Planes, Trains, and Taxis

After a very long day of travel, we have arrived in Dijon. 

The flights from Chicago to Paris was easy even if we didn't get much sleep. But the craziness started when we arrived in Paris at Charles de Gaulle airport. I remember years ago when we landed there, we were shuttled onto busses and taken to an old terminal. I assumed from the way things looked, that they were having construction and renovating the place. But yesterday we had the same welcome. Packed onto a bus, taken to a run-down terminal, waited in line for elevators to take us up a floor (why no escalator?), and pushed into a mob of people waiting to go through the new passport control system. Initially, we were told the system was down, but after juggling people from line to line, a few of the machines started working. Many travelers who had connections missed them. And from the looks of the line we saw where people were waiting to go through TSA, we will be arriving early when we go back to fly home. Not our favorite airport. But we survived, taxied to Gare de Lyon, trained to Dijon, and arrived here about 4:30. 

We met with our AirBnB owner who is delightful but the apartment is pretty quirky. It's in a nice location and we will do just fine here in spite of the fact that the design is odd. The bathroom by the bedrooms has only a shower and sink. Then there's a small room by the kitchen that just has a toilet (no sink). (D & T, didn't we have a toilet-less bathroom situation in Normany too? Is this a French thing?). Also there is a large glass window in one of the bedrooms that looks right into the shower. What's that about? Fortunately, there's a curtain... but why?

We knew we couldn't stay awake much longer and we were starving, so we headed into the center of town looking for dinner. Monday nights many places are closed, but we found a cute place (Les Brasserie des Loges) where we could start off with some traditional Burgundy food plus be able to sit outside. 

I wanted to try the poached egg appetizer I'd read about. It's basically a poached egg served in a red wine sauce and another poached egg in a cream sauce. Strange first course. Good but now I can say I tried it and probably won't try it again. Greg had the escargot which he plans to have every night, and he also had the beef bourguinon which is a local dish. Then black current and apple with a gingerbread crumble. All good but we agree we will probably have better dinners here. There are tons of great places to try.

This morning we explored Les Halles, the local indoor market. It's a cool building and was supposedly designed by the Gustave Eiffel, the man who designed that tower in Paris. It was filled with stands selling meats, cheese, veggies, breads, and prepared foods. We bought a few things for dinner tonight and some quiches for breakfast.

Our first impression of Dijon is that it reminds us of Gent where we went last year. It seems to be about the same size, and like Gent, is often overlooked by tourists who instead go to Beaune, a cuter, smaller town. We initially thought that we would stay in Beaune, but the transportation is better here in Dijon. We will be visiting Beaune in the next few days.

The plan today is to explore more of the town and maybe start to make our plans for the next few days. We are here in Dijon for 11 nights, so we feel we have lots of time.