Where in the world is Val?

20 August The train from Besançon to Dijon was about an hour long.  I had chosen a hotel very near to the train station, so after dropping my luggage in my room, I headed into town to spend the afternoon getting to know the heart of the former duchy of Bourgogne.  In the historic town center, the streets are lined with fluttering ensigns: I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast except for a couple of peaches picked up in the market in Besançon, but it was still way too early for dinner, so when I passed a Mulot et Petitjean, I had to step inside to ogle the comely comestibles. There are a few branches of the well-known and well-respected Mulot & Petitjean around Dijon, which was founded in 1796 and today offers all of the Burgundian pastry specialties - most notably, pains d'épices and nonnettes : Oozing ooey gooey cassis goodness Nonnette translates as "little nun;" these are mini spiced buns that taste similar to the region's famous pain d'...

19 August After breakfast and finishing repacking my bag, I checked out of the Colmar hostel around 10 am.  The typical Alsatian sunny summer weather finally decided to show its face - for the first time since I arrived in Alsace four days earlier, the weather was gorgeous.  I took the bus to the train station, and then hopped on a train to Mulhouse where I had an hour to kill before continuing on to Besançon.  It was around noon, so I stopped in a sit-down restaurant for a pleasant lunch.  I ordered standard French lunch fare, a quiche lorraine : Lorraine is the région of France immediately to the West of Alsace, and since I was on my way out of Alsace (Mulhouse is at the southern tip of Alsace, while Besançon is in Franche-Comté) I figured this was as close as I was going to be to Lorraine and I ought to try some of their most famous namesake dish.  Ordering a quiche lorraine means that you'll be getting a quiche with bacon in it.  This one had plen...

17 August While I generally would prefer to take the train in the morning and have the whole afternoon in a new city, the hostel in Colmar wasn't open for check-in before 5:00 pm, so I didn't leave Strasbourg until about 4:00 pm.  It was a short train ride - just half an hour - to get into Colmar.  After my first luggage fiasco in Aix , I didn't want to take any chances rolling my luggage over any more cobblestones than necessary, so from the train station in Colmar I took a bus to my hostel.  The hostel was about a kilometer outside of town, and it wouldn't let me reserve a room in advance, so I was a little nervous as to whether they would have space... but I needn't have worried.  They had so much space that I was able to spend an extra 5€ per night to have a private room, which brought the grand total to about 19€ per night... sheets not included.  I'm glad I brought my own! Once I had taken my luggage to the room and familiarized myself a little with a ...