A weekend of traditions and local specialties

Le weekend dernier, c'etait super. On Friday evening, I got to experience a French tradition of wine tastings and fetes for the Beaujolais nouveau. Everyone was quick to tell me its not a good French wine, but its a fun tradition. There was a "fete de Beaujolais nouveau" in the teachers lounge at my lycee with a lot of wine, and even more delicious spreads, meats, and bread. It seems that almost all the schools have wine tastings for the teachers. And all the restaurants serve it, you can see many signs:

Its celebrated because this wine, which comes from the Beaujolais region north of Lyon, is only good for a very, very short time. (Wikipedia [sorry Mom] tells me the region is administratively considered to be a part of Burgundy, but the climate is closer the Rhone, so therefore is considered its own region, the vice principal may have also told me this but my French is still far from perfect so I didn't catch his entire talk.) It's released the third Thursday of November, and apparently it's just a big deal all over France even though no one is that wild about the wine. One teacher told me its also really popular in Japan, besides France.

The following night I enjoyed a local specialty that I keep hearing about, called Welsh. Delicious. Its hard to describe but essentially it's bread battered in beer, toasted, and served in a cheddar cheese sauce (cheese is just one ingrediant not sure what else it has), with a fried egg. Or if you get a Welsh complet, like me, it also has ham. Fries are a really important side, so you can dip them in all that cheesey sauce. Bon appetit.