You must(ard) visit Dijon

On Saturday we spent the day lazily wandering the streets of Dijon. Once home to some of Europe’s most powerful princes ‘The Dukes of Burgundy’ the city still retains much of the architecture of that particular period and has real buzz about it. The market proved to be a real treat, a heartwarming display of community interaction. Traders chatted animatedly with regulars, leaving their apprentices to bag up the mornings catch, whilst other more delicate hands prepared cheese boards and oysters for the hungry weekend crowd. It felt like a market should, the beating heart of the town itself, its vivacity irrepressibly infecting other nearby highways and byways.

After a bite to eat we headed back out into the sultry Bourgogne streets. Here the roads where narrower, more akin to York’s Shambles than the sweeping boulevards of France’s capital. Shops selling the city’s famous mustard peddled their divisive wares and cafes thronged with thirsty shoppers. Somewhere between the shade of gothic churches and boutiques selling antique wares, trumpets could be heard. Rounding the corner it became apparent that a newlywed couple where celebrating their big day in style. A North African band dressed in blue velvet waistcoats played a hypnotic tune as the revellers danced along, watched all the while by a growing number of smiling bystanders. It was heartening to see that despite of all the doom, gloom and downright misery that is currently unfolding in certain parts of the globe, at our core so much more unites us than divides us. Dijon exemplified that in a nutshell.

p.s the ‘dukes of burgundy’ opted for said moniker due to the fact that the ‘kings of claret’ had already been taken.

Market Day in Dijon