Enio, maître d’hotel of Discovery II, knows how to make a good joke; and the people seated at our dinner table last night knew how to feed him the lines he needed to turn a simple humorous exchange into high entertainment. Walking past our table at the end of the meal, Enio stopped and looked scornfully at our friend Dorsey’s plate with a portion of dinner still on it.  The other five of us pointed proudly to our clean plates.  The maitre d’ asked Dorsey why she hadn’t eaten all her dinner.  She said something that Enio didn’t think was a good enough answer.  He straightened, assumed the posture of a no-nonsense parent or school master, and began a Croatian accented English description of what his mother did to him when he failed to clean his plate at supper. Dorsey shrugged, looking like a child being scolded but decidedly unrepentant, and turned her head defiantly.  For at least five minutes their exchange of words and gestures looked and sounded like something from a scripted high comedy show. He finally said, “You know, of course, that my Mother would never allow me to eat anything ever again until I finished my supper.  If I didn’t eat it in the evening, I would get again for breakfast.”  Dorsey shrugged.  The maitre d’ signaled for Jeffrey and Daniel to come to the table and told them to take away Dorsey’s plate, cover it and keep it for her breakfast.  

…jump to 7:30 this morning.  As soon as we were all seated, the maitre d’ came with Dorsey’s plate.  He put it in front of her, ceremoniously uncovered the plate with the small piece of last night’s pork and three small potatoes arranged prettily in the middle of it;  and she played her part as well as Carol Burnett might have done. With comedic precision she sliced the pork into small portions and ate them with unrepentant dignity. It was great fun. 

The day was good:  We enjoyed a drive into Beaujolais region for wine tasting at the Hameau Duboeuf Wine Museum.  I liked the Pouilly-Fuisse and the Brouilly, but the Saint-Amour was definitely my favorite even though it’s cost is three Euros less than the more expensive Pouilly-Fuisse. Just now with my tongue in cheek I was trying to sound as if I know what I’m talking about, but all my friends know I’m perfectly happy with two-buck Chuck and can hardly tell the difference between it and a really serious bottle of good wine… and can’t explain why I prefer Pepsi over Coke.  Can I taste and smell the wild blackberries in the Pouilly-Fuisse?  Forget about it!

Margaret and I went in the afternoon to the Centre d’Histoire de la Resistance et de la Deportation in Lyon.  It was established in 2013 mainly to educate the French about the role of resisters and their heroic role in ending the horrific World War II.