Smooth Sailing from Burgundy to Provence

I LOVE planning vacations. I’m sure I was a travel agent in a past life because spending hours on my computer researching places, hotels, restaurants and adventures, is one of my guilty pleasures. Planning a vacation and then realizing your choices were spot on is like winning the lottery for me…well almost. That’s what I felt like once Steve and I got home from our River Cruise on AmaWaterways “Essence of Burgundy to Provence”. I spent hours researching ways to make this vacation smooth and stress-free.

I could probably write a book on adventures going sideway…..like when my daughter was denied boarding on a flight to Mexico because of a water-damaged passport (got it replaced and made it for a 2 pm flt the same day!!!)

This vacation to France was not going to have those AVOIDABLE mishaps.

This post will include some beautiful photos but also some advice that will save you hours of research if ever you plan on going to these regions of France. Of course I’ll include links to all the Hotels, Restaurants and Tours that we discovered.

Give yourself a few days on both ends of a cruise – This may seem obvious but our ship waited a few hours because 2 women were on a flight that was delayed. That is a bunch of stress you don’t need to start a cruise. Also, Dijon was our starting point and we were leaving as soon as all passengers were on board. Some time to explore Dijon on our own was a bonus

Getting to your destination should be part of the adventure- Our flight landed in Lyon and we needed to get to Dijon 2 days later. Beaune is half way in between by train and has been on my bucket list for years. Even though our ship would be stopping for a day in Beaune, I thought an extra day should be part of the plan. This gave us two shorter train rides and 2 extra places to discover. Depending on which town you are planning to visit, you may have to take a train from Lyon Airport-St Exupéry to Lyon-Part Dieu and transfer to your intended town.

Make sure your hotels are close to the train station- Yes, we could have taken taxis but my plan was to find hotels in the older city centres of Beaune and Dijon where we could walk to restaurants but also conveniently and quickly get to a train station. The night before our flight home we opted for Hotel Mercure City Centre right across from the train station in order that we could quickly get to the airport the next morning.

When possible, get your train tickets online- I know this is not always possible but it’s one less thing to worry about at the train station. I also had printed off walking directions from the train stations to our hotels. Not relevant if you have internet but we tried not to use roaming as it was going to be $15 a day.

Figure out a phone plan – As I mentioned, we didn’t want to spend $15 a day on internet but since wifi was free on the cruise, I guess 3 or 4 days wouldn’t have been bad. I tried to use the esim app Airalo but never got it to work. Picking up a sim card once in France is another option.

Beaune has a great Tourist office– I didn’t know where to start when figuring out which wineries to visit so a visit to the Tourism office solved this problem. We stopped in at 3 pm and booked a tour for the next morning. March is not very busy in Burgundy so I wouldn’t recommend doing this in the summer but we found the tour guide excellent and it was only 75 Euros each.

Visit in the off season- We planned this River cruise last minute because I got an email offering 50% off. We travelled the end of March and the weather was better than expected. We did not need reservations for excellent restaurants and streets were not crowded with tourists. So less expensive and less crowded makes up for ok weather!

Talk to people- We had our list of restaurants that I had found on the internet but your hotel is the best resource for recommendations. We even had a gentleman who gave us directionsto our hotel and his favourite wine bar in Beaune called L’Arche des Vins. Talk to the locals because that is when you’ll find those hidden gems!

Just walk- Speaking of hidden gems, when steve and I were strolling the streets of Dijon we came upon a cute street and decided to explore. Once we went around the bend we found the most amazing hotel and decided to go in for a glass of wine. The decor was STUNNING!!! Check it out…..Arlatan

I’ve decided to split this post into a second post which will include the restaurants, wineries, and hotels we discovered. I will also include the website I used to find 50% off our cruise and the methods I use to find these amazing hotels and restaurants! I just have too many ideas to fit in one post!!

Stay tuned…………..