Paris and Dijon

Drat! I've run out of space to upload photos onto blogger, and there's no way for me to upload nice pictures to flickR with this crummy connection.  Therefore, I will unfortunately have to return to using Facebook as my main visual.  Bah.

RINK TO MOAR FOTOZE


Anywho, Paris was great.  The city that is.  I didn't really much like the people.  We took the metro and walked all over the place with the major hyper-tourist destinations in mind but strayed away from the path any time we saw anything that looked remotely interesting, which is to say every fifteen steps in Paris.  The street vendors, called vendeurs a la sauvettes (literally vendors on the run), were quite the nuisance.  A few of them even had the gumption to push me back after I told them I wasn't interested in their necklaces and kept moving.  I wouldn't have any of that, so I pushed them back and kept moving toward Sacre Coeur.

Notre Dame.  We found the center of Paris nearby.

 Jen and Daniel met up with Matt and me on the second day and we went up to Tour Montparnasse, which has a fantastic view of Paris.  We also toured through Jardin des Plantes, which turned out to be a geological and zoological destination as well.  Paris was unusually crowded this weekend because of the French labor day, which put extra stress on the metro system, but we got around.

Montparnasse.  No building in Paris is allowed to be taller or "uglier" than this one.

The Louvre.  Need I say more?

I woke up early the third day to catch my 7:20 train to Dijon.  I stopped by the Eiffel Tower right before dawn for the sole purpose of pleasing the photographer in me.  Luckily for me, they were testing the lights on the tower, so I got a free light show, and on top of that, the sun rose just as the show ended, resulting in some satisfactory pictures.

Light show! At an unorthodox time.

Dawn!

Dijon looked like a scene out of a movie.  The streets were paved with white stone and the ambiance was really rich and vibrant in color.  I did, of course, try Dijon mustard, which comes in a great variety of colors and flavors, each with their own cracker and cheese recommendation.

The plaza in front of the royal palace

Several of the different types of mustard.  There was one for every color pretty much.

I spent the rest of my day in Lyon with my family who up until the point when they saw me, thought I was starving and homeless.  In any case, I think it's one of their most important missions to feed me beyond the point of recognition while I'm here.  We went to what I can only guess to be a super-Carrefour.  It was basically a Mega-Walmart + Sams + Part of a Mall.

Mes cousins!