You can see pictures from this day here.
We had a chance to sleep in just a bit in the morning, and then we checked out of the hotel and hoofed it around Paris all day. The weather in Paris was beautiful. It was much cooler than I was led to believe – a great vacation from the heat and humidity of a Japanese summer.
Since the weather was so great we had no problem wandering all over the place. We saw Notre Dame – a huge old cathedral on an island on the Seine river in the middle of Paris. We went to St. Chappelle, another cathedral, this one heavy on the stained glass. We also visited the Concierge, a converted prison that housed people considered dangerous to the government in the time of the French Revolution.
We covered Paris pretty well in two days. We ate and ate – did I mention the food was incredible? For lunch I had a chili shrimp risotto, and Kuniko had a steak with a bleu cheese sauce, and combined with wine and French bread we were completely satisfied. I was starting to wonder if we should be spending more time in France and less in Italy, just based on the food.
In the evening we headed to the train station to make our next journey, this time to Dijon in the Cote D’Or region. We arrived at the train station a little early, so we killed time drinking at a café, and then headed over to catch an early dinner at a small restaurant nearby. We had salads this time, and switched to white wine for a change. The early dinner was nice since we’d be on the train during the traditional dinner time.
The train system in Europe was touted as being modern, efficient, and easy to use. I’ll give them modern, but barely. Compared to Japan, Europe has a long way to go. Still, compared to America, I’d say they are pretty nice. We worked out the system, but combined with all the rules on how to use the rail pass that I had bought, it was a little complicated. Luckily our first trip was a short one, under three hours, and the train was fast and comfortable.
This might be a good point to tell you about language, specifically ours. Kuniko and I are lucky enough to be able to speak two languages reasonably well, and that made the honeymoon trip much more fun. Mainly we spoke in Japanese this trip because it gave us privacy most of the time. If we were around Japanese people we would switch to English. It made communication really easy for the duration of the trip, and the privacy came in handy sometimes.
On the train we had mostly French people around us, so it didn’t matter which language we used. Later on we were stuck on trains with people that spoke English, and it was nice to be able to speak together without being understood.
Our train arrived in Dijon in the evening around 9 p.m., that is, in the middle of dinnertime for most people. We were able to find our hotel, this time a place that was a restaurant that had converted the upstairs into hotel rooms. The room was clean and comfortable, and we went right to sleep – again lots of walking around had us tired out pretty early.
