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Not surprisingly there was quite a bit of
mustard in the town of Dijon. For example, ALL of the shops
had mustard samplers for sale, including even a barbecue
flavored mustard. Heck, there was an entire museum
dedicated to mustard in the town (we did not go of course).
But the town was simply wonderful.
Our day of travel from Luxembourg to Dijon
was very easy. We got there fairly early in the afternoon
(about 2) so we still had quite a bit of time left to
explore the city. Our hotel was about a mile walk from the
train station so that was a bit taxing with the big bag. But
we made it and our hotel was wonderful. It was actually a
three star hotel that normally costs €90 a night, but we
got it for €41. Gotta
love Priceline! The only
odd thing about the room was that there was no shower
curtain so the bathroom got a bit wet.
We first stopped at a little cafe near the
opera house and actually met a family from Oregon who were
absolutely fascinating. These people have traveled the world
and hearing their stories and adventures was fascinating.
We then trekked
on through the town to the Grand Dukes Palace, which was
enormous and very grand. It is currently partially used as a
fine arts museum and partially as some sort of town offices.
We did not go into the museum because all of the museums in
the town were free on Sundays so we decided to hit them all
up on Sunday. Our next stop was St. Bennigan's
church and crypt. On the way we walked by a beautiful old
abandoned church. We were
kind of shocked to read later on that this church was
actually a storage room for salt. It seemed like and
enormous waste of such exquisite architecture.
Anyways back to St. Bennigan's
(he was the man who is credited with bringing Christianity
to the area). We first went to the crypt and found it to be
one of the neatest ones
we have experienced. Most of the crypt has not yet been
unearthed so there was only a small portion we could go
through. (the church was originally an abbey that was
destroyed during the French revolution) St. Bennigan
was the only one buried there in the spooky circular crypt.
We then tried to get in the church but there was a wedding
going on and we did not want to disturb the service.
The rest of the night we just traveled
through the streets of the town enjoying the general
architecture and the design of the town. We then had dinner
and hit the sack because we were pretty tired from our
travels.
The next day (Sunday) was our museum day. We
were very taken a back though of how dead the town was.
There was absolutely NO ONE in the streets and all of the
shops along with the majority of the restaurants were
closed.
We hit all of the museums we possibly could
because as I stated before they were all free! The
first one we went to was the fine arts museum in the Grand
Dukes Palace. This museum is considered second only the the
Louvre and after walking through I can understand why. The
artwork in the museum was beautiful and actually a majority
of the pieces were from the Louvre. My favorite exhibit were
two crypts in the museum that had more details than some of
the altars we have seen at the churches.
There were two life size
statues on top of each of the crypts and then the sides were
carved with very intricate artwork.
The next museum we went to was the archeology
museum. We were a bit disappointed with this
museum because there was not much to the museum and it was
an odd mix of old artifacts and
current local children's'
artwork. I guess we were hoping for more old stuff. BUT all
of the artifacts in the museum were from the area which was
pretty cool. There was everything from old religious
artifacts to ancient human bones.
We traveled
over to the Notre Dame Cathedral and was amzaed
at all of the gargoyles out front. There were three rows of
these leering gargoyles. One interesting fact is that these
are actually fake gargoyles. The real gargoyles were taken
down because one fell and crushed and Usher to death. His
family demanded the rest be taken down. However, in the late
1800s people realized what a waste this was and the fake
gargoyles were put up.
On Monday we went to the final two museums of
the town, the Sacred art museum and the Museum of the
region. The museum of the region was pretty corny. It just
had a bunch of mannequins dressed up like the people in the
region did a long time ago. At the gift shop you could dress
up in the old clothes and have your picture taken. The museum of Sacred art was
amazing though. It is
dedicated to the art of the Catholic
church and included everything from wine vessels to priests
garments and altars. This may have been one of my favorite
museums.
The rest of the day we spent walking through
the town on the Owl's
Tour. This is a self guided tour of the town (following a
guidebook from the tourist office) that shows and describes
all of the interesting sights and buildings in the town.
This tour was really well put together and quite stupid
proof. There were metal arrows in the road all over
town leading you on the
right path and all of the sights were clearly labeled
with a number and an Owl. In case you were wondering
why the owl, there is a very famous owl in town on the Notre
Dame Church. People
believe that if you make
a wish while running the owl with your left hand your wish
will come true and you will be granted wisdom and good luck.
I made a wish .
We then went back to the bar to watch the
soccer match.
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Elizabeth 
