BURGUNDY..

Yes, it's a big destination for oenophiles. But as Rachel Howard and her young son discover, there's much more to this part of central France than the bottle.

- Rachel Howard

BURGUNDY?” Three red wine emojis. “Is it good for kids?” Crying with laughter face. The text exchange with my Parisian friend Pascale was not very reassuring.

As I studied a map of Burgundy while planning a vacation with my 10-year-old son, Lucas, many of the place names looked strangely familiar. Chablis, Pouilly-Fuissé, Puligny-Montrachet, Pommard: it was like perusing the wine list of a fancy French restaurant. I had never been to Burgundy (a.k.a. La Bourgogne), but surely there was more to the region than grands crus and Michelin-starred restaurants? Could a tour of its byways and backwaters offer rural respite for this harried mom and her screen-addled son?

After a whirlwind 48 hours in Paris—where we strolled wide-eyed along the Seine, ate our body weight in steak frites, and witnessed a marriage proposal at the top of the Eiffel Tower—Lucas and I set off by train from the Paris-Bercy station. On a Saturday morning in August, it seemed as though every Parisian left in the city was amassed on the station platforms, desperate to escape. As far as I could tell, we were the only foreigners on the 2½-hour route to Clamecy, a market town in central Burgundy. At each stop, more people scrambled off, and fewer climbed aboard. At one station, a guard hollered something in French and all the remaining passengers jumped off the train and squeezed into the front carriage. Rather like the medieval villages that flecked the tidy green landscape, even the train was getting smaller. Clamecy was clearly off the beaten track, even for Parisian weekenders.