Dijon and home

Tuesday morning and we all met in the hotel reception at 8-30 to catch the coach waiting to take us to the railway station for our journey to Dijon, The coach ride was about 4 minutes but it was all uphill all the way, again we went down the steps and under the underpass to the far platform to wait for our train to Lausanne. We had alpine scenery for the full length of this trip as well as passing by Lac Leman.

 

Lausanne station is very modern with multiple food outlets where you could buy from a sandwich to a full meal to take away, we were now of course back in Switzerland but here they did take cards for payment thankfully. We had less than an hours wait for our connecting train to Dijon.  
It was a very short walk from the Dijon station and we were at our hotel around 2-30, so had the rest of the afternoon to look around the town. We had actually stayed here many years ago when doing a river cruise so it was nice to refresh our memories. After a week of constant sunshine we now had some very heavy clouds and as we sat in the square, under a large umbrella it started to rain, then the wind picked up at which point we hurried inside the Café. The rain got harder and then it was joined by hail. Thankfully the whole lot only lasted about half an hour and we could continue to the Park and Cathedral.

The hotel had a very narrow frontage but went back a long way again leading to some long corridors. Although the room was ensuite the toilet was in one room off one side of the bedroom and the shower and washbasin was in a room on the other side of the bedroom, not the most hygienic of arrangements and not sure it would be allowed under UK building regulations.

In the evening, as a group we visited a nearby restaurant for a traditional meal in the cellars. The food was shall we say unusual starting with poached eggs cooked in a Burgundy sauce made of red wine, lardons, shallots fried in butter.

Wednesday morning and we met up just before 9am for the short walk back to the station to catch our train to Paris Gare de Lyon, where a coach would be waiting to take us to Paris Gare de Nord  for our Eurostar journey back to the UK. At At Paris Gare de Nord for some reason they ushered us through the manual passport control ,and also started to do manual ticket validation but abandoned that idea after just one passenger went through, me. Everyone else got allocated a new boarding pass, different seat number and carriage, I just had my original. I went to the desk in departures and explained my problem. They didn’t know what seat I should be in, but as we were in a group just gave me a duplicate ticket for the right carriage and said “sort it out between your selves” Lunch with wine was served on the train, its not great but fills a hole. Once in London we caught the underground to Victoria and walked to the coach station and after having a coffee caught our coach back to Norwich. We had a lovely sunset as we travelled along the A14.

At Norwich I rang for a taxi but I didn’t get to speak to a person. A recorded voice said ”Press one if you want to book a taxi now” Still no person but a voice giving my exact location and asking me to confirm it by again pressing one. Job done. I got a text with the taxi number and description and as the taxi pulled in a phone call with a recorded voice saying”Your taxi has just arrived”  As we waited this is what was at our feet on the pavement.

Until the next time and thanks for reading.