Visiting Gray, Auxonne, Dijon and Suerre - July 12 - 18, 2017

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As mentioned we are now in Gray with plenty of things to see and do here. With arriving on July 12^th and Bastille Day being on July 14^thwe decided that we should stay put to check out their celebrations for the holiday. In the meantime we planned a day trip by bus to the town of Dijon. It was a full day checking out the architecture of the area, visiting an art museum in the Duke’s Palace, visiting their Notre Dame and the crypt. Never thought we would be checking out crypts on our travels, but in fact they are quite interesting as well. Yes, and before you ask, there is plenty of varieties of mustard for sale here in Dijon at the markets and souvenir shops – more varieties than we could ever have imagined although we learned it isn’t made in Dijon anymore, but is in a neighboring town!

As always when in a new place we stopped at the Tourist Information Center in Dijon and found that they have “The Owl’s Trail” where you follow the owl marker on the sidewalks which takes you on a walking tour of the town. The trail starts at the Jardin Darcy, the town’s first public garden created in 1880. It has an impressive water feature, numerous statutes and wonderful flower beds. What was interesting was that this park is dedicated to the engineer Henry Darcy that figured a way to bring drinking water to the town which helped in its development. From there you look down to the Porte Guillaume, an 18^th C. triumphal arch which surprised us by having a plaque dedicated to Thomas Jefferson How quickly we had forgotten that he was the US Ambassador to France before becoming President therefore a definite connection to France.

The Owl Trail took us pass the covered market built in 1873; numerous buildings that still remain from the 1300’s as well as those from later centuries – a definite cross section of architecture with its specific details of the period. We had a chance to visit the Musee des Beaux-Arts (Fine Arts Museum) which is housed in a well preserved medieval palace. The oldest part is from 1365, but as always it was enlarged and modified over the years. The dukes’ residence was added by Philip The Good (Duke of Burgundy from 1364-1404) and then reconstruction again occurred in the 17^th C. with it being finished in the 19^th C. It was here that we not only had a chance to view numerous pieces of artworks from the 5^th to the 16^th C. but also view the inside of this magnificent palace. Unfortunately for us they are doing a major renovation and will be opening many more rooms in the future but that is not scheduled to be open until 2019. Even with that we had plenty to see. We learned more about the history of this area as they tried to explain how the House of Burgundy with its 4 Dukes spanning the years from 1364 – 1477 which unknown to us before made this area separate from the House of France. When the last of the Dukes, Charles the Bold died Louis XI hurriedly decided to annex Burgundy to the Kingdom of France. Burgundy encompassed a large area; therefore this increased the size of France considerably. In the oldest section of the museum building, the tombs of the first 2 Dukes of Burgundy, John the Fearless and Philip the Bold are located. The tombs have alabaster sculptures which are only 14-18” tall of mourners underneath. They are amazingly detailed and show various ways of expressing grief. They are shown as monks with their flowing robes in numerous positions- some reading the bible, others comforting the one next to them and still others shedding tears. The tomb of John the Fearless and his wife, Margaret of Bavaria were created a half-century after the father, Philip the Bold, but they mimicked the earlier one even to the detail of having similar mourners on the laters’ tomb. The museum clearly showed the pairing of mourners on the two tombs. There are also similar angels at the head and lion at the feet on the two tombs. These are housed in a magnificent great room in the former Palace complete with an intricately carved fireplace and tiled floor.

The Place de la Liberation in Dijon was designed in 1685 as a semi-circular square to house an equestrian statute of King Louise XIV which unfortunately was destroyed in 1792 in order to make cannons for the revolution. This practice was not unique to Dijon as we have heard of this being the fate of numerous bronze statutes in numerous locations. The “square” however is still an impressive place with the Palace on one side, water features in the middle and cafes around the edges for a bite to eat or just a coffee to sit and people watch.

Dijon has numerous private mansions and residences that were homes to the parliamentarians that once lived here. There are ones with watch towers, intricate carvings on the facades, colorful tile roofs and beautiful courtyards. It seemed as if everywhere you turned you had to admire the details in the architecture.

