Wandering Dijon

Helena and Katie (two of the English girls) and I decided to follow the Owl Path around the city yesterday.  This is a self-guided tour, in which you can pick up a booklet for a couple of dollars from the local tourism center, and then follow these little golden owls that have been paved into the sidewalk.  It’s supposed to take you by all of the major attractions in the city, as well as give you a bit of background about each one.  It’s really nice because the city has a lot of really cool buildings in it (with really amazing architecture – I’m a bit of a nerd for gothic-style architecture) and the city center isn’t really that big, so the entire tour can be done in about an hour.  The only thing we wound up going into was the local Notre-Dame church (which was absolutely incredible) but we got to see where all kinds of things were, such as the Fine Arts Museum, the Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy, the local market (set up Tuesday through Saturday) and various parks.   We also raided the tourism office for pamphlets so we’d have plenty of things to keep ourselves entertained in the upcoming weeks (museums, tours of the mustard factory, castles not far from the city) and picked up some of the event flyers that were being handed out in the streets.  Personally, I want to go to a salsa dancing class that is offered every week from Tuesday-Thursday for various levels of dancer which is only 5 euro.  Apparently there is some kind of international music and dance festival going on right now, so every half hour or so we stumbled across performers dancing through the streets in full costume.  Clearly, this is going to be a very interesting semester.