France (unknown date)

France without Cities

The first thing to accept about driving in France, we have discovered, is this: you will get lost. French road signs are placed according to some official logic that remains impenetrable to the ordinary mind. After our first trip we had decided that maybe it was just us, but no—a young hotel manager in the Dordogne who had lived in the area all his life told us that he gets lost routinely. “It is the signs,” he told us. “I come to an intersection and I say ‘Well, I know I don’t want to go that way, and I don’t like the looks of that road there, so I’ll try this one. Sometimes I’m right, but not too often.’”

So accept getting lost. Often it is just an annoyance, but occasionally it leads to delightful surprises. We had, for example, no intention of going to Tarascon, having never heard of it. But we missed the road we meant to find above Avignon and found ourselves headed south instead of east. Having no desire to get involved with Avignon traffic, we followed the road we were on and found in Tarascon a marvelous, well-preserved castle overlooking the Rhône—the former home of Good King René. We spent a happy hour touring it and went on our way much refreshed.

There is great variety in the illogic of the road signs. You will be following a clearly marked route to Laon, for example: intersection after intersection, traffic circle after traffic circle (and my, do they love traffic circles!) will have a nice big green sign that says Laon. Then suddenly you come to a T intersection which has a listing of towns going left and a listing of towns going right. No mention whatsoever of Laon. And of course none of the towns mentioned are on your map—they are all too small. You try going right, but after several kilometers it doesn’t feel right, so you turn around and go back. And there, facing you, is a sign for Laon. Not, of course, facing the way you needed it ten minutes ago.

Or you will be traveling along on the way to Villandry on the D-7, when suddenly the sign says you are on the D-751. You haven’t turned, there has been no intersection, and according to your map the D-751 goes in another direction altogether. We got to see Chinon that way, though we hadn’t meant to. We circled the whole village of Azay-le-Rideau three times after our lunch there trying to find the road that leads southeast from there to Ste. Maure. No luck, though we tried what we thought was every possible direction. We did find the other end of the road in Ste. Maure, which we finally reached by another route, and almost felt like driving it in reverse to see where it did originate. Meanwhile, we had given up and taken a road due east and another due south. The eastbound road was numbered quite correctly according to our 1977 Michelin Guide for the Loire Valley, but not according to our brand-new 1995 Michelin Atlas, which gave a different number. Go figure.

Anyway, we get lost. Most of the time we accept it; sometimes, when we are tired and grumpy, we get angry and yell a lot at French bureaucracy, which can’t hear us.

This trip was a circle tour—although we landed at Paris, we didn’t go into the city at all—or any other large cities. Instead, we headed north for Beauvais and Amiens to see their cathedrals. “Suivez les signes pour Chantilly (Just follow the signs for Chantilly),” the cheerful young man at the car rental told us. “Pas de problème.” We did. The only sign there was for Chantilly led us to a road that went right back into the airport. Eventually we got out of there, but it took a while.

Beauvais’ cathedral is a magnificent example of overreaching. The choir is the highest in the world, and that is all there is, because when they built the nave it fell down—twice. The choir is spectacular, but it is still on the endangered list, still trying hard to fall down after seven or eight hundred years. Scaffolding encircles it on the outside, and a huge wooden buttress is holding up one of the interior arches that looks even more precarious than the others. We tiptoed through, awe-inspired but nervous.

A drive through lovely spring countryside led us to a tiny village on the outskirts of Amiens, where we had a reservation at a Bed and Breakfast. The landlady, an artist, had converted the stable block of her “fermette” into rooms, and done a beautiful job. She very kindly called restaurants in the city to find out what was open (it was Easter Monday, a holiday), and, after we mucked about in French with her directions, we drove in for a delicious dinner opposite the cathedral. In the morning, after we enjoyed a much more sumptuous breakfast than is usual in France, the landlady’s pet goose developed a strong attachment to our bright-blue car and took great exception to our approaching it, hissing indignantly at us, but luckily taking no further action. We left anyway, and went in to see the cathedral in the daytime. Like all of them, it was partially encased in scaffolding, but this time it was only for cleaning. The interior is high and beautiful, well worth seeing—an ambition of mine since I saw slides of it in college.

From there, onward to Rouen to see the cathedral Monet was so obsessed with. Not as impressive as the other two, we felt, though they are all magnificent. This one did not catch at the throat the way the others did, and the outside is very fussy. Oddly enough, there is another Gothic church on the same open square about half a block away; it was hard to tell which was which. We wandered around the old town for an hour or so and found the famous clock tower we weren’t really looking for, but enjoyed.

Getting out of Rouen after lunch was a problem. We figured out a straightforward way on our map and headed for it, but the powers that be wouldn’t let us make a left turn onto the road we wanted and forced us back over the bridge into the Centre Ville again. Try going around the block in a medieval city. It took 45 minutes before we reached the bridge again in the right direction and got out.

