Day 9 & 10 – All aboard for a weekend of fun.

You know our routine by now: if it’s the morning, we must be heading out for breakfast goodies. However, as it was a little bit later, we bought lunch items and just a couple of baked goods for dessert. The lunch items were slices of quiche, a chorizo baguette (and a sandwich for me), plus a pain au chocolat, a slice of flan and a chocolate torte – a big one!

It’s easy to sum up breakfast/brunch – it was yummy once again. As you can see from the pictures above, by the end, everything was eaten.

Fully sated, it was time to venture out. We were heading to the Musée Vinéa Passion, a wine museum that also featured a Tourist Train. I love tourist trains and this one was right up my alley. The route takes you into the vineyards then around and through the town of Chablis.

You might laugh, but all eighteen seats were filled and everyone was enjoying themselves.

Off we went on our adventure. The museum is located on the road that separates the Montmains and Vaillons climats, both of which are Premier Cru vineyards. The grapes have all been harvested, though we did get to see a few straggler clusters still clinging to the vines.

The train goes in between the vineyards and then cuts into the Vaillons climat for a closer look. After exiting the vines, we headed down the road to town.

We passed right by our house and then went along the Serein River. We proceeded across the main street and down past the old mill to the far side of the town. We came back up to the Rue d’Auxerre and went past the many shops and wine boutiques in town. Then it was back towards the museum. It was fun and we saw some areas that we otherwise wouldn’t have seen.

After you return to the museum, you are invited in for a wine tasting or you can just browse the wines and souvenirs available. For an additional fee, you can also peruse the museum displays. We chose to just check out the souvenirs, before buying a couple of their wines. We took a pleasant ride home, trying to get a better vantage point to see the old church, but there wasn’t a place we could see to park.

We still have time here; we’ll figure something out.

Tonight, dinner was at “Chablis Wine Not” and we had a great night.

It was raining lightly when we walked over to the restaurant. It’s less than a five minute walk from the house, so the raindrops couldn’t even catch up to us. We were greeted warmly (right after the couple in front of us was turned away without a reservation) and led upstairs to a nice table. The room we were seated in was set up with two larger tables for ten persons.

A gentleman sitting at one of the set-up tables came over and introduced himself as Christian Moreau. He is the owner and winemaker at Domaine Christian Moreau. He recognized us as the people staying at his sister’s home and his next door neighbors. It was a pleasure meeting him and he told us that he would love to have us join him at his wine cellar to taste his wine. We introduced ourselves and accepted his gracious offer.

When one of the wine servers came to our table, we ordered a Christian Moreau wine: the 2020 Vaillons Premier Cru and the wine server knew that we were in town and staying for the month in the Moreau family house. We laughingly talked among ourselves and decided that Chablis was like Mayberry with a French accent. By the way, the wine was awesome!

Our main server for the evening was just having a good time. She guided us through our tapas choices and could be heard singing little tunes as she went about her duties. When we were finished, I added to her song list with a rendition of “la la la la l’addition, s’il vous plait” and we all had a little chuckle.

There are multiple ways to dine at the restaurant, we chose to go the ‘Tapas’ route by ordering multiple small plates to share. Next time we’ll try to order from the regular menu – especially after smelling the delicious grilled pork chop that went by.

Oh, and on our way out, Monsieur Moreau said he’ll call during the week. Cool!

The short walk back to the house was pleasant as the rain had stopped and the evening air was fresh.

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Uh oh! It’s Sunday market day, but it’s a rainy day. We readied ourselves, but held back hoping that the rain would end soon and it did. Though the streets were wet, the market vendors were mostly ready to sell. As we walked around, it was drying up nicely and the sun was even popping out.

Today we were on a mission. We knew exactly what we wanted and only had to search out the vendors. We started by going to the boulangerie to get a couple of baguettes and some breakfast goodies. Our next stop was the cheese vendor, where we got a few different cheeses. Next up was some sausage, but with a stop in between when I saw gougères with chorizo. The sausage guy had a variety of sausages from Italy. We ended up buying three different types. Our final stop was at the olive vendor. We bought some green olives, black olives and some cashews.

Phase two of our mission was to enjoy all those different cheeses and sausages along with the other goodies later in the afternoon. It would be our grand finale event. To keep it short and sweet, everything was fresh and delicious, and paired well with our bottle of 2022 Domaine Laroche Fourchaume Premier Cru.

For the rest of the evening we sat around and talked, laughed, checked in on the score of the Buffalo Bills game and then called it an early evening as we needed to get up early to get Michael and Nancy to the train station in Auxerre on Monday.