A Day in Dijon

Thursday, September 29th
FINALLY le petite dejeuner was COMPRIS at our current Dijon hostel. A long gap in central France without many hostelling opportunities has left us staying mostly in cheap little hotels for the past couple of days, and breakfast at these places is usually a guilty extra 5-10 euro! (For a croissant, baguette, butter, jam, and a drink.... I have no idea how the French stay so thin). So anyway, we kicked the day off with breakfast at the hostel (included, but not our preferred buffet-style which we are so talented at abusing). We spent a long breakfast relishing our tiny to-do list and anticipating our excursion into Dijon. Our hostel is about a 20 minute walk from the downtown area, so we cruised into the city and did some window-shopping. In a bookstore we all snatched up some English magazines and tried to remember how to read things that aren't maps or street signs (at least I, Amie, did). We also perused the Gap (which I'm pretty sure has the same fashions as the Gap in the US, though don't quote me on that because I've been missing from the face of the Earth for a little while) and spent some time feeling sorry for our frumpy-selves in our tired jeans and smelly workout jackets.... So sorry, in fact, that we almost bought a bunch of pastries at the first patisserie we could find, and instead wound up sipping coffee in McDonalds and sucking the free WiFi while we wrote some postcards. Dijon really is a beautiful city. There's a lot of metro-building road work going on right now, but the streets are classically windy, narrow, cobblestoned...medieval. We didn't bother going to any monuments or museums, which has been a bit of a theme this trip. As McKayla's pointed out - This is more like..."grocery shopping in France 101" than it is a crash course in European history. Around 2 we headed back to the hostel to check into our new room (had to switch rooms to stay another night here). We got pumped up and did our beloved "insanity" workout for an hour or so. We then walked down to the store, and spent our usual eternity perusing the groceries. For dinner we bought an AMAZINGLY delicious rotisserie chicken, a pot of veggies, some fruit and cheese, and some cider to top it all off. We even did our homework after dinner (bank phone calls, clothes washing, etc.) and finished off the night giggling on our beds while we complimented each other (thanks for that idea, Erin... :).
Tomorrow, we're going to change things up a little bit. Erin and McKayla will continue heading east toward Besancon and ultimately Lausanne, Switzerland. I am going to take a brief excursion to Munich for the weekend to attend the final three days of Oktoberfest and hopefully meet a friend or two in Germany, before returing to Erin and McKayla in Lausanne for our grandparent-homestay! So maybe look out for a separate blog post from me in the next couple of days.