Belley, France

Date: September 14, 2018 – September 15, 2018
Location: Belley, France and Chambéry, France

Belley, France

From Nice, France we took a train to Lyon, France and picked up a rental car. We drove to Belley, France.

Belley, France is allegedly the town that Brian’s ancestors came from.

As the legend goes, when his ancestors arrived in the United States they didn’t speak any English. Thus, when asked what their name was, they thought they were being asked where they were from, so they said “Belley”.  Their family name was then Belley from that day forward.

The roads en route to Belley had many rotaries.

We made it to Belley!

The Belley Cathedral was being renovated when we were there.

We were able to go inside the church.

This is the Belley public library.

This is the Belley war memorial.

There are some cafés and restaurants with seating outside.

Belley, France even has a tourist office!

Chambéry, France

After the afternoon in Belley, we went to our hotel in Chambéry, France and had dinner in the town.

Chambéry was nice with many pedestrian streets.

For dinner, Brian had veal tartare, which was his first time having raw veal.

After dinner, we walked around the town. There was really nice lighting around the castle, Château des Ducs de Savoie.

There were not many people walking around.

The cathedral in Chambéry.

September 15, 2018

We left Chambéry and drove to the east to a winery, Domaine de Méjane.

The view from the winery.

We did a wine tasting and enjoyed the wine. We also saw a short film about the winery and vine nursery.

Vine nurseries are needed because of the Phylloxera insects. In the 1800s, French wineries imported American vines to stay competitive. However, in the mid 1860s, entire vineyards were rotting.

The reason was found to be a bug from America that would eat the vine roots. The vines in America are resistant to Phylloxera. Thus, it was found that roots from American vines could be used to resist the insects by being grafted to the root of another grape variety. The grafting allows there to be grapes and leaves of one variety, but the root system is another variety that is not effected by Phylloxera. 

After the winery we started making our way south for a housesit.