We left early Saturday morning for Dijon and arrived around noon. There was just enough time for me to eat a mozzarella, tomato, lettuce sandwich on poppyseed bread (probably the most delicious so far in France) before going on a guided tour of the city. The architecture is stunning because all the the buildings are so old, but very diverse. One of the historical buildings is Maison Milliére which dates back to 1483 and is very unique with its warped wooden roof and siding (I think most of the wood is original). Many buildings have roofs patterned with colored tiles (as seen in one of my pictures), but overall I thought the architecture varied greatly which made the city feel very distinct.
After the tour I went to an art museum in the Ducal Palace, visited one of the other cathedrals, and then attended about 15 minutes of mass in the Notre Dame cathedral which was quite interesting (even though I didn't have a clue what was going on since I'm not Catholic). An interesting note is that on the side of Notre Dame is a famous owl carving rumored to give good luck when rubbed with your left hand. All of the city's historical sites are marked with an owl based on this. On another note, owl in French is "chouette" while in France the word "chouette" is synonymous with "cool" (I wonder if there's a connection!). Later on that night I went with 6 students in my group to a pretty nice restaurant with an urbane literature/press theme called L'imprimerie. I had fries (with awesome Dijon mustard!) and escargot. This was my first experience with escargot and it was a great one! I'd have to say it's in my top 5 dishes I've had in France.
La Chouette. It's about the size my hand
Maison Milliére and the back part of Notre Dame on the left.
The other cathedral, I'm not sure what it's called.
A glimpse of Notre Dame (it's in a very cramped spot). If you zoom in you can see a lot of carved figures similar to the Notre Dame in Paris.
Some of distinct architecture, zoom in on the roof to see the colored tiles.
Inside of a fancy courtyard we saw.
Escargot and Fries (which of course was ordered on the side)
The next afternoon we arrived at Beaune and started the day with a wine tasting at La Maison Reine Pédauque. Here we toured their 17th century wine cellars while tasting possibly the best wine I've ever had. The ancient cellar was covered in cobwebs and racks of dusty wine bottles dating back as far as 1943 lined the walls from floor to ceiling. We sampled 2 white wines, then 2 red wines, and finally 2 liquors. Afterwards we had free time for lunch and I explored as much of the town as I could. It has much more of a small town feel to it despite maintaining that famous French architecture throughout. Our final stop before returning to Grenoble was at Beaune's large medieval hospital (Hospices de Beaune), which is now a museum. I believe it was in operation until the mid 20th century, but I was amazed at how intricate some of the religious decorations were in the larger rooms, I'll post one picture below.
Huge bottles of wine and me holding a box of our groups wine glasses from the tasting.
Also I have a weird look on my face...
Good wine!
Just a part of the hospital, all the wooden beams are painted and carved
In the middle of the hospital, I love the roofs!
Just a typical street in Beaune
Well this pretty much describes this trip, it's quite hard to summarize when there was so much to see! The next trip will be to Nice. Until then I'll see if I can post something else about Grenoble, though I'm waiting for spring to come to get certain pictures. Check out facebook for plenty of pictures I've been tagged in by my group too.
I'm so jealous!
ReplyDelete-Janet F.