Devin's Travels: Dijon and Belfort

We arrived in Dijon around noon and had the afternoon to tour around the city before meeting up with Celine, my cousin. So first thing that we did was find a place to store our bags for a few hours and then we made our way downtown. While wandering through the streets to get downtown we saw that there were several mechanical booths setup playing music on the street so we stopped to enjoy a few songs before we found a nice small park area to sit down and eat some lunch in. After lunch we toured around the city a little bit and generally just admired the beautiful architecture of the buildings, a few churches and of course we stopped off to buy some dijon mustard. One of the things that we made sure to do was to pet the lucky owl on the side of one of the churches but other than that we just strolled along the streets enjoying the mechanical music and the very pretty downtown area. After wandering the streets for a bit we decided to sit down in one of the sidewalk cafes for a drink before we had to meet up with Celine. After our drink we made our way back to the train station where we collected our bags and then went back downtown to meet Celine. Upon meeting up with Celine again she immediately took us to her dorm room where we were going to spend the night and after dropping our bags off there Celine took us out for a better tour of the city. After Celine's great tour of Dijon we figured it was time for some dinner as it was getting late and wound up having some delicious pizza before heading back to her dorm room where we spent the rest of the evening relaxing and watching a movie before all somehow sleeping in the small space.

The next morning after breakfast Celine took us around some more of the city including through the large market where it seemed that you could get anything from food to house supplies and clothes. After our short tour of downtown we decided to accompany Celine to her university campus as she had a class to attend so we walked through more of Dijon and got to see the less picturesque part that wasn't downtown. Once we got to Celine's university though she discovered that her class had been canceled so we quickly turned around and took the bus back to her dorm room. Back at Celine's room we made some lunch and were met by Celine's other sister Sandrine who took all of us to her new house in Belfort for the weekend. The rest of the afternoon was spent driving to Belfort and when we arrived in Belfort the evening was spent enjoying a delicious dinner and catching up with Sandrine and her husband Guillaume.

The following morning we got up and planned on taking a road trip to explore the Alsace region just to the north of Belfort. We started off the day by driving up the nearby mountains to the top of Grand Ballon, the second highest peak in the area at 1424 meters. At the top we spent some time walking around and admiring the sights that were available but unfortunately it was too cloudy to be able to see the alps in the distance. Once we finished our short walk we stopped off at a small cafe where we enjoyed some blueberry pie, something the area was famous for. After our delicious pie we returned to the car and continued to drive through the mountains, stopping occasionally to admire the views, until we came to Munster a picturesque little town that's home to storks at this time of the year. We spent a bit of time wandering around the town looking at the storks and the beautiful buildings before deciding to stop for some lunch. After lunch we returned to the car and continued the scenic drive to Colmar. At Colmar we got out of the car and wandered around the extremely picturesque streets of the downtown area admiring the gingerbread house like architecture of the buildings and the flower lined canal. The city was absolutely gorgeous and deserved a couple hours of wandering around it just to admire everything. After seeing most of Colmar we returned to the car and made our way back to Belfort along the less scenic, but faster, highway. Back in Belfort we enjoyed another delicious dinner at home and some more relaxing and sharing stories about our trip.

The next morning was our last day in Belfort and Guillaume and I decided to spend the morning going for a nice bike ride while the ladies went to the market. The nice bike ride turned out to be far more difficult than I expected as super Guillaume too me on a 60 km ride up to the top of the Grand Ballon and back, a nice 3 hour ride that left me nearly dead. When we returned back home we enjoyed a great lunch before heading out to see some sights in Belfort before having to catch our train back to Paris. Sandrine and Guillaume were great guides as they took us up to the large Belfort lion and the fort overlooking Belfort as well as wandering through the streets of the old town and out to the city walls. By the time that we had seen the downtown area of Belfort it was time for us to head to the train station where we said goodbye to everyone and caught our train back to Paris. We arrived in Paris at about 10 pm and quickly found our hostel where we dropped our bags off and rushed out to see the Eiffel Tower lit up at night. We got to the Eiffel Tower and had about 30 minutes to admire it before catching the last metro train back to our hostel at 1 am where we both fell asleep absolutely exhausted.

The next morning we got up and just made our way to the Charles de Gaulle airport and eventually got on our flight back across the Atlantic to Toronto. So our trip was coming to an end, just a short visit in Ontario and then on home to Calgary.