she will sink the ticket. She comes off to me as uninquisitive and not too bright and havent we already done that for 8 years.

Anyway. She did a nice job in the debate and she won from the perspective that she did not sound stupid. She still was heavily scripted and when she did not like a question she just talked about something she had memorized like energy and high taxes. She did a good job and did not sound stupid, so she won. Biden did a much better job then her and lost nothing. certainly on a debate team scorecard he won. I am not a huge Biden fan either. He has lined up with big banks and MasterCard at every turn and was key in getting the awful Bankruptcy Reform Act passed in 2005. He takes money from the banks. I do not like him as i said. But he did a good job and is certainly in a position to be President if something awful happens to barrack. She is not. I listened to the talking heads for a few minutes when they were done and went to sleep.

We slept late and got up and had hot baguettes and butter and some hot tea. heaven. then we set out to explore the wine caves. This was a cool experience. We paid like 9 euro dollars each and for that got a little silver plated sommelier cup and were set lose in this catacombed, cavernous stone basement/celler to walk around where they would have a barrel and on top of it a bottle of wine and a candle. You were admonished to only take one taste of each wine. It started with the fruitier whites and worked their way up through chalkier whites, to lighter reds to the big hearty bergundys. One of the cool parts was that there were all kinds of vintages represented. By each bottle there was a barrel to spit your wine into so as not to foul your pallet. I did that a couple of times. We drank our way through, came out the other side and bought a nice Pomard.

We then went to a little place for a kebab. A gebab appears to be a sandwhich on a bakery fresh piece of sourdough cut like a pita. It looks and tatstes a lot like a gyro but without the tsitsi sauce. It was average and expensing and the service sucked. One of the things i have learned in England and in France is the general indifference of servers. I think it is because tips are not normally expected since evidently they get paid a living wage to serve but everything is soooooo slow. I think I said that in an earlier entry but I want to emphasize...slow. In a place where you are eating quickly, ask for the check when the entree arrives.

We hit another Wine cave as it started to rain and drank our way through the ritual with some unpleasant german family. In the prior cave we had been following around some American wine snobs and now were treated to their teutonic equivalent. Not pleasant. But the wine was good. In this one you were directed to the cellar and then had a winding walk of about a 1/4 mile through different chmbers and walls divided by tens of thousands of bottles of wine being stored down thiere. It was creepy but cool.

Afterwords I went to find some more cigars. Sandy went to the big grocery store in town called Casino in order to get some wine glasses so we could....drink more. Now to know my wife is to experience many joys. It is not enough to go to a French grocery and just negotiate the process with awkward smiles and nods for sympathy. Not Sandy. She had to find some glasses and decide to self check. In the self checking process she found the glasses scanned higher then marked and then decided to put them back in the aisle and get another cheaper set. She had a woman chase her and yell at her telling her she needed to bring back the set to erase the sale. There was much yelling and although she ended up being friends she was still made to feel a criminal.

It had gotten cleared up and so went home, drank some more and napped for a while. Or rather she did. I sat out on the back porch and drank wine and played on the internet and read with a blanket on. It was a great afternoon in the sunshine with another nice Cuban to smoke. It was awesome.

We then looked around a lot and as it got colder and colder we decided on a nice restaraunt with a huge fire place which they also used to cook their steaks. It was awesome and warm. I had a great little steak in bernaise sauce. We had another bottle of wine. We went home and passed out. We really like wine.