A Day Trip to Dijon
The TV station SBS did a Global Village episode on Dijon once, so I decided to overcome my aversion to mustard and visit this historic city. In addition, our French tourist guidebook devotes a whole page to Dijon, so even though I don’t always agree with its comments, I figured it must be worth a visit. And it was!!
The day started well. We agreed that we needed to leave early because I thought it would be about a 2 – 3 hour drive at the most (It’s about 200kms east from here) and we had seen some of the sights on the way there, so we would not be distracted, or so we thought! So we set the alarm for 8.00am (that’s early for us!!!) and were away by 10.00am as agreed (note I was not late!!!!).
We chose a lovely scenic route that took in lots of lovely views of the surrounding countryside and even some drives along very dark, but picturesque river gullies (not valleys – too narrow for that). In fact the road that ran along the river would have made a fantastic bike ride. That section of the route was about 23km in total one way and involved a flat quiet road along the river under the shade of the forest trees and then a good climb up out of the valley to an open hilltop and a spectacular view that went for miles. As a return bike ride it would be excellent, but I digress.
The only town that we passed through that tempted us, was Vezelay - a hilltop church town with a very interesting historic church and abbey, an old historic quarter and great views, but we did not succumb, and continued on to Dijon. Taking the scenic route was lovely, but long, and 4 hours after starting the trip we arrived!!!!!
Congratulations to Alan who drove the whole way, voluntarily, and still survived to enjoy walking around the town for hours. This is partly because the drive was lovely and because the roads were “driving” roads. Alan has long decried the loss of roads in Australia where you really need to drive, rather than put the car in cruise control and forget it. These roads require concentration as they are narrow and twist, turn, dip and dive, change cambers and provide lots of blind crests and corners, but reward you with great views and a feeling of “driving”.
Anway to Dijon. It truly is a great town. It reminded us very strongly of Montpellier – lots of wide open city squares, a vibrant young population, but still lots of elderly people around, a very historic city centre with some fantastic architecture, easy to get around, good food and great Burgundy wines, etc – need I go on?
As usual, we drove straight into “Centre Ville” and found lots of good underground carparks. To digress again, and I think I have made this point before – French cities are great because they build all their large multi level carparks underground and don’t spoil the views or ambience of the city with carpark buildings! Anyway, the car was parked and off we went to find the tourist bureau. This proved a little more difficult as the pedestrian signposting was small and difficult to spot and the signposts for drivers takes you in huge circles due to the maze of one way streets in town. Anyway, after asking 2 different people and walking round in a big circle, we found it, around the corner from where we started!
They were very friendly and helpful and when we said we were only here for the day, they suggested we follow the guided walking brochure they sell for 2.50euros. It was a good investment. It was an excellent walk, taking in about 24 of the most historic sights in Dijon, and because we were doing it on our own, we could spend as long or as little as we liked at each place. We soon agreed that we would forgo the scenic drive home, and stay in town as long as we could. It also meant we would avoid driving home into the setting sun (a very wise move!).
So after leaving the tourist office, Pam well armed with tourist papers and brochures, we walked back to the large Place de la Liberation where we sat and ate a baguette sandwich in the sun, followed by a coffee at one of the square side cafes, and were then accosted by several student groups in a range of fancy dress costumes (ranging from nappies over jeans, Greek togas, smartie packets, etc) selling sweets to raise funds for a school excursion. The students all spoke excellent English (Alan always speaks to them in English). They were all studying different courses, but there was an economic /commerce component to all of them, so this dress up and approach people to sell something was a compulsory unit of the course. It aimed to teach them to overcome the natural shyness and aversion to approaching strange people and asking them for money. The students were all very friendly and lots of fun and they were all over town, so we were approached by different groups all day. It certainly got rid of all our loose small change!
On to the history. Dijon is now the capital of Burgundy, but dates back to Gallo Roman times and there are a few archaeological relics on display in one of the museums. However its heyday was in the middle ages and again in the 17th –18th centuries, so it has a mixture of historic architecture. It is also a major city of France today with universities, industry, commerce, and tourism all playing major roles in the town and region’s economy. It has several churches with the usual features stained glass, flying buttresses, great sculpture inside – one church has a whole exterior facade of gargoyles – it looks fantastic.
