Based in Beaune, France, Butterfield & Robinson offers biking tours to the famed  wine regions of both Burgundy and Bordeaux. Here David Robinson gives his pick—Burgundy. We have been on a Butterfield & Robinson bike adventure through Burgundy and can tell you that the trip was blue chip all the way. B&R believes in booking the best hotels, restaurants and guides. And unlike some competitors who rent inferior local bikes, B&R owns its own fleet of high quality bikes.

Our multi-lingual young guides were well informed, helpful and just plain fun to be with, as were our fellow travelers who came from all over the U.S. and South America. Enough good cannot be said about the luxury lodging in small, off-the-beaten path locations, many of which were Relais & Chateaux properties. Restaurants ranged from Michelin stars to Mom & Pop undiscovered gems.

And then, of course, there’s the wine. Our private wine tastings were professional and informative, and then some. Burgundy’s tiny stone wine villages are as beautiful as you might expect, and we peddled through the key villages from Dijon south to Puligny Montrachect.

We had basically not been on bicycles since our early Key West days. Had it not been for our decades of experience riding Harleys, the downhill runs would have presented a serious issue. As for uphills? Challenging to say the least. Some we were able to handle with minimal embarrassment; others we threw in the towel by dropping our bikes in the van and walking the steepest inclines.

Our group split into two, the pros and then the likes of us. Thank goodness we at least had the common sense to pack padded biking shorts (an absolute must) and biking shoes. At the end of the day, there are not sufficient words to describe the wonderful experience we had with Butterfield & Robinson.

Happy New Year. B&R’s slogan is slow down and see the world. If you are able to head out on a B&R biking/wine tour in the New Year, you are in for a treat. And finally, it might not hurt to get in some serious biking experience in advance! Enjoy.

Warm regards,

Dick and Debbie

The San Carlos Institute’s directors in Key West have written to President Obama against the president’s Cuba initiative. There is no doubt some substance to the complaint. Barack Obama, however, is a lamer-than-lame duck and will not be on the national scene much longer. Cuban nationals as well as Cuban Americans, like many of our friends and local residents in Key West, will now be able to grab the ball and run with it. Take the special interest politicians out of the mix and a lot of good can and should come from normalizing relations with a tiny country only 90 miles from America. As is the case here at home, the people of Cuba must find a way to take back their country from the government.

NPR writes:

Tony Yanez, the burly, white-bearded city commissioner, is one of Key West’s best-known Cuban politicians.

What he says is repeated often around town: Before the completion of the federal highway in 1938 linking the Florida Keys, Key West felt more like a province of Cuba.

“People actually tell me, old-timers tell me about even taking the ferry boat to Cuba to go to the dentist, to go to the doctor,” Yanez says. “You cannot separate the histories and the cultures of the two islands.”

Yanez was born in Havana, emigrated with his parents after Fidel came to power, and holds a visceral love for his homeland.

“When I first heard the news on television of President Obama saying that this dream that Cuba was going to open up, I bawled. I cried like a baby for a long time,” he says. “And of course I started calling relatives and friends, and they were all crying.”

He gets emotional again. “It’s over half a century of dreaming of something,” he says.

Yanez stands inside one of the most famous buildings in Key West, the San Carlos Institute. It’s here where the Cuban national hero José Martí came in 1891 to whip up support for the Cuban war of independence against Spanish colonial rule.

Opposition To Obama Policy

Yanez loves his Cuban history — and so does Rafael Penalver, though they’re on opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Penalver is a Miami lawyer who also fled Havana with his parents as a child. He’s director of the San Carlos Institute. He and Yanez butted heads a couple years ago when Yanez invited some diplomats from the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., to lay a wreath at the Martí statue. Penalver refused them entry.

“I told Tony Yanez, to come here, as a showpiece, to put a wreath in front of the statue of José Martí, that, to me, was unacceptable,” he says.

Earlier this week, they clashed again. The board of directors of San Carlos, led by Penalver, wrote a caustic letter condemning President Obama’s new Cuba policy.

“This is an agreement between economic interests of the United States and the interest of a Cuban dictator that wants to stay in power,” Penalver says.

Competing religious groups and ethnicities are tearing Syria into a patchwork of localized spheres of control. Stratfor (subscription required) has developed a map illustrating the areas of control held by various factions.

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As you might expect, there are, two views on President Obama’s olive branch to the Castro brothers. And an olive branch is really all that is in place so far. Before the embargo on Cuba is entirely lifted, Congress is going to have to get into the act. The 1996 Helms-Burton act calls for the government in Cuba to move toward democracy and free markets before the elimination of the economic embargo. So, as the Washington Post rightly points out here, Obama is constrained from actually lifting the embargo. The Post talks about Obama basking in global adulation. Seriously? The Post also talks about giving the Castros legitimacy. With whom? The brothers are murdering thugs who in the right setting should receive a late night visit from a SEAL team, and the Cuban people, with a lot of help from America, could get on with developing a prosperous economy.

America is not abandoning the dissidents, far from it. The Cato Institute’s Juan Carlos Hidalgo writes, “Given the ossified status of the relationship between both nations, frozen in time for decades despite the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, Washington’s engagement is significant and welcome.” Agreed.