nukesafe

Auctions are easy, Iregeo. I once heard an auctioneer explain how simple it is. He said, "If you see something you like, just hold up your hand. Leave it up long enough, and the thing is yours."

nukesafe

One thing we wanted to do on this trip was to visit a city in France other than Paris. We didn't want another big city, and we didn't want it to be a tiny village; something with charm and with something interesting to see. Since I had done much of the initial planning for the trip, Annette was the designated city picker. I have no idea how she made her choice, pin in a map, flipping a coin, or random city generator, but she came up with Besançon. Frankly, I do not recall ever hearing the name. As we looked at it more deeply, it seemed to fit the bill. First, it was a long way from Paris, but on a TGV route, so the trip would only take a couple of hours. Secondly, it seemed to have both history and natural beauty. Here is a link to a Guardian article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/200...ce-city-breaks

It is an university town, located within a tight loop of the river Doubs. It has a clock making history; not surprising, seeing it is only about 30 miles as the crow flies from the Swiss border. It has a Museum of Time, a Archaeological and Fine Art museum, and a well preserved citadel overlooking the town. It was early enough to get PREM fares, so tickets would only cost €20 each way. It also had a selection of hotels that seemed to have off season rates. Seemed a winner, so I booked the tickets for early on the Wednesday, returning late Thursday. Annette booked a room for one night at a hotel near the Citadel with an Internet rate of €60. http://www.hotel-granvelle.fr/an_index.html

We caught the 07:23 TGV from Gare de Lyon with minimal luggage. Annette had the big handbag she usually carries, and I had my small day pack, into which I put my net book computer, shaving stuff and a clean pair of skivvies; We were only going to be one night, after all. Umbrellas, of course.

We had side by side seats on the upper level, and as it got light we anticipated seeing some lovely French countryside. What we saw from our comfortable seats was pissing down rain and fog. We arrived at the new and very slick TGV station with it really pouring down. As we followed the other passengers under the modernistic covered walkways, with rain thundering down on the curved overhead, we could see no town. As far as we could tell we were far out in the countryside in a brand new railroad terminus. Confused, we stopped at the news stand to as the clerk if we had gotten off at the right station. He assured us we had, and walked with us to a ramp that led to another set of tracks. Urging us to hurry, he pushed us down the ramp, where we managed to climb on small, very modern train that zipped off for about another 15 minutes to land us at the regular Besançon railway station for the slower, regular, trains.

We got a city map at a news stand, which also had a bus route map. It bus map was so small, and so confusing, compared to the simplicity of the Paris bus system that we were completely at a loss. The fact that we had no app for Besançon on Annette's iPad did not help matters. We saw a Number 10 bus standing outside the station, so we bought tickets at the news stand and showed the driver the address of our hotel. He indicated he would pass fairly close, and away we went. We wound down the hill from the train station, and over the river, and at one point the driver motioned we should get off at the next stop. With umbrellas raised, we huddled in a doorway while we found our location on the map, and marched away toward our hotel. It was a considerable walk, and we were glad we had not brought more luggage.

The hotel turned out to be fine. A €60 room, after all, but quite adequate. They let us check in immediately, even though it was not much past 10:00. The staff was very friendly, and the front desk clerks spoke enough English for us to get by. The only problem was that we could not make our computers connect with their free WiFi. We spent a long time at the desk with them, even calling in the resident computer expert; a teenager, of course. No way could we get on line, so we gave up.

While the hotel was fine, we found it a bit far from the center of the action in town. We struggled with the bus map, and found it too confusing to be of much use. Even the larger maps in the bus stops were no help. Lots of lines in different colors, but they crisscrossed so wildly to our eyes that they just blurred into a meaningless jumble. We did know that the Number 10 would take us to the train station, and the desk clerk showed us where to catch the Number 17 that would take us up to the Citadel.

