First Few Days

Getting out of Paris was a bit of a problem.  We took a wrong turn and did a whole circuit of the city in a very heavy traffic jam before finding the right turn-off.  After that it was quite plain sailing.

We drove for a couple of hours, with a coffee stop on a sunny “terrasse”, and arrived at a pretty little town called Joigny on the Yonne River.  We found an excellent hotel with a view over the river to the medieval town.  As you can see, the weather was beautiful.

Next day we drove to a lovely little village called Flagey-Échézeau in the countryside not far from Dijon.  The hotel was fantastic - a huge room with an enormous bathroom.

The biggest town nearby, about 10min drive, called Nuits-St-George, is very cute indeed, with a large central pedestrianised area with lots of cafés etc.

  As well as its famous wines, Bourgogne (Burgundy) produces a liqueur called Crème de Cassis, which is made from blackberries.  We had a tour of that factory and we also went to the showplace for sparkling wines of the area and saw how they are produced (both in Nuits-St-George).

On Saturday we went into Dijon, which is another beautiful town with a very big area for pedestrians only.  The only vehicle allowed is a little free shuttle bus that does a circuit of the whole town – very handy.

Dijon is, of course famous for its mustard and we visited a shop which had dozens of different mixtures of mustard with nuts, fruits, brandy and wines.

A couple of pictures to represent some other important aspects of our holiday so far.

On Sunday we drove to Vézlay where the village runs up a steep hill to the famous Basilica of St Mary Magdalene which looks out over the countryside.  They were having a “vide grenier” (empty attic day) in the town; like everyone having a garage sale at once.