Day 51: France isn’t always wet

August 11 –

So today we prepare to bid Auf Weidersein to Zurich and move on to the French countryside.  We breakfasted, packed up and loaded up our new rental car; alas, our rental car karma had given out and we got exactly what we paid for:  a Volkswagon Caddy.  It’s a bare bones mini-van with no extras especially no satellite navigation system so I actually have to pay attention to where we are and figure out how to get to where we are going!

So thanks to Google maps, we find our way out of Zurich and onto the road to Dijon.  It is grey and cloudy and we are convinced that we are in for another soggy day in France.  We got there about 3.5 hours later and realized the downside to Google maps:  if you don’t wind up on the road they recommend, you have no reference how to get back to the suggested route!  We found the hotel eventually and got the bags unloaded.  The sun had broken through the clouds and it appeared that France was trying to redeem herself.  But we couldn’t enjoy it immediately because we had family business:  laundry!

As it would happen, there is a laundromat right around the corner from our hotel (coincidence?) so we start a couple of loads and head of to grab some lunch.  Now we are back in less familiar, more French territory where a smile and “Bitte” don’t buy anything!  Dijon may not be the back woods but it isn’t so cosmopolitan that we can expect everyone to speak English because they don’t!  We navigated the menu at the brasserie with no major problems (ham in mustard sauce – yum!) and then checked in on the laundry. 

After putting the clean clothes in the dryer, we started our daily wanderings to see what this city had to offer.  It is a very old town with lots of ancient sandstone buildings and tons of churches!  We found our way into Notre Dame de Dijon – I think every French city has a Notre Dame – where I lit a candle for my mom to make up for the lack of candles in the Swiss churches (candles: 9).  We retrieved the laundry and had our daily ice cream before doing some more wandering.

One thing that is really neat about Dijon is that there is a marked walking tour of the city.  The Owl  (“La Chouette”) is a symbol for the city and it appears on the pillars of Notre Dam and there are little owl plaques set into the sidewalks to take you past the major tourist attractions.  We figured this out halfway through and proceeded to have some aim to our wandering which took us past many other churches – including one where a wedding was just wrapping up and we got to see the bride and groom emerge.  It was really neat!  We stopped in a few shops and snapped lots of pictures of this really neat town.

We found a lovely little restaurant where there was an English menu posted – except, of course, that the waiter himself didn’t speak English.  Luckily I knew the French word for egg or I would have gotten escargot for a starter!  We think we have found all the missing children from Zurich because they were all in the square in Dijon tonight.  We enjoyed all three courses and a litre of the local wine and then headed back for a quiet Saturday night.

/san/

[Pedometer:  18,681 or about 9 miles over cobblestones.  Not bad considering we spent half the day in the car…]