When recommended itineraries from a guidebook were treated as a challenge.
I grew up firmly indoctrinated in the “sprint” school of travel. Everyone in my family was either in school or with a full-time job, so vacation time came at a premium. Recommended itineraries from a guidebook were treated as a challenge – if they said you needed three weeks, we’d do it in two, and if we came back from vacations more tired than we left, maximizing the experience was worth it.
The first time I had a chance to travel on my own for an extended period of time, I followed my training. I had one month to spend in Paris after graduating from high school, and the language classes I was taking left plenty of time for exploration. It was my first big adventure, and I was going to see everything. Another student in my program, Michael, and I arrived on a weekend and hit the ground running. Luxembourg Gardens and the Latin Quarter, Notre Dame and Ile-de-la-Cite. The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, les Champs-Elysee, l’Arc de Triomphe, le Musee d’Orsay. I’ll spare you the full list, but we ticked off each and every one of the Paris guidebook’s “must-sees” in a single weekend. What next?
Back at our hostel, I was mining the guidebook for new ideas when Michael said he had some family friends in Burgundy who’d invited us to visit the following weekend. Would I like to come? Since “always say yes” is a personal rule of traveling even more innate than devising impossibly packed itineraries, I enthusiastically agreed. Only later did I start to wonder what I’d gotten myself into. The nearest town reachable by train, Beaune, barely merited a mention on the travel sites I checked, and the farm town we’d be staying in was so tiny, my high school had more students than they had residents.
As our TGV train left Paris and its banlieues behind, high rises and concrete gave way to rolling fields, and an entirely different France appeared. We met Michael’s friend Clothilde in Beaune, and got a quick tour of the city before moving on to her parent’s home in Nolay. We stopped at an overlook, where we could see the hilly forests to the north give way to fields of vineyards farther south. There are, no doubt, equally beautiful places in France, maybe even in Burgundy, but meandering down Nolay’s sleepy cobblestone streets was like walking into history – in some cases quite literally. The Central Market, built in the 14th century, is still in use today.
The real festivities started the next morning, though – our visit happened to coincide with two family members’ 30th birthdays, and after being sworn to secrecy, Michael and I helped prepare for the surprise bash. When the birthday boy and girl walked into the barn at one of the uncles’ farms (an odd place for a party, but the only space large enough for the 120 guests,) we joined in singing “Joyeuex Anniversaire” and did “La Bourguignonne” – a chant and dance that accompanies any major toast. We took part in a traditional 5-hour, multi-course feast, each dish paired with a local wine, and did our best to keep up with the lively, French-only conversation. Clothilde’s brother Jean-Baptiste started up a game of pétanque, a French version of bocce ball requiring, he assured us, far more skill, until the crowd decided to migrate up to visit Chateau de la Rochepot, the castle on the hill, working off lunch before an equally impressive dinner, more birthday traditions, and dancing into the early morning hours.
One of the cousins confided, as the crowd dwindled, that we were something of a novelty, as the last Americans in town were WWII-era soldiers. I suspect he exaggerated, but it might help explain the incredible hospitality – they were just as curious about us as we were about them.
There’s a reason Parisian landmarks top any list of France’s highlights, and in my first whirlwind weekend I learned about French history, saw amazing art and architecture, and marveled at the presence of history in the middle of a modern city.
But in my race to not miss a single thing, I would have missed what I was most looking forward to: experiencing la vie francaise. So yes, I’ve been to Burgundy without seeing any of the famous chateaux or visiting any vineyards, but it will still be the place I first felt I “knew” France. A guidebook detour from the master plan, perhaps, but there’s more than one way to maximize travel.
Article written by Lauren Zumbach.
