Small Bears "En Vacances" Part 2 - Wine Tasting!

When we woke up on our first day afloat on the cruise ship, we were still on the move.  Polar explained that we had been cruising all night up the River Saone and were heading for a place called Chalon-sur-Saone. 

"We're going to visit the town of Beaune when we get there," she explained.  "It's supposed to be very pretty and it's in the wine-growing area, so we're doing some wine-tasting too.  I can take one of you in the Bear Bag with my camera."

We bears discussed who would go and agreed that I would do this visit, but Endon would go into Lyon the next day, while Hanley would ride the Train d'Ardeche on Sunday. 

"You are good bears to agree to share," said Polar.  "There will be plenty of adventures for all of you on this journey."

From the coach, I had some super views of the vineyards and I also spotted a canal, which was the Canal du Centre.  Polar says it's part of a system linking the Saone to the Loire.  I wonder if there are French boating bears? 

After a nice drive through the countryside, we reached Beaune, which was very, very pretty indeed.  Polar and Grizzly decided to visit the Hotel Dieu museum, which was a chapel and hospital built in the 1440s, providing free medical care from the nuns who lived there to the poor people of the town.

You can see that the roof is covered in beautiful, colourful tiles on one side, although our guide said it was the plain slate roof that was the most expensive part when it was built.

I thought the beds looked very comfortable and was tempted to try bouncing on one, but Polar told me to be a good bear and be respectful as we were in a very historic building.

After our visit to the museum it was time to explore more of the town and join the rest of our group to visit the wine cellar.  Polar took lots of pictures because the town was so pretty.

It was a very warm day and I was starting to get rather hot in the Bear Bag, so it was a relief when we went down into the cool cellars.  Being a bear, I could smell lots of wine even before we went into the shop, but even the humans could smell it in the cellars.

Our guide, Ursula (a good Bear name!) knew a lot about wine and, helped by one of the men from the shop, gave all of our group sipping samples of white and then red wines to try, showing us how to test the bouquet (smell) of the wine before tasting it.

I think that we bears would make excellent wine testers, because we have such a good sense of smell.  I found it very easy to tell the different wines apart, although even Polar (who has quite a poor sense of smell) found that she could tell the difference in smell between the wines we were sampling.

I enjoyed climbing on some of the wine barrels and sniffing the wines inside them, but my favourite thing in the cellar were the tasty little biscuits we had between wines to help cleanse our palettes.

Hanley and Endon were looking out for us when we the coach brought us back to the boat, just in time for a lovely lunch!  We cast off soon afterwards, and we enjoyed looking out of the window at the lovely scenery and interesting buildings.

Then we came to the first lock we had seen in daylight.  It looked very big, but we would see even bigger locks later in the week.  Our big boat only just fitted into this one!

The top gate slid out of the way, but there were mitred bottom gates, like big versions of the sort of lock gates we are used to seeing at home.  You can see that the lock-keeper has a very smart control tower!

Polar noticed there was a nice little pool on the stern of the boat.  It was starting to get very hot, so we decided to have naps in our nice cool cabin with Grizzly, while Polar had a dip.

But we didn't do very much napping, as there were too many interesting things to look out from our window - and soon, we heard that it was time for afternoon tea!

"We are going to be very fat little bears by the end of this holiday!" I warned the others, but fortunately we would a little bit of exercise during our trips out, and I will tell you all about Endon's first trip out in my next post. 

Small Bears "En Vacances" Part 1 - Very Fast Trains

 I have some very exciting blog posts to write, as we bears have been on holiday.  It's even more exciting than a usual holiday post, as our holiday included travelling on trains and a big river boat in another country.

Almost two weeks ago, Hanley, Endon and I set off by train with our human guardians.  Not all of our hug could go on this trip, because Polar and Grizzly had to take a whole week's things for themselves and they were worried bears would get lost with all the changes of train we would be doing.  When Polar told us we were going to France, Hanley Bear found his beret from our trip in 2018 and Endon asked if he could borrow my stripy top.

"People and small bears in France don't all dress like that!" I told them, but they packed them anyway and said they wanted to look like French bears - or ours en peluche as they say in France.

We took the local train across to Derby then caught a train to St Pancras, which is one of my favourite stations as great adventures start there.

Our great adventure started the next morning, with a very early first breakfast and a long queue to check in for the Eurostar to Paris.  Polar and Grizzly should have been sitting with other members of their group, but the train layout was different to expected and there was a muddle getting everyone aboard.

Polar and Grizzly ended up not sitting together and we didn't get a seat by the window, so we couldn't look out and see where we were.  Every time we went into a tunnel, Endon asked if it was The Tunnel, but there are lots of tunnels on the route through London, Essex and Kent.  Finally, it was The Tunnel, and we found ourselves speeding through northern France.  None of us bears had been to Paris before, so we were all very excited.

      

Polar and Grizzly's holiday firm had organised a coach to take us across Paris.  It was very slow, as there is so much traffic on the roads, but we didn't mind as we had lots of time to look out at all the people and look for interesting things, like the old Metro signs and lovely cake shops.  We waved and shouted "Bonjour!" but I don't think anyone could hear us.

The coach took us from Gare du Nord across the city to Gare du Lyon, where you catch the trains for the south and south-east of France, and trains to Italy.  It was very busy here, so we stayed in our Bear Bag except when Polar lifted us out to look at interesting things, like this lovely mural in the station.  We all cheered when Polar said we would be seeing some of the castles and countryside in the pictures.

All the trains looked very sleek and streamlined, like our Eurostar but in lots of other colours.  Polar lifted Hanley up so he could see the red Italian train and some double-decker TGVs - Trains a Grande Vitesse.  He was almost sick with excitement when he discovered we would be travelling on one of these!

All our group were seated together this time and we had a seat beside the window.  Soon, we were out of Paris and speeding through the countryside, which had huge fields of wheat and barley.  Endon Bear was very surprised to see that some had already been harvested, because the weather has been so hot there.

TGVs can go as fast as 350 km/h, although I don't think ours was quite that speedy.  Polar noticed we were doing almost 300 km/h at one point and took a photo, though we were too busy looking out of the window for castles, rivers and canals to keep checking our speed.

Although it is almost 300 miles from Paris to Lyon, our train only took about two hours to get there.  Then, once all our party had been collected together, we were organised onto another coach and taken to our boat.  We could see other cruise boats out on the Rhone and suddenly realised how big a river it is.

"It's even bigger than the Trent was near Torksey!" cried Hanley, who compares everything to the Trent, as he says it is the best river in the world.

Polar and Grizzly checked in and got the keys to our cabin.  We had been planning to have naps when we arrived but there was too much to see from our window, which had a very convenient bear-shelf where we could all sit.  Hanley and Endon put their blue-and-white striped tops on, even though we had seen nobody dressed like that anywhere on our trip.

"Nous sommes Nounours!" declared Hanley, who had used Polar's phone to look up another word for Teddy Bear in French.

Suddenly, we realised that our boat had cast off and was moving along the river.  "I think we are going to have a great adventure!" said Endon, and we all agreed.