So our trip is mostly booked. Decided to fly into Paris and take train to Avignon same day. Using Avignon as base for 5 days. Thinking of taking train north to Dijon for 1 1/2 days then back to Paris for the remainder of trip.
Would anyone recommend marseille on coast over Dijon?
Everything is booked so just trying to finalize middle couple days of trip
Marseille and Dijon are VERY different.
Dijon is a well-kept bourgeois town with interesting late medieval and 17th C monuments, and a connection to the Bourgogne wine region. It is small, sightseeing in town takes about half a day to a day, after what you could take a wine tour.
Marseille is a chaotic port city, unpretentious, quite run down in parts but nicely spruced up in others. It has a fascinating multicultural vibe and incredible sea views and landscapes both in town and around. It is short on old monuments despite its 2,600 year-old history. Some folks hate it, others love it - I am firmly in the latter category, having lived there for two years.
My pick would be Marseille, which also greatly simplifies logistics (you'll spend much less time on trains), but Dijon arguably adds variety to your trip since it gives you a taste of a very different part of France.
Another vote for Marseille for all of the reasons previous poster gave but the time of year is important. Most like other Med ports: Palermo, Naples, Genoa and Barcelona.
Our trip is in mid June.
I was in both those cities just this past July. I'm in the process of writing up the trip report and hope to post it within the week. I agree that both Marseille and Dijon are wonderful so I don't think you can go wrong.
A day and a half is not much time. I had just a bit over that for Dijon (2 nights, about 48 hours) which I thought was good. Great size (the old town) - not so small you get bored in an hour, but small enough to easily cover the main areas. I felt it was the most "French" town I'd been in (I've been to France at least 10 times) - beautiful mix of architectural styles, center is mostly pedestrianized, some interesting (and different) museums.
Marseille is much larger but the area around the old port could easily be seen in your amount of time. It's a busy, chaotic city with lots of street art (e.g. really good graffiti) and a nice buzz. One advantage I see to picking Marseille over Dijon is that it sounds like the rest of your trip is all inland so being on the water for a day or two would be a plus for me. One highlight for me was the boat trip to the calanques. I did a half day one but if I remember correctly there were some that were only an hour or two so you could fit that it.
Here are my photos (I haven't labeled them yet but you'll get the idea) - https://andiamo.zenfolio.com/f667172952
Dijon has mustard. Marseille has sooooo much more. Here’s a link to a recent article about Marseille and Lyon..
