Made it to Dijon

Moutarde on tap at Maille's

Our first day was spent finding our way around, doing the important things: checking with the tourist information office to see what we should see, stopping at a sidewalk café for a café au lait, and just for good measure dropping into an Irish pub for a pint of the good stuff. Plus, being in Dijon, we had to check out moutarde (better known in the US as mustard). We dropped into the Maille moutarde shop and tried several flavors plus a few that were only available on tap at this store. Back at the boat we wrote to the yard that had done the work on Juniper hoping for a reply (remember, we are in France).

Joan café au lait

Dijon Day two – after having to go a day without croissants for breakfast Michael was sent out into the cold morning to search for the nearest boulangerie. As luck would have it the walk was less than 5 minutes. Joan barely had coffee ready by the time I was back. The morning mail asked if we would mind returning to St. Jean de Losne to have the needed repair work done – we politely said we would really prefer not as it was a 20 minute drive for them and a 2 day trip for us that would have us arriving on a weekend (so sit two more days) then a day of work on the boat and finally two days to get back to where we were. A full week of cruising time lost. They agreed and said they would have a mechanic visit us in Dijon.

Being a market day we grabbed our shopping bags and walked to Les Halles in search of local delicacies.  We ended up with escargot, paupiette a couple of new, to us, les fromages and vegetables we hadn’t been able to find in a grocery. All in all a great haul. Another walk back to the boat for lunch before returning to the old city center. By the way that walk is about ¾ of a mile each way.

Escargot - and we're in Bourgogne, how can we pass this up?

Using our phones to translate French to English and visa versa

Chouette trail marker

The rest of the day was spent doing a tourist walk called the Parcours de la Chouette or the owl’s walk. The name comes from a carved owl on the side of Notre-Dame that legend has will grant you a wish that is made when your left hand is touching the carving. The trail is marked by following bronze owl plaques on the sidewalk and guides you through the history of this amazing city, plus most of the museums are free. They say an hour to walk the trail; after a day on our feet we returned to the boat to put our feet up having seen about half the stops. The evening mail also let us know Anthony, our mechanic, would be aboard at nine the next morning. Our dinner entrée was our escargot – and they were good.

Anthony - we finally found the elusive part

Dijon Day three – We were up in time to read the news while enjoying our morning coffee and croissant before Anthony arrived. We had already given them our two cents worth that maybe the boat wasn’t going fully in gear and that was the cause of our problem. It only took a few minutes to determine that was at least a part of the problem, if not the entire problem. Then a couple of hours to actually find the piece that was causing the problem, it was located behind the back wall of one of our cupboards (don’t even ask how many places we took apart to find the correct one). With our mechanical problem fixed it was time for lunch then a walk back to the old city center to finish our walk.

The highlights were visiting the Musée des Beaux Arts located in the Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy from the days when they ruled as an independent region and probably had as much power and wealth as the king of France. The buildings were spectacular and the medieval art and armament on display was interesting and well displayed. In the afternoon we joined a group to climb the stairs to the top of Tour Philippe Le Bon for a great view from the highest point in Dijon. The tower was built to symbolize the prestige and power of the Dukes of Burgundy.

You have to look for art everywhere - this is how corbels are really held in place

Michael making a wish for our grand daughter to be's good life and health

Joan making a wish for our grand daughter to be as well

Musée des beaux arts - tomb of one of the Dukes of Burgundy

Rooftops taken from the top of Tour Philippe Le Bon (Philippe the Good)

Gargoyle at top of Tour Philippe Le Bon

By this time we realized we didn’t have an éclusier scheduled for the next day. A couple of phone calls left us frustrated but no answers. We had the tourist information office call, they also had no luck. So we returned to the boat so that I could try biking back down the canal to a VNF office we had seen coming into Dijon. While I was getting a bike down Joan found another boater that lived aboard in Dijon and knew the secret number to get our trip scheduled. With that accomplished we decided to celebrate with a dinner out for our last night in Dijon. Tomorrow we attempt to do 22 écluse in one day. Some may call it crazy, we call it trying to make up the week we lost.