Saturday, October 24, 2015
One week from today we will be at home and have our first
newspaper in a month! Little things.
It was an early start today. Breakfast was still as hit and
miss with more misses. A couple sat with us and she ordered a poached egg that
took at least 15 minutes to arrive. Our regular dining companion never eats
breakfast with us because we come and leave early and he comes and leaves late.
He always orders an omelet. Today he ordered on and twenty minutes later it
still had not arrived and since he had to board the bus in 10 minutes, he got
up and cancelled his order and left. Here is the real mystery. When we boarded,
at the safety briefing they said there were 33 of us. The next day they said
32. Today they said 28. There are the 3 of us on the Complete Europe, there are
2 independent Norwegians (we’ve been told but we haven’t met them) and the rest
are all going to a Celebrity cruise. Whoever came up with the Luftner/Amadeus
& Celebrity co-marketing was an evil genius because otherwise these river
boats would have been much emptier. I can’t imagine why Luftner is building a
new boat a year when these are not full.
I know we are in a sort of shoulder season so maybe they are booked full
at other times of the year.
We were on the bus on our way across the river to the Bresse
region by 8:30am. Only 4 passengers stayed on the boat. Our first stop was a
farm museum in Romenay. The architecture of these old farm houses that we
passed and visited reminded us very much of Tito’s village. We spent at least
an hour on a guided tour there and then had a performance by locals in costumes
who played songs and danced. The whole experience was supposed to be set in
1937, I think because at that time most farmhouses had both old and new things
in them so they could display old and really old. Lyon evidently used to be a
silk center so they wore a surprising amount of silk for farmers. We saw and
heard a new instrument for us, a hurdy gurdy.
After that we drove to Ferme Auberge du Colombier in Vernoux
for a huge Bressonaise lunch. It was a great setting on a clear day with
snow-capped Mont Blanc visible in the distance as well as acres of Bresse
chickens. The chickens have a red top on their heads, white feathers and blue
leathery legs. They are protected by appellation and have specific requirements
like a minimum of 10 square meters of outdoor range. We ate them of course!
They had a unique meat texture and strong flavor as well as freakish long legs!
We had sausage, pickled onions and cornichons with pork terrine to start. We
had warm French bread with Bresse butter. We had white and red wine. We all
thought the red was awful and didn’t love the white though I thought it tasted
very similar to our Pouilly-Fuisse last night. There was a salad with chicken livers
and hard boiled eggs. There were gratineed potatoes and then chicken in sour
cream. Lastly, there was a pie like a very thin version of Clay’s Granny’s pie
made with cream and sugar. They served tea and coffee. It was a good and
filling meal and it was a nice change from the struggles and agonies of dining
on Amadeus boats. We walked out through the back to see the chicken yards in
the distance and their old wood fired oven.
We next drove to Monastere Royal de Brou in Bourg en Bresse.
It was a beautiful deconsecrated monastery and church. It was built by a widow
on the death of her husband, who I believe I understood was later sainted
Philibert. She was a Hapsburg and ruled in I believe the Netherlands and raised
the future king of Spain Charles V, her nephew. She died after the church was
completed without ever seeing it. She, her husband and his mother are all
entombed behind the altar. It stopped being a monastery and church during the
French Revolution and became a city building in the 1920s. It was late high
Gothic style and finished in fewer than 30 years if I understood correctly. It
was certainly the largest church we had ever seen that had been built as a
private enterprise and tomb. That alone made it singular.
We drove on south for about an hour and a half to Lyon, a
huge city, to find a bunch of riverboats and our docked where the Saone meets
and becomes the Rhone. After we got back they had a demonstration and sale of
Lyon-painted silk scarves in the Lounge. We dropped in for about 15 minutes.
There were fewer than a dozen people in attendance. I still don’t know if anyone
attended the book restoration lecture. Dinner is at 7:30pm and I see no port
talk for tomorrow on the program. I will try not to write about dinner since at
this point I guess the less said the better. I expect the rigid rules about the
service of courses for the entire restaurant and the hour we waited for main
courses last night after salad and soup will keep us from ever returning to another
Amadeus Cruise. If I still have Internet, I’ll publish this now.
