Day 3

Today we drove vans down to Southern Burgundy. We toured a small red fruit farm, a mustard factory, and a old Hospital/nursing home in the town of Beaune.

This is the fruit farm we visited. The farmer is all organic and grows black current, strawberries, raspberries, wine peaches, and cherries.

He had a very cute country store where we were all able to purchases jams, syrups, and some liquors. All was very good.

We visited a mustard factory in Beaune, we had some "fashionable" headsets to wear around that had information about all parts of the factory.

Here was an old Hospital in Beaune, which was connected with a church. They brought people here who were very ill and they tried numerous remedies and healing techniques.

My favorite part, a stained glass window in the church that depicted Christ's death and then also the devil taking the sole of one man and an angel taking away the soul of another on the opposite side.

A magnificent alter in one of the rooms.

A magnificent painting that folds up to one square. This painting is no longer at the hospital but placed in the Louvre.

Tomorrow we leave for a farm in the mountains of Jura, visit a cheese factory and dairy farm, then later stop at a horse breeding farm and stay in Alsace for the night at a hotel.

Day 1 and 2:

Hard to realize that we have been in Dijon for 3 days now and will be packing up and leaving tomorrow morning. So I will just be posting a photo from each place that we visited.

Day 1: Our first tour was a walking tour of the city of Dijon, where we have been staying. It was quite interesting and very helpful to gain knowledge of the history of the city. Then we visited a vineyard and tasted some wine. Also got to see the most expensive vines in the land, so expensive that the wine wasn't even on sale for purchase.

I have fallen in love with all the architecture. Everything is made of stone, or partial wooden boards. And most of the streets are cobble stone.

Here is the Duke tower top, which we later climbed over 300 stairs to get to the top and see a panoramic view of the city.

Panoramic view of the city.

The beautiful Catholic church.

After a tour of the city, we then had a wine tasting at the Chateau of Marsannay. In France the wines are named or "branded" by the region they come from. So Marsannay wine can only come from the small village of Marsannay.

Day 2: We started our day off with Pascal teaching us the history of all of Burgundy, then left for lunch at a green tourism farm. We then visited a crop farm, dairy farm, Charolais beef farm and then ate steaks at nearby restaurant in the small village.

For lunch we had many courses. We started off with wine, then a chicken patty and bread. Our main course was scrambled eggs, which were very good and the chicken.. not so much. We finished with some cheese and jam, crepes with sugar and a very strong dessert liquor.

Here is the grain producer standing in a field of rapeseed, which is like canola oil. He also produces wheat and peas.

I was surprised to see the farmer had a fairly large sprayer, which even had gps. The gps doesn't include autosteer though like most in the States, it is only used to ensure the farmer doesn't overlap and use more spray than needed.

Cows from the dairy farm, which are milked twice a day in a milking parlor.

Here is a Charolais bull that was at the breeding farm we visited. France only uses pure bread animals (they do not cross bread) but only 10% of the cattle are actually registered Charolais and the other are merely commercial because it is a lot of paperwork and money to register the cattle.

After visiting the farm we went to a local restaurant to have a steak, which was served with small lightly fried potatoes. This meal was excellent and a great way to celebrate our National beef month!

Arrival:

Well we arrived in France around 2:00 AM CDT or about 9:00 Am local France time (France is 7 hours ahead). Many of us found it hard to sleep on the plane, but we all seem to be managing well. After our arrival in Paris, we sailed through customs and met up with the 5 students from the University of Kentucky. We then went on a train to the main Paris train station. Managing to scan our train tickets and get through the gates quickly before they shut proved to be quite difficult, but we all made it through and nobody was left behind. From Paris, we took a 3 hour train ride to Dijon where we are staying at the University of Burgundy. Many of us took advantage of the train ride to catch up on our sleep that we didn't get on the plane.

Amanda and Brandon catching some Z's on the train ride to Dijon. 

 After we made it to Dijon, our travel guide, Pascal met us and loaded up all our luggage to take to the University. Then all of us loaded onto a city bus to ride to our dorm area.

Here is what our rooms look like.. very tiny!

Don't mind our messy room! 

We are lucky to have wireless internet and so far all electronics seem to be working with a converter. Tomorrow we will tour the city of Dijon and then visit some wineries in the area and then have a choice for dinner and free time after to go and experience the culture.

Countdown to France

After a stressful week of finals, 13 University of Nebraska students from the Agricultural Economics Department will be jumping on a plane and heading to France. We will also meet up with 5 other students from the University of Kentucky.  We depart Omaha the afternoon of Monday May 9^th and arrive in Paris, France May 10^th around 9:30 AM. France is 7 hours ahead of CDT. We will leave from Paris and head to Dijon where we will be staying at the University of Burgundy.

            We have many stops set for our itinerary that include (but not limited to) : visiting vineyards and wineries to sample numerous wines, cheese factories, medieval castles, Dijon mustard factory, cereal farms, dairy farms, beef cattle farm, truffle farm, museums, Mediterranean and Rhone River, horse/fighting bull farm, numerous sightseeing in Paris, and then more wine tasting!  As you can see we have plenty to do and see while we are there, with a few afternoons for free time to see different sights.

            Our plan is to try and post everyday about our tours with some photos and possibly a video or two as well. Hope you are able to travel around with us as we tour the numerous agribusinesses of France.We shall return back to Omaha on Tuesday May 24th.