{"id":2045,"date":"2008-10-08T13:39:24","date_gmt":"2008-10-08T17:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/frenchbychoice.com\/?p=2045"},"modified":"2014-04-14T14:14:37","modified_gmt":"2014-04-14T18:14:37","slug":"dijonparis-wednesday-8-october-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frenchbychoice.com\/?p=2045","title":{"rendered":"Dijon\/Paris, Wednesday, 8 October 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It rained all night and is raining this morning as we gather our belongings and head up to the office to check in our boat.\u00c2\u00a0 While we are in the process, another boat with a Swiss family aboard, pulls in and decides to tie up adjacent to another boat rather than to squeeze into a space at the dock \u00e2\u20ac\u201c even though their space was bigger than the space Mike pulled into.\u00c2\u00a0 At 9:30 AM the cab was waiting to return us to Dijon.\u00c2\u00a0 We loaded up our bags and off we went.\u00c2\u00a0 The drive took about 1 \u00c2\u00bd hours, the driver dropped us at Shoe and Carol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hotel where we dumped our bags.\u00c2\u00a0 Shoe and Carol leave tomorrow (Thursday at 10:30 PM on an overnight train to Milan!) so they had reserved a room at the Kyriad.<\/p>\n

Since it was lunchtime, we headed into the center of town, stopped by the tourist office to get Shoe and Carol a map of Dijon, and headed over to Brasserie Les Ducs for lunch.\u00c2\u00a0 It was pouring rain, so eating out on the terrace was not an option.\u00c2\u00a0 It is that time of year when the French have turned on the heat and the heat runs, regardless of the temperature. When a closed in restaurant\/bar\/brasserie\/bistro gets filled with people, it can get pretty warm; so eating outside is preferable if at all possible \u00e2\u20ac\u201c even though that is where the smokers are.<\/p>\n

Not letting the rain stop us, we walked around Dijon \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as the rain picked up intensity and it rained harder, harder, harder.\u00c2\u00a0 By the time we got back to Shoe and Carol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hotel, rain had soaked through our umbrellas, our rain jackets, our shoes and socks.\u00c2\u00a0 We were not a pretty sight and therefore no final photos were taken of the four of us together that last day.\u00c2\u00a0 We dried out for about an hour, and headed over to the train station where our TGV to Paris was scheduled to leave at 16:21.\u00c2\u00a0 We went over early so we could dry out a little from our walk to the train station before we packed into the train.\u00c2\u00a0 At about 16:04, they announced our track (I), so we left Carol and Shoe with hugs around, validated our ticket and boarded the train to find a young businessman with papers and computer spread out in our seats.\u00c2\u00a0 We verified the coach number and asked him to move.\u00c2\u00a0 The train ride through the countryside was full of fall color and beautiful, especially when the rain stopped about 15 minutes out of Dijon.\u00c2\u00a0 We passed farms, pastureland, small villages, and even a windmill farm generating electricity \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but only half were spinning.<\/p>\n

We arrived in Paris as scheduled, 17:59, meandered through Gare de Lyon to the connection to the Metro.\u00c2\u00a0 We purchased our week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pass and headed to\u00c2\u00a0 the 14 to Madeleine where we changed to the 8 to Balard and got off at Le Motte Piquot, the stop closest to our apartment. All of this would have been easy going, except every escalator going our way (even at Gare de Lyon) was broken \u00e2\u20ac\u201c so we lugged our suitcases up all those flights of stairs.<\/p>\n

\"Paris

Bedroom in our Paris apartment<\/p><\/div>\n

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\"Paris

Living room in the apartment<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

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\"Paris

Hallway and dining room in the apartment<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

We easily found our apartment and settled in.\u00c2\u00a0 Long hot showers to get rid of the travel grime and to enjoy after those short \u00e2\u20ac\u0153navy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d showers on the boat.\u00c2\u00a0 We even have a hairdryer, after a week of no hairdryer, embarrassing photos, I am excited by life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s little conveniences. We divided up the dirty clothes into loads and actually washed two loads.<\/p>\n

We went to a brasserie around the corner, Caf\u00c3\u00a9 le Piquet and sat on the terrace.\u00c2\u00a0 It is much warmer here in Paris, even in the evening than it was in Dijon and along the Soane.\u00c2\u00a0 Both of us had a glass of rose and salade campardarnge \u00e2\u20ac\u201c expecting a light meal.\u00c2\u00a0 The bowls were huge and we left over half.\u00c2\u00a0 We went to the Monoprix, just before it closed to get milk and juice for the morning.\u00c2\u00a0 Then back to the apartment for a great night\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  It rained all night and is raining this morning as we gather our belongings and head up to the office to check in our boat.\u00c2\u00a0 While we are in the process, another boat with a Swiss family aboard, pulls … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219,4,25,11],"tags":[668,669],"class_list":["post-2045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dijon","category-france","category-paris","category-tgv","tag-brasserie-les-ducs","tag-cafe-le-piquet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/frenchbychoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/frenchbychoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/frenchbychoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frenchbychoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frenchbychoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/frenchbychoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2045\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/frenchbychoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frenchbychoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frenchbychoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}