There are a great number of original medieval half timbered houses that I love. I have seen other towns with great collections as well (Aubigny and Auxerre are two in particular – blogs on these also - Aubigny's has already been posted see below), but they really looked in place here and they still make Alan and I marvel at the fact they have survived 500 – 600 years! There are also some fantastic buildings from the 18th century which have the typical Parisienne architecture of round grey domes on the rooves, attic windows, magnificently sculpted exteriors and continuous balconies of iron lacework. There was also a lovely garden with fountain and Chateau d’Eau (Water Palace) – once again reminiscent of Montpellier.
We decided to stay in town for tea and had a lovely light dinner at a street side cafe. We tried 2 small pichets (carafes) of local red wine – a Cotes Haut Nuits and Cotes du Beaune. The latter was a pinot noir and although quite light was nice and fruity, but definitely drink now. The former was more expensive and you could tell. I think it was a gamay (a type of grape for those who don’t know wines), but I need to do more research on this particular appellation area. Whatever it was, it tasted great, more complex, more fruit and a bigger wine overall. I am looking forward to doing more research!
Finishing dinner around 9.00pm, still in short sleeves, while we watched the sun set and the Ducal Palace facing the square light up was just lovely. It had been a great day, plus warm and sunny, (my type of weather), and we agreed that we had better head for home. We decided to take the freeway as far as we could (to Auxerre) and then connect up with the good road straight home (straight and direct – not the scenic variety).
What timing! No sooner did we stand up than it clouded over and by the time we walked back to the car the rain started! And what rain – Melbourne would turn green with envy. It was a continuous tropical downpour for over an hour with a spectacular lightning show to accompany it – for the whole hour! Alan offered to drive home and I was extremely glad because I hate driving in that type of weather. Anyway the freeway was good. We sat a safe distance behind a truck which shielded us a bit and provided a good set of lights to follow, because apart from the lightning, it was pitch black and with all the oncoming traffic we couldn’t put our lights on high beam, so following truck lights was a lot easier! Freeways in France have two speed limits 130kph in dry conditions and 110kph in rain. The traffic was well behaved, although lots of locals seemed happy to pass us and the truck. We were doing less than 110kph, so I can only assume they were used to that sort of storm and they knew the road and felt comfortable travelling at 110kph.
Eventually the rain seemed to subside, about the time we got to Auxerre, so we changed over to the regional road in nice weather and Alan was even foolish enough to comment how it looked like the storm was over, when you guessed it, a second and similar storm front hit – the name of the town we were in when the 2nd lot of rain came – Pourrain!!!!! Eventually that passed too and the last 50kms we drove home in lovely balmy weather!!!! Still what we thought would be a much quicker drive home also took 4 hours because of the storms and we did not get home till about 1.30am! Still it was good to see rain like that and the lightning was spectacular.
We did sleep in the next morning though!
PS I did not actually try the mustard, because I do not like it as a condiment (I can use mustard powder and mustard seeds in cooking but do not like it as an accompaniment). But there is a lot more to Dijon than its famous mustard. Dijon is well worth a visit to anyone visiting Burgundy, but allow a few days to see the sights properly and absorb more of the atmosphere.
Tudor Buildings in Dijon
A shop window with a full set of perfectly tailored Saville Row outfits for toddlers & children!!!!!
The Natural Gas bus & the Electric bus
The medieval style street banners looked great & A very small street cafe!
Burgundy is famous for the fancy roof tiles. Here are some examples. the best are in Beaune, but we did not get there this trip. Still these were good.
An old church, now a museum, containing ruins from the Gallo Roman origins of the city and also various famous sculptures, including this copy of the "Departure of the Volunteers" by the same guy who did the original on the Arc de Triomphe, who happened to come from Dijon! Amazing detail and I love these 3 dimensional sculptures on buildings and monuments.
The State Palace, now the Town Hall:
The Market Halls - we loved the modern look and mural.
Other old buildings - France is full of buildings with these decorative corner towers - often interior staircases or rooms and also lots of old wells still exist, even in major cities.
The famous church with all the gargoyles - quite spectacular!
The 18th century gardens including fountain - no droughts here - all the fountains work!
The other cathedrals:
Enjoying the pleasures of French food and wine & French dining.
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