Dijon, and ruminations on dragons

Oh mah good-ness.  Here we are in Marseille, a gorgeous and exciting day capped off with yet one more expensive travel mistake.  I'm having a hard time not being just so pissed at myself, feeling like I'm bumbling around this strange foreign place without even the barest trace of a clue, but Eve assures me that this is how travelers just sort of feel most of the time.  I seriously do not  know what I am going to do without her when we part ways in just three extremely short days.  It seems redic that soon I will have to solve every problem on my own, that I will have no one to laugh with, no one to chill me out or snap me back to earth.

I would not trade this time we have had together in France for anything in the world.  It has been, simply, awesome.

We are staying an extra day in Marseille tomorrow, because we both unexpectedly completely love it here.  Then it is two days in Bordeaux (see above, expensive travel mistake), and then shit is over.  Evie goes to Paris to fly home, and I head to San Sebastian, Spain.  All by myself.  I am super excited at the prospect of not having to eat another bland-as-all-fuck baguette sandwich, but otherwise the idea of saying goodbye to my travel partner, at the moment, leaves me with a sort of feeling like "here, there be dragons."

And yes, the dragons were supposed to be the whole point.  But I will say that facing dragons from the onset is different than facing dragons alone after you have become accustomed to facing them with a fellow warrior you have come to depend on rather implicitly.  One thing I am certain of -- I will laugh less in Spain than I did in France.

When I last left you, Paris had rocked our worlds and we were on to Dijon.  Let me just say, Dijon was such an unexpectedly beautiful, picturesque breath of fresh air after the chaos of Paris.  We scored such a stupid lucky break with our hotel, Hotel Le Jacquemart.  It was dead-smack in the center of town and right next to a bunch of pedestrian streets stuffed full of shops, markets, bars, and restaurants.  I instantly fell in love with Dijon.  It looked almost tailor-made to be beautiful.

This was Eve's and my first try at an inter-city Euro train with finding our new accommodations at the end.  All did not go totally smooth, but we did finally find it and checked in.  Room on the fourth floor, walk up.  Shared shower and toilet.  But the room was huge, and it was ours!!  After the Paris hostel, this felt like Paradisal Luxury.

Our first afternoon and evening, we just sort of wandered around, happy and unwinding.  Evie bought mustard.  We got one of our best meals yet in a creperie near our hotel -- chicken dijonaise crepes in Dijon!!

And we ate EVERYTHING.

In the evening, we walked around some just for fun.  Dijon is just as charming and beautiful at night.

Got some wine in a cool little bar we found.

And then came home to do the Best Room Picnic Ever.

Eve with her pink champagne and mustard.  The oranges make it healthy

The next day, we went on a self-guided walking tour of the town, as laid out on a map furnished by our hotel.  The map was kind of crap and hard to follow, but we saw probably 90% of it.  One of the highlights was climbing to the top of the Phillipe le Duc Tower.

As you can see, the weather was not the greatest but we made the best of it.  Dijon being awesome helped a lot to keep our spirits up.  We saw a bunch of churches (go figure), and the Musee Beaux Arts which had a lot of interesting Medieval stuff as well as a couple zombies.

Sadly my sister was really sick with a bad cold during our whole Dijon stay.  She was a total trooper though!  But we had an early night our second evening in town.  Got to see THIS sunset though.

Overall, Dijon was a 100% complete pleasant surprise.  I honestly did not know what we'd find here other than mustard, but this town was a joy.  I was sorry to leave it, leave its perfect tudor houses, our lovely clean bright hotel with our gigantic room.  I would have been even sorrier if I had known what we were in for...