More France pictures

We spent just one night in Paris before we flew back home last week and I couldn't waste an opportunity to take some historical shots.  This is from a place called Place des Vosges.  It is literally a square block of garden surrounded by these lovely brick buildings. The entire block has art galleries and some shops--it's a covered walkway all throughout.
 Victor Hugo is purported to have lived here and there is a museum in his honor.
That is my husband who photo-bombed the picture in the bottom corner!







The area where we stayed for the week is the burgundy region of France where they grow grapes for wine everywhere.  At this time of year, all the vineyards have been turned gold, as the leaves get ready to fall.  Just gorgeous!









My husband and I enjoy France so much.  We love the breads and cheese and frequently will have a light dinner of cheese, bread and paté (with wine, of course).  The house we rented had a fabulous patio where we'd sit each evening to watch the sunset and enjoy a glass of wine from the region.
We picked up the olives at the farmer's market from a small booth, the cheese and meats from a couple of small stores in the town of Beaune;  the wine was from the adjacent town of Meursault, where they make delicious white wine.




This was the little bakery in the town where we stayed.  My husband just loved his little walk up to the bakery early in the mornings for our croissants and bread.

We love wine tasting and doing it in this area is quite an experience.  Most of the "wineries" literally have caves where they store their wine.  We visited several of them and frequently their tasting rooms were in the caves!



This is my husband with our guide for the day, Pascal, who has been living in the area for over 40 years involved in the wine industry.  Note his scarf!  In France, everyone wears scarves, men and women, hot or cold!


This area of France has a fabulous paved bike path system which runs the entire valley.  The house we rented had bikes so we took a bike ride one afternoon to the next town.  This is what we would see along the way!  The green signs with the bikes were the guides to follow.



This is the town we rode to and we stopped in the center of the town to enjoy the sunshine and a beer!



Look at the roof on the city hall building!  It's not unusual to find one or two buildings in a town with a roof like that.  This is the where we parked ourselves to reward ourselves for our strenuous bike ride through the vineyards! JK


When the weather is nice, as it was when we were in France, it's very common (and kind of typical) for people to sit outside of cafés or restaurants.  This was the view at the farmer's market on that Sunday.  Note that we could not find a single seat at the dozen or so cafés that lined the main square!  We figured that people parked themselves early in the morning and didn't leave until later.  We even saw people who bought chickens from the rotisserie vendors and brought them to the cafés to eat with wine!




This was the church and its organ on the center square in this small town where we went for the farmer's market on that Sunday morning.  The small town was Chalon-sur-Saône, on a beautiful river.


Perhaps you'll enjoy seeing the tiny car we had for our trip. It was really small and perfect to navigate the very small streets were drove throughout our journey.