It was raining when we got up and was cloudy as we walked to the nearby tram to get into Besancon.

It wasn’t long before we were in the centre of the city over the river – we were here last year.

We were a bit early but went up the hill to check out where we were going for lunch. We were meeting our friend Frédérique who lives in Besancon. We met her on a campsite in the Jura last year and spent some time with her. She is an English teacher so speaks very good English.

We found Fort Griffon at the top of the hill – now a teacher’s training college. It was part of the city wall and would have been part of famous military architect Vaubans defensive plan. We could see the large Citadel fort in the distance.

We found the restaurant Bleu de Sapin nearby in one of the old stone houses.

We went in and Frédérique arrived soon afterwards. We had an excellent French lunch. I had roasted beetroot with a garlic cream sauce and we all had Osso Buco for main – it was well cooked and melted in your mouth. I had roasted peaches with a very nice sauce for dessert. All washed down with a local cabarnet Sauvignon.

We forgot to take any photos since we were having such a good time – so apologies.

We then said goodbye to Frédérique who had to prepare her lessons for starting a new school year the next day. We decided to go to the large Besancon museum of Fine Arts and Archeology.

We started with bronze and Iron Age. This dagger is unusual and this style have only been found in France.

Then it came to body decoration. At one point females were highly decorated including a large circular breast plate. Then there were Celtic torques also found in Scotland and other Celtic locations.

We then got to the Roman’s who called the town Vesontio – that over the many years and through Chinese whispers was modified to Besancon.

We moved on quickly as we had recently seen a whole Roman city – Aquileia.

We saw some lovely ceramics from the 16th and 17th century and an impressive cabinet inlaid with red marble.

There were a huge number of paintings by many famous painters but I picked these out. The sculpture of the old woman was amazing due to the lifelike face and the difficult bonnet.

The last 3 paintings were of 3 men who had been commissioned by Louis XVI to write a constitution to hand over power to a government in preparation for a large painting. However it was not required as the revolution happened – and who knows if these 3 men kept their heads!

The view outside of the large square was impressive- even if it had been raining.

After having seen more than enough we left and went to the specialist cheese shop round the corner to buy our favourite that comes from this region – Comte!

We then jumped on the tram back to the campsite and had a cheese and cracker dinner – Perfect!