dijon!

When I say Dijon what do you think of?  Probably mustard. :)  Back in the day, Dijon was the mustard capital of France.  Nowadays, there actually just one small mustard factory, and most of the mustardseeds used to make Dijon mustard are imported from other parts of France. But they still have a cool little store for the tourists where you can taste different types of mustard.  So this weekend Kate, Juliette, and I took a should little train ride to explore this little city and "gouter le moutard."

So for lunch, I grabbed a baguette and some fruit at the market, and bought some fun-looking mustard.

mmm mustard!

On the left we have the bright-green tarragon mustard (tarragon is a spice), in the middle "mutard d'espices", which is basically gingerbread flavored, and then on the right, bright pink ___ mustard! The gingerbread was a little funky, haha, but I loved the rose. It was super spicy though, it really clears out your sinuses. By far the most interesting mustard we tasted was the Chocolate-Speckulos variety that we tasted in the store. MMMMmmm, and it definitely tasted more like chocolate than mustard :)

There are so many gorgeous churches in Lyon, here are Kevin, Juliette, and Kate in front of one. Kevin was our Couch-Surfing host for the weekend. For those of you who don't know, Couch Surfing in a network of people who are willing to "host" travelers for a couple of days. This could mean merely showing them around the area, or offering couches or spare bedrooms for them to stay in. You may think that sounds really sketchy, but generally, people are incredibly nice and are just really eager to share their culture, learn about other cultures, and show off their hometown to others.    I met two girls my first week in Lyon, who were originally from Hong Kong and had spent the last YEAR AND A HALF traveling throughout California, England, and France. They couchsurfed the entire time and said they had never had a sketchy, questionable situation. Amazing. Kevin is one of the sweetest people I have ever met. He spent his entire Saturday and Sunday showing us around Dijon. He was such a great sport for putting up with all our questions and our horrible french (most people who speak english end up speaking back to you in English, even when you talk to them in french because their comprehension of English is so much better than our comprehension of French, America- we should start teaching language at an earlier age....) Anyways, as a thank you, we cooked dinner for Kevin Saturday night! We were all craving some Tex-Mex (almost impossible to find here!) so we cooked up some fajitas and guacamole! Yummmm. :) only problem was, the "Fajita" seasoning packet we bought tasted like barbecue! Somebody mixed up their "american" flavors! 

Throughout the town of Dijon, there are these little, bronze owls in between the cobblestones. If you follow them, they lead to a sculpture of an owl on the side of an ancient church. If you find the owl, you're supposed to touch it with your left hand and make a wish. 

une chouette (that means owl in french:) )

Me getting lucky.

Then, we decided to take a bus out into the countryside. The city of Dijon has about 100,000 people or so, but it doesn't take very long to get out of the city into the middle of nowhere. 

hello wine country.

Ha. Yeah so it wasn't until after we had gotten off the bus that we realized that since it was Sunday, another bus wouldn't come for about 5 hours. Typical. On Sundays in France, nearly everything is closed. Ah, but little village was so pretty! To bad it was cold and we didn't have a way to get home
.

A cool tower/gazebo we found

Luckily, we found a wine retail shop that was open! The lady there helped us find some sandwiches and get a ride back to town. 

Stranded.

After safely making it back to Dijon, we went to another museum and looked at 17th century french paintings and naked marble statues. There was an entire room of marble Saints, all in different poses. I thought this one was really great:

The other trains that I have ridden just had seats in rows, kinda like a bus, but on the ride back from Dijon, we ended up having our own compartment! It was just like HARRY POTTER! We were SO incredibly excited, and pulled the curtains closed, blasted some music, and pretended we were on the Hogwarts Express. 

Harry, Ron, and Hermione