France Day 1 - Kerfuffle

We got off the plane at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris sometime in the morning. I didn’t really get any rest on the flight because there were these two extremely noisy children sitting right in front of me. The food was pretty good though; I thought it was much better than the Air Canada food I’ve tasted. When were lining up for customs at the airport, we heard a “security announcement” regarding a grey suitcase that had been left unattended in some area of the terminal. When we were waiting for our baggage claim, we saw that there were a large number of customs personnel and even a few soldiers in camouflage with rifles standing around. Travellers were cleared out of the area and kept gathered at a safe distance. We only had to wait a very short time before they gave the all clear and we could proceed into the terminal. I caught a glimpse of the questionable suitcase, or what was left of it, as officials were piling pieces of it into a large plastic bag. I guess they cut it up to see what was inside.

Some dude sleeping, and a coffee
vending machine

France Day 1 - Car and Driver

We got our rental car from the airport, and spent a little time in the parking lot with its tiny parking spaces trying to figure out the car. On a side note, the car parked beside ours was a Panda. Our car does some cool things like auto parking brake, mirrors that swivel themselves in when you leave the car, and windshield wipers that automatically turn on when it starts to rain. There’s also a DVD drive, assumably so you can watch videos on the little screen in the dashboard, and also what looks like a phone function.

We had a GPS that we borrowed from one of my dad’s relatives, but while I was still trying to figure out how it worked, we got a little bit lost just getting out of the airport. The roads were overlapping and strange, and we even managed to accidentally go into an underground parking lot and had to navigate our way out. Oops.

Once we were on the highway, we drove a little way but got stuck in traffic where the police had temporarily blocked off the road. When things cleared, we drove past an accident where a car had completely flipped over, and bags of groceries were scattered at the side of the road---I saw squished onions everywhere.

As we drove on the highway, we passed by stuff too quickly for me to actually get it on camera, but I saw some interesting things like trees with slender branches and puffs of moss or vines hanging from them like something out of Avatar, three large ruined buildings that looked straight out of the Medieval era, and a random little tree by the side of the highway all by itself sporting beautiful pink flowers. 

France Day 1 - Auxerre

We arrived at the small town of Auxerre just in time to have lunch at a restaurant in the town square. Since it was Sunday, most stores in the town were closed for Sabbath, but a few restaurants were open and filled with locals. The one we went to was really nicely decorated, with coloured Plexiglas panels everywhere to make the interior quite vibrant. We had some pizza, salad and soup that tasted lovely, and our waiter did try really hard with his English.

Salad with some kind of meatstuff

coffeee

"Soup of the Season"...looked like green
mush but tasted good.

Thin crust pizza with meat and an egg

cute little European cars...

After lunch we took a walk through the old city to have a look around. A bunch of little kids passed by us, gawking at the rare Asian specimens. There were some whimsical little statues here and there, engraved with lines from poems, and then a huge sundial/clock mounted on an archway in the middle of town.

We stopped in a local cathedral called St. Etienne, pushing open a small but heavy wooden door and stepping into the musty silence. There were two other tourists wandering around in there, but the rest of it was a suffocating sort of emptiness in which I could hear my footsteps echoing. I even managed to creep into this old, dark crypt thing with a sarcophagus and an inscription on the wall putting the year of death in the 1400s. It was honestly the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen in any of the old churches I’ve visited, because it was a dark little niche I had to stoop to get into and there were remnants of old candle wax dripped everywhere with dead leaves and petals on the ground.

We emerged from there and went back down to the riverside where our car was parked. There was a delicately narrow little bridge from which we were able to take some pictures of the “skyline” of the city. After that, we started our drive to Dijon and I fell asleep immediately once I was back in the car. 

France Day 1 - Rainy Sunday Night

We checked into a hotel in Dijon that was clean and tidy, but rather old. Notably, the elevator was epic and about the size of my closet at home, with a door you had to open and close manually. We put our luggage down and headed out to do a little exploring. 

There’s a small palace of sorts in this town, and quaint cobblestone streets that looked convincingly moody in the rainy weather. We located a Subway, a McDonalds, an H&M, a Claire’s, and several other establishments reminiscent of America. There were lots of local French stores too, like one that just sells mustard, but nothing was really open. 


After an hour or so of ambling through the twisting streets, we settled into a restaurant called l’Imprimerie. The interior design was awesome, with old books lining every wall, an old-fashioned printing press in the middle, and fake newspaper hanging from the ceiling. 

Baked Potato

Escargots

French Onion Soup

Beef Tartare

Coconut and Chocolate Ice Cream