Quaint and Quiet

We are back from our 4-day weekend vacation to Burgundy, France, and I kind of really wish we were still there. It was so relaxing and peaceful, and it was wonderful to be able to get away from everything with John for a long weekend. We had several laughing fits that resulted in happy tears over the weekend. I can’t remember the last time we’d laughed that hard together. France is that great.

I have so much to share about our time there, that even before I begin, I know I will have to break this up into a few posts. Please bear with me as I share some of our favorite parts of the trip. We started our preparations on Thursday night by dropping Béni off at the kennel, which was a different one than before, and by picking up our rental car. We decided to go with a rental, because our overtly American gas-guzzling SUV just hit 100,000 miles and needs a tune up. Besides, it was much more fuel-efficient to rent a little zippy(ish) European car.

Friday morning we were on the road by 8:45. The drive to Mont-St.-Jean, which is where we stayed, is supposed to take about 4 hours and 45 minutes, but between stopping for refueling and a break for lunch, it took us closer to 6 hours. On the way there, while still on the German Autobahn, we drove through several construction areas that were a wee bit nerve wracking. The lanes were so narrow that I had to mentally try to put myself somewhere else in order to curb my anxiety. I did, however, manage to snap a quick photo of an 18-wheeler in the next lane over:

Eeeeek!

Once we crossed the border into France, we decided we could make it about another hour before finding a place for lunch, which meant that once we drove by Besançon, it was time to find a restaurant. Immediately upon exiting the Autoroute (the highway system in France), we saw a McDonald’s. Feeling a bit more adventurous than taking the easy lunch stop, we decided to drive into Besançon. We must have passed through the more run-down part of the city, because it didn’t look like much until we got downtown. Down there, it was a cute town; unfortunately, our GPS directed us down a pedestrian way (i.e. a street reserved for pedestrian use and sometimes bus routes). We did our best to get off there as quickly as possible, and we later learned that driving on a pedestrian way in France is against the law. Oops. Silly GPS. We ended up heading back toward the Autoroute to fund a place to eat and ended up stopping at a random place for pizza. I had an Alsatian pizza that is often served in western Germany called Flammenküche (or Flammkuchen in German).  I must have pronounced the French version of the word like a German would, because we think our waitress thought we were German. She didn’t speak English (that we know of), and she tried to say a few words here and there to us in German. I was excited that we passed for something other than Americans. It is nice to blend in sometimes.

After our quick lunch, we were eager to get back on the road and get to Mont-Saint-Jean and start relaxing. After long last 10 km over a one lane (not each way….one lane total) bumpy farm road driving between fields of corn and hay, we pulled into Mont-Saint-Jean. To say this town is small might be an exaggeration. It’s so small that it’s only about a street and a half long/wide. In order to really illustrate this, I have pulled a map from Google Maps showing the last town we went through, the drive through the fields and finally, Mont-Saint-Jean: click here to view the map.

Quaint, isn’t it? Doesn’t the thought of it just make you want to sing Bonjour from Beauty and the Beast? I was singing that song all weekend.

All right. In an effort to avoid overwhelming our already rather small audience, I’m going to wrap this up as the end of Part 1 of our trip. Tomorrow I’ll write about Mont-Saint-Jean and our bed and breakfast.

What did you do over the long weekend?