We hiked back to the center. (There I go, whineing about walking again! I don't want to discourage you young whipper-snappers of 70, as it was flat,only about a half mile, and there were lots of things to see along the way.) There were small triangles/arrows set into the pavements all over the town. They had clockwork patterns stamped into them, so we assumed they showed the way to the museum of time. We followed them, but they didn't lead there at all. Never did find their purpose, if there was one. We located the Tourist Office, and bought city passes that contained admission to the museums and a bus pass. In spite of the confusing brass arrows, we found the museum of time, and spent a couple of happy hours there. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus%C3%..._Besan%C3%A7on The museum had very interesting exhibits, tracing the history of clock making, the world's most complex pocket watch, and yet another Foucault Pendulum. It also had one room completely filled with a scale model of Besançon in the middle ages, when the Citadel and the surrounding hilltop forts dominated the tight loop of the river. Nobody was going to use that part of the river without paying a toll. There was also one huge painting of the siege of Besançon by the French army in 1674. The Spanish held the Citadel, until Vauban hauled cannon to the tops of hills to the west of the city and bombarded both the town and fortress until they surrendered.

While we were on the top floor, under the steeply sloped roof, we were startled by a really loud roaring sound which I first thought was some sort of over the top sound effect for one of the exhibits. We soon realized the noise was coming from rain on the roof. We went to the window, and watched one the heaviest cloudbursts I have ever seen. It was like watching a waterfall from inside. I tried taking pictures of the sheets of water flowing down the steeply slanted roof, overwhelming the gutters, and hurling itself into the courtyard below. The pictures hardly turned out because the rain was also sheeting across the slanted windows. Being a weekday, and raining of course, we had the place almost to ourselves. A visit is certainly worthwhile, especially if you are a scientific type like me.

By the time we had finished our tour the rain had pretty much stopped, probably the rain gods having exhausted themselves with that one big downpour. We wandered vaguely back in the direction of the hotel, looking for a place to eat. We often take our main meal at lunch because my wife has trouble with her stomach if she eats heavily too late in the evening. French dinner time is too late for her to have a full meal, so we chow down at lunch, and she will only have an entree or desert in the evening, while patiently watching me gorge myself. In any case, we were just entering the Place Granvelle, a pleasant little park with a bandstand, when a smiling faced lady stepped into our path with a cheery, “Oh, I say, are you Americans?” When we allowed we were, she introduced herself as a retired British teacher who was now living in Besançon while teaching English classes. We had a pleasant chat about how Besançon was a really village where everyone knew one another, and how she loved it. Before she excused herself to meet a friend for coffee, we asked her for recommendations for lunch. She pointed to a large Italian cafe on the north east corner of the square, saying it was all right, but said we would would really like the one at the south west corner, if we didn't mind paying a bit more.

We thanked her, and headed for the second place; the 1802, http://www.besac.com/1802/ where we had one of the best meals of our trip. Annette had the Magret de canard au miel de lavande, which was simply a delight, she said. It was plated beautifully, with the slices of duck breast fanned around the plate, and sprinkled with lavender petals on top of the lavender honey sauce. Accompanying that on the plate were three small mounds of purple mashed potatoes, each one of which crisscrossed with two perfect snap peas, and with a perfectly centered tiny onion. Yep, I did say purple potatoes. We at first thought that they had mixed food coloring into the spuds for effect, but found out they were made from a variety of purple Peruvian fingerling potatoes. (Try saying that three times really fast.) I was so entranced at Annette's plate, and so busy trying to get a taste of those potatoes, that I do not remember what I had, only that it was delicious.

We had just about finished our plat, when the English lady appeared beside us, accompanied by her French friend. I jumped to my feet and gave her a big hug to thank her for her recommendation, and invited them to join us for coffee. They did sit down, but had just had coffee, so we had a truly enjoyable chat for awhile; her translating for the French lady.

