Dijon – owl´s trail and gastronomy

July 16th 2023

I woke up to nice weather and a nice view from my little attic room.

Today my first task was to find out what thoses mall birds on pavements were all about. That is the owl´s trail. (So not pigeon as i thought…) that form a path around town by small and big sights.

The original owl is on Notre Dame church and I heard that you should touch it with your left hand and make a wish.

Anyway, the trail led me past several interesting buildings and other places.

I also visited the church of St. Michael, which was quite simple but still beautiful.

It had a lot of wood carvings and ornaments – quite north European in its style.

Next to the church is a small – but free – museum dedicated to Francois Rude, one of the most known sculpturers in the 19th century. Full scale replicas of ornaments from Arc de Triumphe was amongst the highlights.

Then a brunch at Monsieur Moutarde, a buffet brunch with many goodies to choose from.

After this I did some shopping and filled my already stuffed suitcase with a couple of items – you can´t come home from Dijon without mustard!

In the afternoon my plan was to see the “gastronomic city”. That was a very cool place – I will return there before leaving Dijon.

It occupies an old monastery and one of the chapels has been made into a small museum displaying the “climats’ of Burgundy. Climats is their way of saying wineyard or plot of land – describing it’s uniqueness.

With a free ticket you got from the reception desk you could also visit a calm courtyard with a tiny chapel.

No gastronomy in these woods without a serious wine tasting venue. Self-service with a prepaid card to use in the dispensers – around 250 wines to choose from.

I went for the good bottles in the cellar – a really nice selection there.

When it comes to tasting, mustard tasting is a challenging form, as the mouth gets sedated after around 8 of them. But some interesting variants to taste…

After a pit stop at the hotel I went out for my evening meal, which was in a cellar of a 16th century house.

This place is owned by a collector of old wines, who decided to open a food and wine bar with old wines for tasting, and to make it cheap and accessible. I had wines as old as from 1962, small tastes but enough to,get a good impression. Highly recommended!

Their concept is to serve each wine as a blind tasting, you must then guess the age and the region. I was very proud to get 3 of 6 regions right, but I was off by years and decades for the age on nearly all of them. Amazing how young some of them felt!