The Notre Dame built in the 13^th C. has a complete outer wall of false gargoyles. In fact only a couple of the original from the 13^th C. remain as the story states that a moneylender was coming to be married but was crushed by a falling gargoyle so his colleagues had the rest of them removed. Between 1880-1882 seven sculptors were asked to create the gargoyles that are visible today. It looks like they had “fun” creating quite a few of them if you look closely! We were quite taken by the Saint-Benigne Church with its highly decorative columns, but we also had a chance to visit the crypt which was quite beautiful with its Romanesque columns, tile floor and chapels. There were many other churches we could have visited, but with only a day in Dijon we only chose these two.

There is a very unique clock in Dijon. We found out that the story behind it is that it was taken by the Duke from Belgium as war loot in 1382 and given to the people of Dijon as thanks for their help during the Flanders War. The clock only had a sculpture of a man smoking a pipe named Jacquemart. In the 17^th C. people teased that he was a bachelor and in 1651 a woman sculpture appeared as a companion and they named her Jacqueline. In 1714 people were teasing that they didn’t have any children so that year Jacquelinet appeared. Last but not least in 1884 Jacquelinette appeared completely the family. The children mark each quarter hour on the clock. Quite an interesting development from the original war loot!

There was so much to see in Dijon we walked most of the day and still didn’t complete the Owl Trail, but we felt satisfied that we got a good overview of this lovely town

A bonus of taking these day trips from the villages that we stop in is getting a chance to see the countryside. There seems to be plenty of land being used for agricultural purposes here providing us with some wonderful scenery on our trip. We are very fortunate indeed to be able to use public transportation here to be able to explore more of this beautiful area.

In an earlier blog posting I did mention a couple of things we did in Gray, but will expand on that now as we enjoyed our time in this town. The next day was Bastille Day and we had been told that they would have a large fireworks display on the river not far from where we are staying. We took a wander up to the main bridge in town to get a good viewing spot (along with many others with the same idea!) They started off the evening with quite a surprise over the loudspeaker – it was the recording of Martin Luther King and his famous speech of “I Have a Dream” and then the recording of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. This was immediately followed up with a wonderful fireworks display. It was a great family event as seen by the crowds both at the fireworks and then afterwards with everyone having a meal at the numerous cafes and restaurants. In the town during the week there was also a carnival with numerous kids rides available complete with the selling of cotton candy adding to the festivities.

The next day we were walking into town to do some errands and stopped by the Tourist Information office to thank them for their help. We had been told by the staff that we met on the first day here that we should stop by if we could to meet their other staff member as she enjoys talking to visitors from other countries. Fortunately for us she was there as we had a wonderful visit with her. A real bonus for us was she told us we “had” to visit the historic village on the hill. We told her it was on our agenda to do, but she insisted on trying to set us with a guide to show us through a few of the buildings that we would not be able to get into without the guide. She made a couple of phone calls and set it up for us so we put off our errands and hiked up the hill to meet our guide. We were so glad we did as she took us to numerous places that we would never have seen without her assistance. We met our guide at the Town Hall in Gray which is a magnificent building built between 1567-1572. The architect used different colors of limestone walls to highlight the pink marble obtained from the Jura region. What hits you immediately when seeing it is the spectacular colored tile roof and the overall size of it with it being 37 meters long (121 feet). When built it was originally intended for both the municipal activities and the location for the market. The translation of the motto of Gray is “Three Times Victorious over the Flames”. This is due to the fact that Gray survived an accidental fire in 1324, then came back again after mercenary soldiers in 1440 burned the town. The third fire occurred when Louis XI’s troops burned it again between 1477-1479, but it always came back, hence the motto for the town. The Golden Age for Gray was in the 16^th C. when river commerce thrived and there was the presence of a political elite in this area.

