Daytrip to Beaune, France

Cool jars in the pharmacie at Les Hospices de l'Hotel Dieu

The usual jumping picture

Cristina in a little patisserie that we went to to get warm

Beds in l'Hotel Dieu. Very typical Medieval architecture, evidently.

An arche in the middle of the city

Colors=very Anthropologie...

A Rose. On a wall.

Hotel Dieu. These tiles are typical of Beaune and are seen on random buildings around the town.

Well, yes, I did go on a daytrip to Beaune, but first I will tell you about Le Mont d'Or, which means Golden mountain basically...On Sunday afternoon I went to these hills right outside of Tassin, where I live, with my French friend, Ludo who showed me around a bit since he is Lyonnais. The hills are named Mont d'Or for the stones that were used to build walls and buildings that turned a golden color from the sun. It was freeeezingggg though---All day it had been raining and then snowing but it cleared up into a beautiful day in the afternoon and we trudged through the snow and mud along these paths with trees covered in snow--it was beautiful, and you could see all of Lyon from the top. The funniest thing though was that some people had lost their little dog named "Jackie," so about 10 people were wondering around calling its name and asking us if we had seen it...we just laughed and Ludo kept telling me "vas y, vas y!"--basically go ahead, they're calling you...I'm not sure if I've mentioned this, but a "jackie" in spoken French is basically a guy who plays techno music really loud in his car, which is usually fixed up really nice, and they also dress kind of euro trash--not a nice connotation to my name, eh? This is why I also introduce myself as Jacqueline to French people. I also found out my name is a bit old-fashioned...basically the equivalent to Betty or Shirley or something, but hey, I don't mind! At least with a name like Jacqueline DeMaret Gilles no one could guess that I'm not French...

Anyways, the daytrip to Beaune. My friend Cristina and I were debating where to go for the past week for a little daytrip and finally decided the night before that we'd go to this little town called Beaune, that her French host father suggested, the next morning. It's the capital of Burgundy country and it's about 2 hours by train from Lyon. When I woke up at 6h30 to get ready to go, I looked outside my window and everything was covered in snow, and it was actually still snowing. I was thinking it would be a pretty miserably cold and wet day, but it actually was sunny on and off and the snow made the scenery quite charming :) We got there and just wandered around the streets with no real plan, and so it was really relaxing. We went to the antique market where I bought like 100 yr old postcards from Lyon for 50 cents, went to a wine museum, a basilica, les Hospices de l'Hotel Dieu, which was an old hospital of sorts from the middle ages, and at the end of the night we went to a restaurant where I tried my first escargots! They were in the shell and everything, and quite delicious. We of course had to have some good wine, too, from the Burgundy region--try a Cote de Beaune--and then headed back in the snow to catch our train. It was a great day--just really relaxing not having any set plans and just letting ourselves get lost in a town...today I am just chillin chez moi and getting random errands done. In two days I leave for Barcelone and am getting more and more excited! Mais c'est tout pour maintenant. Bisous!