SUNDAY, Drayton and I took a day trip to Beaune and Nuits St. Georges. These towns are both in Burgundy so they were 20 minutes or less of a train ride away from Dijon-and beautiful train rides through the picturesque French countryside at that.
Beaune was absolutely precious. From the moment we walked through the gates of the small wine town, we could not stop "ooo-ing" and "aww-ing." Everything was just so... old! I loved pausing to imagine the people that lived in those very same houses I was admiring hundreds of years ago... how many things have changed. We walked around for hours, never growing tired of all the architecture and character of the town. We soon realized that Sunday was not the best day to travel to a new city in France-everywhere was closed! We eventually found a yummy brasserie before checking out a wine museum.
Notre Dame
Now, here comes our surprise of the day... Nuits St. Georges. When we researched this town, we saw rolling vineyards and green everywhere, so we expected to stumble upon a vineyard near the train station and be able to tour it. We were wrong. When we stepped out of the train station, three descriptive words came to mind: dark, dreary and dismal. With dirt roads, lots of fence, abandoned looking houses, and no sign of human life, Nuits St. Georges was not at all what we expected. However, Drayton and I had a lot of fun wandering the creepy streets... for about 30 minutes before turning around. We must have needed to take a taxi to the really pretty vineyards we saw online-better planning next time!
Nuits St. Georges.. :)
MONDAY was another long day of travel with our ridiculous luggage. With Drayton and I each dragging 2 carry-on bags, a gigantic rolling suitcase, and a duffel bag, we slowly rushed to catch our train headed to Vichy! We were cutting it close on time. Then, we discovered our first set of stairs. We had avoided them up to this point by taking any elevators and escalators in our sight. But this was it. There was no other way up to our platform. After making several trips up the stairs with Drayton each bringing up individual pieces of luggage, I made it on the train first with most of the luggage. Drayton was still fighting to make it up the stairs with the last bag. This is when the story gets unnecessarily dramatic. I was standing in the doorway of our train when all the sudden the doors started to close on me. I took this as a sign that the train was leaving. I began screaming to Drayton (with no voice-I am still sick at that point) "Drayton! Come on! Hurry! The train is about to leave!!" Little did I know that the doors closing was a normal occurrence beginning sometimes even 20 minutes before a train leaves the station as to not let the "paid air" get out. I thought this was life or death. I couldn't leave the luggage on the train to help Drayton because I didn't want the train to leave with our luggage and not us. I couldn't take the luggage off by myself because "there wasn't enough time." After a few minutes of me franticly brainstorming, Drayton made it up the stairs and onto the train. We then realized that we forgot to compost our tickets. After weighing our options, I decided I would take the leap of faith and get our tickets composted, thinking that I may get left behind. So I sprinted and was back in about 2 minutes-record time. In the end, the train did not leave for another 20 minutes due to electrical difficulties. Puh.
As soon as I walked off the train at Vichy, it was love at first sight. It's just beautiful. We were thinking that someone from Blaise Pascal (our university in Vichy) would be at the train station to greet us and take us to our dorm to check in. Since no one was there and we had to get to the dorm by 5 to check in, we started the "10 minute" walk toward the university. Let's just say, it ended up taking 40 minutes. Leaving Drayton with our luggage about 5 minutes away from our destination, I ran to see if our dorm building (Residence Home Lardy) was still open. At 4:45, the doors were locked and no one was in sight. We had to take the next best option and stay in a sketchy hotel for the night.
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Me with all my luggage at the Vichy train station!
Vichy! The river in front of my school!
We woke up early the TUESDAY morning to discover that our adviser at Blaise Pascal thought we were not arriving until that afternoon, so we could not check into our dorm until that afternoon. After much apologizing, he introduced us to a French student named Pierre that showed us around all day! He introduced us to many of his friends and we spoke French all day!! We learned French card games, they took us to lunch in our school cafeteria (great French food for 2.90 euro!),and just showed us around. It was like a dream come true. I am now confident that we will be fluent by the end of this trip-they have already complimented us on how good our french is :)
WEDNESDAY Drayton and I focused on getting our dorms prepared and organized. They were not exactly what we expected but we plan to make them our own! We went to the nearest Monoprix (closed thing to a Walmart in France) and stocked up on supplies and groceries. It is so fun to start our lives here.
My dorm room.
TODAY, THURSDAY, it is snowing continuously and it is actually sticking to the ground!! This fact is so bizarre to us! ;) Vichy is absolutely charming when it snows! We hung out with our French friends again today-they are such sweet, fun people! Tonight, they made sure we are going to a weekly Thursday night party that the university throws. I cannot wait to meet a lot of people tonight!
I cannot wait to explore more of Vichy tomorrow!
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