November 9-10, 2006: Burgundy

This morning we got up early and checked out of the lovely (expensive!) hotel, and bought a sandwich and chocolate beignet on the long hike back to the train station. We bought tickets back to Paris and then to Dijon, and then we went to go out to the platform to wait for the train. We figured out after a couple minutes that we needed to be on the other side of the platform, and we saw some train workers letting someone in a wheelchair be pushed across the tracks. We thought we could do that too (of course not!—but we feigned ignorance anyway) so the workers let us cross. (We were supposed to go down stairs, under the tracks, and back up the stairs…who wants to do that if you can just walk across??)

So we hopped on the train from Chartres to Paris (Montparnasse station), and took the Metro to the Gare de Lyon station, where we got on our train to Dijon. This time we called a hotel from the train station in Dijon and ended up getting a room at the Hotel Le Chambellon, a cute, funky hotel run by a very nice French lady. It had a very cute little courtyard area—I bet it’s gorgeous in spring and summer!

On Friday we had the hotel’s breakfast, which was simple but nice: pain d’epice (a regional spice bread), croissants, toast, and baguettes, with honey, butter, and/or jam, and we each got our own little carafe of coffee and shared a carafe of steamed milk. It was so good! Then we left for the train station to head to Beaune for the day.

Beaune is a major wine hub of Burgundy, apparently. We didn’t stick around to visit any wine caves or anything, which might be nice to do next time..Instead we rented a car at Beaune and drove around the countryside. Navigating the roads and highways in France is very confusing. We had trouble even getting out of the city of Beaune! We finally did, though the signs were just not very helpful, and you have to know what major city to head toward, to know which road to take.

We ended up driving to Autun and Seaulieu and then back to Beaune. The French countryside is absolutely beautiful, breathtakingly so. There were grapevines covering the hills, little towns tucked in the valleys, and each town we stopped in was just adorable and pretty. The sunset was just gorgeous, all purple and coral and pink. Once we got back to Beaune we had trouble finding the train station (it’s not like they had signs, not really, and then all the streets are winding) so we could return the rental car. Then we took the train back to Dijon. Whew!

I don’t regret renting the car because it was so awesome to get to see France NOT from a train, but it also would’ve been wonderful to have just stayed in Beaune and toured some of the vineyards and wine caves. Next time!