As we left, Annette found the manager, and asked for a reservation for lunch at 1:00 the following day. I can just picture how nice the place must be in the Summer, with outside tables, people dancing on the bandstand --------

Knowing it would be death in the afternoon if my wife let me go back to the hotel, and anywhere near a bed, after that meal, she suggested we walk it off. It was only a block to the Grand Rue, sort of the main street. It runs parallel with the other “main” street, Rue des Granges, and one of the first things we saw, surprisingly, was “Galleries Lafayette”. It was a big store that stretched from one main street to the other. Of course, nothing would do but we go inside to look at hats. I took a swing through, and then back out to the street to explore nearby, more guy oriented, stores a bit before DW, thankfully hat less, rejoined me.

We made our way up to the Fine Arts and Archeology museum, http://www.musee-arts-besancon.org/home.php where we presented our passes. The ticket taker shook his head and pointed to a sign that said, because they were in the middle of installation of a new art exhibit, the art part of the museum could not be visited, and that admission was therefore free. You would have thought the guy in the Tourist Office who sold us the tickets might have mentioned that.

We toured the archaeological part of the museum, which was interesting and well laid out. There were a lot of other artifacts gleaned from excavations, historic displays, etc, but there was only so many mounted Roman coins in cases I could stomach after that meal, so we wandered around much of the rest of the center on our way back to the hotel to see if we could get internet.

We could not connect to the web, but that gave us some time to talk to the nice lady at the desk, who had pretty good English. We mentioned how much we had liked 1802, and asked it she could recommend a place to eat a light meal that evening. She asked what kind of food we wanted, and I said, “local”. “In that case”, she began, and went on to tell us in detail how to find a certain restaurant. Good thing she did, because we would have never found it ourselves. Ever.

She said to go to the Grande Rue, and look for a tiny grocery store. “Next to the grocery, to the right”, she said, “you will see an opening. Go through the opening, and you will find the place”. I'm going into such detail, as the location really is not obvious, but we consider the place a find. The address is 103 Grande Rue. The Grocery is called “Casino”. To the right is a narrow stone doorway, above which is a wooden plank with a couple of horse shoes nailed to it, and bits of cut out rusty metal spelling out, “Au Vieux Comtois”. The only waitress had no English, so I couldn't get an explanation of the name, but it means either the old horse; Comtois is a kind of locally bred draft horse, or an old native of the region of Comtois. http://www.auvieuxcomtois.fr/ Go through the doorway, and down an ill lit corridor, and the restaurant is to your right. There is an upstairs bar with a few tables, and a cellar with a number more. We ate downstairs and, since we were early, we were the only people there for awhile. It filled up a bit later, and I can see why.

I certainly wish we had access to the net, as we had no idea what we were ordering. Annette had a “Gratin Beau Site”. She knows “gratin” implies cheese, and she loves cheese. I ordered a “Tartiflette a l'Edel de Cleron”. She got a deep dish of sliced potatoes mixed with cheese with sausage slices on top. It had been baked at high heat in an oven. It was crispy and she loved it. My Tartiflette was similar, but had a different kind of cheese on top, and it was accompanied with a separate plate piled high with two kinds of thinly sliced ham; jambon cru, like our deli ham but much tastier, and the dried jambon de montagne. It was a thoroughly satisfying meal, but certainly not as “light” as we had planned.

Back to the hotel to digest and curse the reluctant WiFi.

This is getting awfully long, so I'll tell you about our visit to the Citadel the next day, in a future installment.

irishface

thanks for a terrific report! I am enjoying the food descriptions (and I am not a foodie!), laughing at the way you have with words, and all the while imagining the places you are describing. Thanks, and do carry on!

Iregeo

Thanks, nukesafe. Maybe I could handle an auction after all! I will be in Paris soon and I see from the link you posted that there's a jewelry auction on my birthday. Since it would be all your fault, if I purchase something, would you pay half the bill?

But seriously, the auctions are in French, aren't they?

latedaytraveler

Nukesafe, continuing to enjoy your delightful report. You must have done a great deal of writing in your other life, n'est-ce pas?

nukesafe

Yes, Iregeo, the auctions are in French, but the language of auctions are universal. You look at the description in the catalog. You come early and examine the goods. The auction starts, and if your thing is not first on the list you sit where you can watch and notice how things proceed. Say the thing is listed in the catalog with an estimated sale value of €700 to €1200. The auctioneer will start chanting "Sept cent",over and over. (sounds like "say sont") If he starts talking in "Mille", I head for the door. If nobody bids he will say, "Six cent" (sounds like see saw), etc. All you need to do is to recognize the few numbers he uses and twitch your hand at an appropriate time.