Just down from the Town Hall we had a chance to enter the Notre Dame Basilica which was originally built in the 12^th C., but it was destroyed and replaced with the current building between 1478-1569. Unfortunately for us our guide did not know much English and we don’t know much French, but another couple and a guide were going through at the same time so we were able to find out some of the information through their help. With the help of the guide we were able to see some areas of the church we normally wouldn’t. She took us behind the altar area in order to see the wooden carved Jesse Tree (Jesus genealogical family tree) climbing up around the stained glass window in the back of the church. She pointed out other details that we would not have spotted if we had come here on our own.

Nearby is the Paravis Tower which is the only remaining tower from the fortress that was located on the hill here in Gray. It dates from the 13^th C. and now houses a museum that was closed at the time we were there. The original fortified town was high on a hill overlooking the current town, but there is still plenty of life up in the old section of town.

We then all piled into cars and drove to another section of town to see the interior of the Theatre which was built between 1846-1849. They are particularly proud of this place that is decorated in the “Italian” style with paintings of muses radiating from the center of the ceiling and its luxurious curtains and downstage boxes. What was of particular interest to us was our tour of the downstairs and attic areas. Here you could see the mechanisms they had in place for the rising and lowering of the scenery sets using an intricate pulley system which is still being used today for the shows that they have here. It is nice to hear of these facilities being used for its intended purpose. As our guide had the key for the church and the theatre these were two places we definitely would not have seen on our own.

Our tour ended here with our guide, but the other guide offered to drop us off down town which we took him up on. We found out in talking to him that he actually isn’t a guide, but works at the local paper and is also a writer. When he dropped us off he very kindly gave us a copy of his book – it is in French and he told us that it might help us with learning French. We definitely will have to learn lots more in order to tackle this very kind gift.

We were very fortunate that the tourist bureau here is so helpful and go out of their way for you to appreciate what they have to offer here. We have been to many tourist offices and this one in Gray is the best we have ever been to as the people that work here are truly service oriented and work hard at making your time here a pleasant one – they definitely succeeded with us.



Where we were docked they were having a triathlon which we found out people from all over the country come to participate in. It is an annual event here with swimming, bicycling and running as the 3 portions of the triathlon. We had decided to move the next day to another town, but we got a paper stuck on the boat stating that we couldn’t move for a period of time that would have “trapped” us here. We followed up with some people working on setting things up for the swimming portion of the race and found we could leave early the next morning before the swimming began so that decided our departure time. Unfortunately it was before the official opening of the nearby lock, but we had scoped it out and found there was a place to tie up close to the lock to wait for the 9AM opening. Everything worked out fine, we didn’t get in the way of the swimmers and we were in place to start our day on the water again.

Our next stop was the village of Auxonne which had a nice marina to stay in. We decided to stay the next day to take the city walking tour of this area. It really seems to work out well for us to obtain the walking tour flier for these villages/towns as it provides some history of the area and gets us to the various areas that we may not have wandered to on our own. From where we were in the marina we could still see some of the remains of the fortified walls and knew from what we read that there would be enough to keep us busy for the day. One claim to fame Auxonne has is that Napoleon Bonaparte stayed here twice, in 1788-1789 as well as in 1791. He was here as a 2^nd Lieutenant in the Regiment de la Fere and a student at the artillery school. The barracks where Napoleon stayed are still being used by the military to this day. I didn’t take a chance in taking photos of these buildings as this is a military base and there were many military personnel around! A bronze statue of Napoleon in a prominent location near the Notre Dame Cathedral and Town Hall commemorates his time here.

Some of the buildings that remain from the fortified town are the arsenal built in 1689 to make barrels, the wheelwright building and the forges. These amazingly are still being used by the weekly market and the college. We got a chance to see the numerous historic buildings still standing from the 15^th-18^th C. A bonus of following the city tour was the ability to enter the Town Hall to view the 15^th C. staircase. Fortunately the people that work here seem to be quite used to the fact that people ask to come in to see it.

The Notre Dame has a gothic edifice with its southern portion having been constructed in the 12^th C. and the rest of the church built in the 13^th & 14^th C. As in many places we have visited there are numerous modifications to these structures and this is no exception as they had a total restoration project in the 19^th C.

