Yes, that’s basically our address. About a week ago, we rented another car and left Paris. Les Volets Bleus is our house, an old French farm house with blue shutters. Montjouan is the little hamlet of a half dozen houses and outlying farms in the region of the village of Larochemillay, a hill top town with a church, government building, and the charming home & school of some new acquaintances, Janna & Sjaak, teacher/artists. The Morvan is a national park area in Burgundy that features many hikes through natural deciduous and planted evergreen forests, as well as rolling farm pastures enclosing white cows in well-groomed hedges. But an address like that does not go easily into GPS, and thus we got a bit lost getting here.

ML thought “Step” was short for Stephan, so in asking a little old couple on the outskirts of Larochemillay where Les Volets Bleus was we mentioned Stephan. They smiled, nodded, and directed us to another little farm up the road, which was not our destination, but did feature a Stephan who not only helped us with a map, but let us use his phone to call Janna and tell her we were lost. They had a great set up, but soon we found our way to our own great set up at Les Volets Bleus.

The property is owned by Step (short for Stephanie!) Vaessen, a Dutch journalist who works for Aljazeera in Indonesia. The house has many Asian artifacts, along with the quiet charm of the French countryside. Over the last several days we have visited the hilltop village and old abbey of Vezelay, gone bike riding along the Loire and Nivernais canal, hiked near Chiddes, had a nice lunch in the town of Autun, and visited the ancient Gaul site of Bibracte. Details forthcoming…?