After your first bid he has you marked, and you needn't raise your hand again. He will look at you and you just nod, or shake your head. There are a few other signals for if you want to bid half the bid interval - 50, rather than 100, for example, but I'd wait until you have been to at least one auction before you use them -- you may buy a vacation home in Cannes by mistake.

nukesafe

Yes, latedaytraveler, I did write a lot, but most of it was BS, and gobbledygook, since it was for the Government. The stuff I'm writing here is the absolute truth.

(Mostly)

Kurosawa

Looks like a fantastic studio. I am in Seattle myself and we flew to paris this August on Delta. Sounds like your Icelandic Air option was possibly better.

nukesafe

I don't know the duration of your flight, but ours was was mercifully brief, considering the distance. Also, it left around 4:00 in the afternoon, so we got in around 1:00 in the afternoon, so there was no stalling, messing about with luggage while waiting to check into the apartment.

Pvoyageuse

Comtois = inhabitant of Franche Comté, the old province Besançon is part of. A "Pendule comtoise" is a grandfather clock.

latedaytraveler

Nukesafe,

“Yes, latedaytraveler, I did write a lot, but most of it was BS, and gobbledygook, since it was for the Government. The stuff I'm writing here is the absolute truth.”

Touche! I thought so…

Sidny

Sounds like a fun trip, def fun to read about. Bookmarking for tips and to catch up on later.

gomiki

nukesafe, It must have been very well written gobbledygook! This is a wonderful read.

annhig

Nukesafe - should I ever find myself in Besançon, i will try to do two things - make time to eat in both these restaurants, and be there on a day when it's not raining cats and dogs!

keep it coming, please.

ParisAmsterdam

This may help find the restaurant: http://goo.gl/maps/5Z9nC

nukesafe

Exactly, ParisAmsterdam! The iron letters are perhaps a trifle more rusty now, since the image is a few years old, but that's the place. Thank you for posting. Dear Wife is preparing a presentation with some of our pictures and a few brief video shots of our trip that we hope to be able to post to YouTube -- but don't hold your breath, as we haven't done that before.

nukesafe

The plan for our Besançon trip had us leaving Paris early, and coming back late, so as to give maximum time in the town, so we booked seats on the 6:32 pm TGV which would get us back to Gare de Lyon at 8:30 on Thursday evening. We left the hotel around 9:00, and skipped breakfast. We had eaten too much at the Vieux Comtois the night before, and had reservations at 1802 for lunch.

Earlier, we had located a stop for the number 17 bus, so we walked the few blocks and waited. When the bus arrived, we showed the driver our bus passes and asked if he went to the Citadel. No, he said, this was not the stop that would take us to the fortress, directly. He had to take a loop through the whole town, before going up the hill. Great with us, we said, and climbed on. The morning was foggy, with intermittent rain showers, but we got a lovely tour of the town as we made the circuit. We could tell that the Citadel was not visible up in the clouds, so we were not hopeful of getting the great views we had hoped for.

Actually, our expectations for the Citadel were not very high. We had both seen lots of fortifications and, unless one is a student of military architecture, there is not much to recommend them except for the views they afford. We even thought about canceling the visit, and staying in town. I am SO glad we didn't!

The bus eventually deposited us at a stop in a parking lot at the base of the fortifications. There was a schedule for the return buses, of which we snapped a picture for reference. Our collective minds are a sieve for that kind of detail, it seems in recent years. It was a climb up from the parking lot, through the initial fortifications, where there is a gift shop, and up a sloping path to the main entrance. (bitch, bitch bitch) What we found at the top made the climb well worth it.

