Sunday, July 6, 2008

Not the Mustard

Day 117
My alarm went off early, I had to switch trains pretty early in the morning. After reading for a few hours the next train finally came and I was able to sleep some more.

After dropping my things off at the super modern and clean hostel I headed back into town to check out Dijon. Unfortunately it was pouring cats and dogs and I wasn't able to wander as I would have liked. Still, I was able to tell that Dijon was a really cute little town. And to tell you the truth, after the severe heat of the last few days I was ready for a cooler day and the rain didn't bug me too much.


Eventually the medieval streets lead me to Notre Dame. This was a nice Gothic church with a Black Virgin Mary statue that they claim saved the city from ruin twice. Once from the Swiss, and the second time from the Nazis. I needed a picture of this miraculous statue.


Nearby was the fine arts museum. It was small but quite good. There was some sort of odd modern art instillation everywhere. There were all sorts of plastic animals, on the stairs, with flowers on their butts, red balls on their eyes and surrounding the art. Some were camping out in Ikea tents and other on beds. I really didn't get it.


The rain hadn't let up yet by time I left the museum and headed to the Archaeological Museum. It wasn't very interesting and I was really just there to kill time before the next thing I wanted to see opened. The St. Benigne Cathedral, according to my guidebook had a really creepy crypt. I spent some time checking it out and taking pictures. The Rotunda's foundation dated back to the Romans is it is surprising that the building not only survived the church above collapsing in 1280, but also Napoleon's attempted destruction of the building. It was nice, but not creepy.


When I got back to the hostel I was able to move into my room. I was happy to see that I would have it to myself for the evening. What I wasn't happy about was that because it was Sunday there wasn't anything open. I didn't want to believe the receptionist so I spent a few hours wandering the neighborhood. There wasn't anything open. In the end I had some tuna that I had been carrying around for emergencies and spent the evening reading Sense and Sensibility.

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