Dijon, more than mustard!

We had an early start this morning. I had booked an Uber to take us Gare de Lyon for our 90 minute train trip to Dijon. The train ride was uneventful and we arrived in Dijon to grey clouds but no rain. We stored our cases at the station as we couldn’t get access to our AirBnb till 5pm. We spent some time exploring the lovely city of Dijon, which has a real mix of architecture, car free streets and lovely narrow laneways.

We stopped for a crepe and coffee, which was very nice and provided the energy to continue our exploration of the city. We passed the Notre Dame cathedral which is a stone’s throw from our apartment and then went to the Musée des Beaux-Arts to check out their collections. There was quite a large religious collection, many paintings and statues from the Middle Ages, and two exceptional funerary monuments in marble and alabaster which were so intricate. They were the first two dukes of Burgundy, Philip the Bold and his son John the Fearless, and were installed in the Fine Arts museum in 1827. There was also a small modern section that had some interesting pieces.

We had met a lovely couple while we were having coffee and, as they were locals, I asked them for a recommendation for a good meal. They said that Le Café des Ducs in Place de la Libération was a great place. We had a lovely lunch there and, when we told the owner the place was recommended to us by a local, he was very interested to know who. It turns out it was the person who does his socials, and her name is Medusa.

After lunch I messaged the AirBnB contact to see if we could get early access to the property, and we could. Ian and I had a Cheese and Burgundy workshop to attend mid afternoon so we couldn’t return to the station to collect our bags until after 5pm.

We were finally settled in the apartment by early evening, we did some washing and had some bread and cheese (and Vegemite for Katie) and had a relaxing night. Ian and I had planned to go to Beaune, a famous wine town, a town about 37 kms south of Dijon the following day.Read more