It's a lot of work walking down the sidewalks in Amboise. I told you the streets were really narrow. That's because when they built the buildings they didn't have cars so they made them too close together. Poor planning

In an attempt to modernize they paved the streets. Somewhere along the line they also made little sidewalks. Some of those sidewalks are a waste of material. You'll be walking along and the sidewalk will narrow down to less than a foot wide. I know I'm larger than a normal person but Twiggy couldn't walk on some of those things. Well, maybe sideways. So that means you have to constantly move back and forth from the sidewalk to the street. You don't want to be on the street when there's even a chance of a car coming.

Even the sidewalks that are over a foot wide are hard to walk on. It appears that the section in front of each building is the responsibility of the person who owns that particular building. Some sections are concrete but most are made up of small stones or rocks about four to five inches square. Over the years these stones tend to settle but not evenly. So you have all these constant dips and doodles everywhere. That is combined with the fact that each building is only ten to twenty feet wide so the texture and quality of the workmanship of each section changes before you can get adjusted to the one you were on.

The combined effect of all of this is that everybody looks a little drunk walking down the street. Maybe with all the wine they drink over here they don't notice. Maybe it's just me. Maybe the wine and the sidewalks counterbalance each other. Is that enough of an excuse to drink more wine?

Speaking of wine, I have to tell you about last night's dinner. I’ve been to trying not to spend too much money over here so I have been avoiding the really expensive French restaurants. However, yesterday I asked my friend down at the little boulangerie where I have my morning croissant, where the really good places to eat were. She gave me a couple of names and I decided to go to one last night.

The name of the place is St. Thomas’s Restaurant. With a name like that you expect a lot just going in but it was beyond even my expectations. The dining room was small and couldn’t seat more that thirty people at a time but it was exquisitely decorated. The single waiter, of course, wore a tuxedo but he had an assistant who was in a costume. I assumed he was supposed to have portrayed some sort of renaissance slave. I guess he was black in order to appear more authentic.

I tried to order one of the dinner combo menus. It was actually the cheapest one but I thought it said that I got an entrée, a main dish, and either one of those cheese plates or a desert. It looked to me like the more expensive combos just added on an aperitif and you got desert and the cheese plate. When I tried to tell the waiter which entrée and which plat(main dish) I wanted, he eventually got through to me that I could only select either the poisson(fish) combination of entrée and plat or the one with viande(beef). I picked the poisson. I guess I was trying to get the more expensive stuff but he wasn’t going for it. Even at that, what I had ordered was 26 euro. That’s about > $22.

In any event, I also decided to try some expensive French wine. I really don’t like wine but I knew I couldn’t return to Placerville without having some really good French wine. Some of the stuff on the list was over 100 euros but I settled on a local vintage that was only 27 euros for a demi bouteille(half a bottle). That’s a lot of money to me just for a few glasses of something to drink with my meal. However, I thought this would be a good experience and the wine was made in 1964. An excellent year! For me at least. I’m not sure if it was a good wine year.

So he brings a bottle out that doesn’t even have a label on it and he starts telling me something and I can’t understand a word he’s saying but I just kept looking at him and nodding my head now and then. That must have worked because he look satisfied and opened the bottle up but instead of putting it on my table he set it on a little table next to me. Then he says something else and acts like this time I had to understand him. I gave in and admitted that I didn’t and he says in English that the wine had to set for five minutes before I could have any. I’m thinking, “Who is he kidding! I have waited fifty-two years for this, what in the world was a few more minutes?”

After five minutes he comes back over and pours some in a little glass. I knew what to do then because some friends of mine from CANEC had taught me how to hold the glass and taste it so I was prepared. I looked cool! I think I was supposed to drink all of the stuff in the little glass though because then he poured a regular portion in one of the bigger glasses on the table. When he wasn’t looking I snuck the rest of the little one so no one else would notice.

I have to tell you, I learned some valuable lessons last night. The first lesson was that I will never waste that much money on a meal for myself again. They charge you a lot more because of the atmosphere, which was worth every penny if you’re going for romance. Next time I will go with a date. Then I would probably even spring for at least the middle priced combo.

The second lesson I learned could end up completely skewing my financial condition for the rest of my life. This wine was so incredibly smooth I actually enjoyed just sipping it. I don’t know if the aging process lessens the acidity or what but I didn’t even get heartburn. I have always gotten heartburn before when I drank wine. That is probably why I didn’t like it. I always wondered why in the Bible Paul said to drink a little wine to soothe our stomachs. It never did anything for mine. Now it all fits. You know that the wine those guys had was the very best! That wine Paul was talking about was probably some of that stuff Jesus made from water. God never intended for us to drink cheap wine!

I was even disappointed when the waiter wouldn’t let me have the last half a glass. He said something about the sediment. I was thinking, “How bad could a little sediment be”, and tried to talk him out of that too but he was holding the bottle. Wine people probable say that a person should remember the last sip as the best and having that stuff at the bottom would leave you with the wrong memory of how good the wine was. My theory is that the waiter uses what’s left over in the bottom of all those wine bottles to have a little nightcap at the end of his shift. By the time he leaves for home he doesn’t care about the sediment. I also imagine that his boss wouldn’t know because of those wobbly sidewalks.

Sincerely,

RandyG