The last area we visited was the Castle built in 1479 by Louis XI after Burgundy was annexed. The Governor’s mansion and barracks of the 16^th C. are also located here. We could walk on part of the wall here and get a great view of the Saone River giving a good understanding of why it was located here.

When walking back to the marina we saw signs high above the river which indicated the levels of previous floods here. In the photo I’ve included note that the measuring stick is in meters and 5 meters is equal to 16.4 feet to give an idea of how high the river gets here. This was an enjoyable stop but it was time to move on again.

The next day we only moved a short distance with only 2 locks to go through and stopping in Seurre. In this area of the river there are fewer places to stop that have enough depth for us, so that is making the decision for us as to how long we travel. This was the first day we started to see the return of the river hotel boats as well as some commercial barges. We really haven’t missed seeing them on the river with us! Fortunately there aren’t as many locks, but as they are commercial they take priority and many times the locks have us wait for them for to come even if it means us waiting for 45 minutes to an hour. That definitely makes it more difficult to factor in how far we can travel each day if you have to delay your progress at each lock.

We got there shortly after noon and had a little difficulty at first as the first dock we tried for we went aground before making it to the dock. We knew from our books that this was supposed to be a shallow area, but they said that we should be able to get in with our depth. A person on a neighboring boat told us to try for a different one as he thought it was deeper there – that worked and we were able to tie up for the night. The person visited us for a while and invited us to stop over for a drink later in the day. We accepted the invitation and then went off to walk through the village. We stopped at the tourist information office, but didn’t find any walking tour so we just wandered around the area ourselves. As with all villages we easily find the church which is typically near the center of town and we can now spot the Hotel de Ville (town hall). Other than those two buildings we just wandered and admired the architectural features we spotted here. Without having any history of the area we completed our “walk about” and decided to head back to get ready to be social and have a drink with our neighbors.



We found out that Elizabeth, an American (we had spotted the US flag designating an American crew member on board) is married to Kim (a Brit with the British flag). Even though it has been summer weather we hadn’t broken out the G&T’s yet, but thankfully Kim kindly offered us one – a nice treat! We had a great evening visiting with them both. The name of their boat is Resolute, which is interesting as Tsamaya’s previous name by the original owners was Resolute. We found out that Elizabeth also wrote a book about another Resolute, the HMS Resolute. It was fascinating talking to them both about how the writing of this book came about and all the research that was done. By the end of the evening we bought one of her books and we were glad we did as it was wonderfully written and provided us with the historical story about this amazing ship and as her subtitle states “And How She Prevented a War”. Elizabeth put a lot of time into doing research for her book and we found out she is in the process of writing a second one that we will look forward to reading as well. It was a lovely evening getting a chance to visit with both Elizabeth and Kim and picking up some tips from them of places to stop along the way as they were heading in the opposite direction on the river. He very kindly gave us lot of useful information on the various villages ahead and places to stop for the night. I’m sure they will come in handy as the books are showing us that they are few and far between in this section.

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Photos

A Grocery Store With a Difference
some can shop, others can have beer/wine or other!

We Were Docked Near the Start for the Relay Race
held in Gray each year -swimming/biking/running

The Hotel de Ville in Gray Built in 1568
columns, limestone, marble & tiled roof = stunning

Always Like Seeing the Older Water Pumps
saw one here in Gray

A Few Details of the Notre Dame Basilica
reconstructed between 1478-1559

The Window Has a Genealogical Tree of Jesse
as well as other interesting details in the Gray Basilica

The Bridge in Gray is Quite the Landmark
and very picturesque with the flower boxes

This Tower from the 13th C is one of last structures
remaining from the fortress in Gray

A Few of the More Unique Buildings in Gray
we always enjoy the variety of architecture we see

The Theatre In Gray Built Between 1846-1848
with the interior decor in the "Italian" style is intact

The "Inner Workings" of the Theatre in the Upstairs
& basement control the scenery changes

Not Everything is Old
This supermarket has everything you need

Some of the Fortified Walls in Auxonne
that we could see from the marina