My first weekend trip!

While I'm here in Lyon, I'll have plenty of chances to travel. My first trip, taken with the rest of the people from my Prune course, was to Bourgogne (That's Burgundy to you Anglophones) to visit the towns of Beaune and Dijon. We had a great day tasting wine and walking around the city, and it was only a couple hours away by bus.

First stop: Beaune.
This is where they make the famous Burgundy wine! At this time of year, the vine-covered hills are blanketed in snow (it's amazing how much snow you see outside of Lyon, which is completely dry!). We had the pleasure of taking a tour of one of the local wine cellars, given by the owner himself.

That's gonna make a lot of French people happy. There are rows and rows of these wine storage down in les caves (wine cellars). I don't know how old some of these are, unfortunately. But I just think it's really amazing that one day someone is going to drink all of these!


The caves are of course, really dark, wet, and therefore moldy like a forgotten lump of cheese under the sofa cushions. I could definitely smell something reminiscent of wine, but it was much more pungent and musty. The walls were orginally made out of brick, but I couldn't even tell because of all the layers of mold. Hmm, it actually rather looks like soap. Who wants a bubble bath?







Now for the wine tasting. We tried the Chardonnay and the Pinot Noir (along with some complimentary cheesy bread), all of which gave us happy wine faces.

Louise and Julia B, lookin' fierce.

Laurel does the cuter version of the wine face.

So after all this, we were hungry for some Beane cuisine, so Julia F, Louise and I found this cute salon de the where we had crepes and tea. They had a tea menu to rival C-ville's Tea Bazaar.

So...Dijon. Surprisingly, it ain't all about la moutarde. It actually is of some historical significance to the region...And here are some pics...

This is the chouette, the owl, that people have rubbed for years for good luck.


Just a good example of some of the cool architecture here. This is now the tourism office.

Half-timbered houses - so French.
Check out the roof on this.

EDIT: Stole some more pictures from my friends! Now there some more of me...Yes, I actually did go on this trip!
Lauren, Emily, and I in Dijon.

Julia making fun of tourist photographers, me and Laurel just happy we're touring a wine cellar.