A confluence of Lunch and Learning

This afternoon we had a booking at a restaurant called La Table d’Ambre, that was recommended by our host Frédéric. We had a nice walk over to the restaurant, building up an appetite. It was a great little restaurant, with simple decor and very welcoming staff. We were seated at a lovely table in the front room, and decided to go with the “Menu du Jour”, two courses of a main and dessert for 24 Euro. Ian chose the fish and I chose the chicken, and we both decided on the panna cotta for dessert. I had a Marguerite Rosé champagne as an aperitif and Ian went for a Chardonnay from the Màcon region.

Our meals arrived, and they smelled wonderful and looked amazing. We were both extremely impressed and happy with our selections. With the main meal I chose a glass of the Chardonnay and Ian selected a Pinot from the Côte Chalonnaise region in Burgundy. Both wines were a wonderful accompaniment for each meal.

If that wasn’t enough wine, we were talking to the owner and he mentioned he had a Gamay which Ian hadn’t seen on the wine list and thought this a better choice of red wine for the fish. The reason he hadn’t seen it was because it was listed as “wine of the week”. He decided he needed to try it before he had his dessert. I had wanted a dessert wine to accompany my panna cotta, but the owner recommended I go with a glass of wine of the white “wine of the week” which was 100% Roussanne (very unusual), and it was perfect with dessert. The dessert was one of the best panna cottas I have ever had. It was served with confit apple, buttery and crunchy biscuit crumbs, chantilly cream and some thin slices of fresh apple - absolutely heaven on a plate. This is one of the most reasonably priced meals we have ever had; we spent more on the wine!

We left the restaurant about 2.15 pm and decided that, since we were already a third of the way there, we would continue down to the Musée des Confluences. This ultra modern science museum has been built on the pointy end of Presqu’île at the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers. It was quite a walk - a bit over 3 km - but nice to do after a fairly large lunch.

The museum is very impressive architecturally. We started off looking at their permanent exhibit. This tells the story of humankind across four different exhibitions: (1) Origins, stories of the World; (2) Species, the Web of Life; (3) Societies, human theatre; and, (4) Émile Guimet Gallery. The current temporary exhibits included: (1) Secrets from the Earth; (2) Epidemics; (3) Into the Forest; and (4) Within the space of a dream.

Within the permanent exhibits we saw some interesting carvings on Inuits and their folklore. We also saw some mummies and carvings from ancient Egyptian times. There was an amazing collection of dinosaur skeletons and a huge fossil collection. In the temporary exhibits we visited “Into the Forest”, which was an amazing collection of photographs of animals from the forest. We also ventured into “Within the space of a dream”. There were exhibits using several types of media. It was an interesting exhibit but after 3 glasses of wine at lunchtime my ability to focus had wained. We also went up to the top floor via many stairs to hopefully get a bird’s eye view of the confluences, which we did.

We then retraced our steps and made it home (a bit over 4 km) in under an hour. All up today I walked 16,887 steps, which equates to 11.3 km. So, once again I was quite tired physically.Read more