Kyriad - Dijon Est Mirande

... however those ticket bays looked angrier and more modern, and as I knew it would, wouldn't let me OUT of the metro so I had to wait until someone entered and while the doors were still open get out.
I had about five hours to spend in Paris but I wasn't feeling too well so I went and put my head down in the nearby park, yet it was too cold and windy so I spent the rest of the time in the train station. The bad thing about the French trains is that they won't announce ...

... Walking back to the van clutching our precious bottle - we're not used to paying £8.60 for a bottle of wine - we were stopped by a Begian couple who had pulled up in their camper. Being Belgian, their English was very good, and we described our tasting experience, mentioning that a single bottle of the second cheapest was a full 10eu!. Ten minutes or so later, they were on their way back to their van towing a trolley laden with three cases. Within the ...

... There we met a lovely French/Hungarian family (Attila makes a point of talking to everyone he hears speaking Hungarian... except in Hungary, of course). The gentleman was from France and spoke English so he helped by clarifying what the extremely-fast-speaking tour guide was showing us.

After leaving the castle we finished our drive through the vinyards of Burgundy and headed back to Beaune for dinner.

After an inauspisious start to the proceeding and having reached Calais in the wee small hours, a few precious hours of much needed sleep were had before it was back in the pooper and the start of the longest part of the journey. As three weary heads hit the pillow it wasn't long before the beast of Basingstoke began its strange mating call. Grunting and snorting with a deep vibrating burr, Rich released his inner monster much to the surprise and ...

The journey from Dunkirk went well. Soon we were on the A25 to Lille and soon enough after on the A26 to Reims; the miles smoothed away. We stopped occasionally at services - which the French do better than anyone else - and came off the motorway for a short while at Chalons en Champagne to fill up more cheaply. This little excursion was made especially interesting by a brief attempt on my part to drive on the left - it ...

... Mati will be back from golf and then we will be off to Paris. Dont know when there will be more blog entires. Hopefully there is an internet cafe close to where we are staying and I will be able to write more. So Mati met me at the internet cafe already showered. The water was back on. I was hungry so he took me for the best meal so far. A hamburger with cheese and chips from Quick. France's version of McDonalds. Total ****...very good ...

... market. The town was so cute as well, with all its old colorful buildings that look as if they are falling down. We spent the rest of our time milling around the main area of town and then called it a night. We checked ahead to see how to get to Dijon and made a reservation for a TGV train, which is apparently the high speed french train. This meant that we had to be at the train station at 8:54 am. We just made it with about 30 seconds ...

... about in a place called Beaune; which was just great. Got some shopping done, lunch, sight-seeing the beautiful tiled roofs of Burgandy and exploring the wine caves which wind their way under the streets of Beaune. There are many individual caves and we saw but one, which we were told holds 4 million bottles! Pinot Noir and C******nay. We were given a tasting cup and sent down to discover for ourselves this amazing place. How could the world ...

... and just really enjoyed the vibe & architecture of the place. It was then back for 2 final days in Paris as we visited the Louvre where you could literally spend days and the Eiffel Tower. The Tower was great and for 11 Euros definitely worth it. Although a cloudy day we still got a great view. It's fair to say that the French and English cultures have failed to influence each other despite being so close together. They are 2 very ...

... to emails, updated my journal, extracted the entire track log of the holiday so far from my GPS as it had understandably run out of memory to store them. Checked weather forecast and lot of other equally small and time consuming jobs. Lucky the cafe closed at 19.00 and like most of these establishments it was empty, just me and the owner. The gamers started to arrive at about 17.00, but thankfully used headphones. My computer fix ...