We drove into Beaune early-ish, around 9:30 am, so that we would be sure of finding a parking spot and so we could hopefully finish our touring before the heat of the day. We parked in the same lot as we had when we were here in November and we felt like locals because this was a new parking lot that wasn't yet on the tourist maps of town. As we were making our way north to Calais, we figured this would be a logical place to break up our driving and more importantly, we knew of a good place for lunch. We found the restaurant and made a reservation for lunch. Having been to the mustard factory and the Hotel de Ville, there weren’t any sites that we wanted to visit in particular. Therefore, we ambled around the town and went in and out of shops that caught our interest. It was quite hot out again and so if a shop had air conditioning, we tended to linger a bit longer. We had some last minute souvenir shopping to do – yes, even after a year, we somehow managed to end up doing some last minute shopping. The hanging baskets were amazing this time of year, just as we remembered them from our last visit. We also walked around to the belfry and past the cathedral before winding our way back to the restaurant. We had the same menu as in November and this time Megs also went for the escargot salad with a parsley-butter sauce as an appetizer. For our main course we both had the tarragon chicken served with fried potatoes and beans. Our third course was a fromage blanc, which is a very fresh cheese that tastes kind of like yoghurt. To finish off our meal, I opted for a chocolate and orange cream cake with a crème anglaise (light custard) while Megs ate a pear and ground almond tart. We left feeling very full and satisfied and thought that we would probably be skipping dinner that evening.

After lunch, we did a complete loop around the outside of the ramparts as you aren’t allowed to actually walk the ramparts themselves. We saw the old washhouse, got great views of the roof of the Hotel Dieu and saw plenty more hanging baskets. We then headed back to camp to spend the rest of the evening catching up on blogs, determined to at least have finished writing before heading back to Canada. Megs whipped up a delicious bruschetta that evening with all the fresh tomatoes and basil we had picked up at the market in Vaison and Malaucène. Her twist on the recipe was to use walnut instead of olive oil as we were trying to use up our ingredients.

The following morning, we set off on our drive to Amiens, about 500 km north-west of Beaune. It was a lot easier of a drive for Megs as there were many fewer roundabouts and the towns were further apart which meant that she could use cruise-control more often. I took the opportunity to catch up on writing blogs when I wasn’t looking out the window. We saw lots of vineyards on our way out of the Beaune area with chateaux nestled in amongst them. We thought that this would be an area to explore further during the fall, when the days were cooler. We also saw quite a few beautiful sunflower fields stretching off into the distance but very few interesting roundabouts. We also encountered the most baffling traffic management near some road works. I say baffling because how hard can it be make sure traffic is stopped on one end while the traffic from the other side is allowed through. We were waved through only to encounter a large trailer and a number of vehicles coming from the other side forcing us to come within inches of the houses on the road. As we neared Amiens, we hit the most incredible thunderstorm. It was raining so hard that visibility was limited and we decided to pull over and wait it out. We weren’t the only ones either – there were quite a few French drivers on the sides so you know it was a real downpour. Luckily, it didn’t last too long and we made it Amiens in time for me to make a job search related call.