I simply cannot say enough good things about how the restoration of this fort has been handled and how the amazing spaces the place affords planners has been utilized to the best possible advantage.
http://www.citadelle.com/en/the-cita...-monument.html The first thing one encounters at the inner wall is the deep and spectacular dry-bottomed moat. As one looks down one sees a tribe (herd, pack, gang?) of some sort of monkey or baboon scampering around the bottom, and leaping from rock to rock of the precipitous walls. Couldn't see what kept them confined but, since I didn't see any wandering around inside the walls, I suppose there was some sort of positive containment.

Passing over the drawbridge and through the tunnel through the inner wall we found ourselves inside the inner Citadel, and on a cobbled area that was the old parade/training area for the defenders. In the buildings leading of of this there was an art gallery, an aquarium, a special exhibit of the history of puppeteering, that was fascinating, a zoo with lions and other animals, a small but nicely presented aquarium, a dimly lit Noctorium where you could see animals that are normally only active a night, a museum of how life was in the garrison, a museum of evolution, and a museum of the Occupation and Deportation, and a chapel. One additional neat thing was the well. Obviously water was very important for a fortification under siege and, since this one sits on a hill several hundred feet above the river, that well is a really deep mother. There is a big squirrel cage contraption attached, in which men would obviously run to hoist up the buckets of water from that great depth.

We spent a long time in the interior spaces, because it was still foggy up on the battlements. We could hardly see the top of the walls some of the time. Finally, we decided we would make the climb up to the top of the walls anyway. Glad we did, because the fog had partially cleared and we could see the curve of the river that surrounds the old town, the barge traffic on the river, and the whole town and valley laid out before us, as whomever designed the fort must have done.

We carefully made sure we caught the bus down to town so we could make our lunch reservation. The food, service, and ambiance were as near to perfection as we had experienced the day before. We had the “menu” for €24 for entree, plat, and desert. Since the menu changes daily, I won't tell you what we had, other than it was beautifully presented and delicious. One would pay much, much, more for a meal like that in Paris. BTW, one of our fellow Fodorites, Pvoyageuse, wrote me a private message on another travel forum to tell me the 1802 restaurant took its name from the year Victor Hugo, who was born in Besançon, was born.

We had checked out of the hotel when we left to go to the Citadel. They had kindly locked our bags away for us, so we did not have to lug them around all day. We wandered around town for awhile, exploring parts of the town and shops we had not seen, and then returned to the hotel. To get our gear. We decided to sit in the comfortable lobby for awhile to rest our weary feet. Annette thought to give her iPad one last try to connect to WiFi. Success! I was able to get on, as well, so we spent a while catching up on email before catching the bus to the train station and back to Paris.

We considered our trip to Besançon a big success.

Next time I get a chance to avoid doing all the things that I put off doing around the house because, “We're going to Paris! It can wait.”, I'll make up some more stories about the rest of our stay in France.

ziggypop

nukesafe, your trip report has been a pleasure to read. I have a saying that I have to remind myself of every once in a while.>attitude is everything< It is quite clear that you have a great attitude towards your wife, your life, and enjoying the journey as well as the destination when you travel.
I think these forums would be much improved if everyone answered posters questions in the same tone and thoughtfulness that you display. Thankyou for the don't hover advise as well as the elbow advise.(great story) I love auctions as well and am always very alert as to my head movement and hand gestures but never thought my elbow would cost me money. This has been a great report and I hope you make it on another journey soon and share the details with us.
Has Fedex stopped by for a visit yet?

yestravel

what a delightful report. thank you so much for sharing your trip.

nukesafe

Thank you, ziggypop and, and yestravel, for the kind words.

No, ziggypop, FedEx seems to have lost our purchase. It left Paris and was scanned into Memphis. From there, there was some cafuffel with Customs, but we submitted the proper papers to prove it was a real work of art. Now they can't find the thing. How they could mislay something almost a meter high, and weighing close to 70 pounds I don't know. Anyone trying to pick up that piece of class would certainly remember it.

My fear is that someone dropped it and then swept the pieces of broken glass; looking like a broken car window, under the rug. We'll call again on Monday to see if we should file a loss claim.