Flavigny-sur-Ozerain, Saturday, July 9

It's Saturday night, nearly 11:00 pm. Jean and Nicole have retired for the night and I'm down here in the kitchen. I'm sitting in paradise. Today I walked through charming streets, enjoyed the warmth of family, dined on exquisite cuisine in my cousin's garden. Yet, waiting for photos to upload, I just read The New York Times online. My heart is heavy. I ache for my own country. Where is the person who can guide us through the anger, the polarization? Will we destroy ourselves and our America before we figure it out?

I can't reconcile these two realities, so I'll give you this day of beauty in Burgundy.

When we enter Flavigny, within moments we are at the home of Jean and Nicole. This is an old stone house, dating back to the 13th or 14th century. Imagine that. 

They bought the house back in 1974 when it was nearly in ruins. Part of a wall was falling down. In the last 42 years they have transformed it into a thing of rare beauty.

Here's a closer look at the entrance:

The tiny wildflowers on the steps:

The doorbell!

Notice the shape of the stone above the center windows. Jean says that set of windows would have been added a few centuries after the house was built. No doubt they came from the ruins of an old castle, appropriated by whoever lived in the house at the time.

Here is Jean in his garden — the first place he went when we got in yesterday evening:

We had dinner outside on the patio.

What's that they're holding up for a toast? Well, it's Pontarlier-Anis. You mix a bit of it with water and have the smoothest, silkiest of treats.

Lavender, a 20-year-old plant:

 Food here is an art. I'll send out a separate blog to illustrating the production of Jean's homemade raspberry sorbet. This afternoon we enjoyed a special kind of locally-made yogurt which comes in a glass jar. Note the Wisconsin maple syrup that we added.

 

These little pastries below are filled with gruyere, fresh out of the oven. We had them along with dinner this evening. There were lots more but we snarfed them down before I got around to finding my camera.

The events of today are now a blur. What came first? We drove back to Semur to do a little shopping, and I'll have to save that for another post. At some point, Nicole and I took a walk here in Flavigny. Here are some street scenes from that walk:

Flavigny is a walled village. To the left, in the photo below, is a very tall outer wall. You can't see it because we're walking on it. But then, there are interior private walls around family compounds. 

Here's Nicole, showing you how close these interior walls can be:

OK, that's it for this post. It's almost midnight!  I'll send you Jean making sorbet in a separate post and then call it a day. Because there will be TOMORROW!