That afternoon we followed a wiggly itinerary (recommended in one of our guidebooks) along the valley of the Seine, instead of a straight shoot to Honfleur. It led us past wonderful half-timbered farmhouses and barns, promised a road full of abbeys but did not deliver except for one view across the river, and was without traffic and interesting but confusing. After negotiating four or five traffic circles getting into Honfleur (“Vous n’avez-pas la priorité!” every entering sign says—a rather wordy substitute for Yield), we were looking for the Rue de la Republique, on which was a hotel some friends had recommended, but what we later learned was the correct rue had no street sign, so we bumbled about and found ourselves right in front of the funky little Hotel Dauphin, recommended in our book of inns. Yes, they had a room, so we booked for two nights. The parking for the hotel was three long blocks away: one unloads first on the tiny streets. We walked all around the town and had dinner at Le Corsair, a very nice seafood restaurant, sitting next to a pleasant British couple and comparing vacation notes.

The next day we planned to wander around Honfleur, a wonderfully picturesque little town, sketching and photographing. But it was raining when we woke up, and continued to do so while we walked a bit after breakfast finding an exchange place. So we decided to drive to Bayeux to see the tapestry, taking the coast road instead of the highway. I think we saw some of the British invasion beaches on the way, although that was not an aim. We went through the famous Deauville and Trouville as well as a number of other resorts, but the Normandy beaches on a miserable day do not inspire.

The Bayeux Tapestry is amazing. In the first place, it is not a tapestry— it is an embroidery, but the most astonishing thing is its length. It is 17 or so inches high and about 230 feet long. It is on display behind glass in a serpentine arrangement through a huge room, very well done and lighted. Earphones give you the story that you are seeing—William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings—in your language of choice. Unfortunately, mine failed to work after the first ten feet, so I was reduced to deciphering the Latin inscriptions as best I could. The line of viewers was strictly one-way—no going back for repairs. The tapestry was well worth the seeing—an incredible undertaking. Bayeux itself was a nice enough town, with a long pedestrian area; we enjoyed the walk and the lack of rain. We drove back to Honfleur on the straightest roads we could find, circling Caen. By that time it had stopped raining, so we at least got to walk around and take some photographs of the wonderful old Honfleur harbor, lined with very tall ancient houses that were reflected perfectly in the still water.

The next morning we stopped in for a quick look at St. Catherine’s, the unusual wooden church built right after the Hundred Years War in Honfleur. It is very impressive and very odd—it has two naves running parallel to each other. I suppose that was the only way they could manage the span, but it is strange. The carpentry work is wonderful—a real gesture of thanksgiving for peace. After that visit, we set out for Mont St. Michel. We kept off the main highways and drove through the countryside, seeing fields of spring wheat and apple blossoms. At one little town we were impressed with the huge castle and stopped to take a picture. I pulled out our Normandy Michelin Guide and discovered that it was Falaise, the birthplace of William the Conqueror—or William the Bastard, depending on whose side you take. No wonder it was impressive.

One can say nothing about Mont St. Michel that has not been said better by others. It is visible over the flat country for miles before you reach it, and the closer you get the more spectacular it is. As the Michelin Guide says, “Worth a trip.” Two fascinating things: the wheel, rail line, and tram that they used to haul the stones—one at a time, and by hand—up to build the place are still there, boggling the mind, and the large number of huge vaulted rooms when you really expected only one is astonishing.

We found a three-fireplace Logis hotel (the Logis are an association of family-owned country inns, rated by the number of fireplaces on their signs) in Pontorson, just south of the causeway to Mont St. Michel; as it had been functioning since the early 18th century we figured they knew how to run an inn by now. It was charming; the dinner was superb and over-filling, and everyone from the chambermaid to the proprietor was friendly and tolerant of our poor French. The chambermaid had showed me around, giving me a choice of rooms. One spectacular room had a huge antique four-poster and a great view: I told her “C’est magnifique, mais je pense que c’est trop cher!” She nodded and grinned in full agreement, leading me to a less expensive place.

Next morning we headed south. Don asked if I could figure out how to work the windshield washer, as we were a bit grubby. I struggled with the manual—how do you say “windshield wiper” in French?—and finally found the right buttons. The washer dispenser worked, all right—it shot right over the roof of the car. On our first day we had great trouble trying to open the windows. We finally had decided that there was no way, since there were no cranks on the windows or buttons on the doors, when I leaned forward to get something from my purse and found the buttons on the front face of my seat, behind my knees. Who would have thought that up?

We stopped in Fougères, where a ruined castle is open for tours and was full of impressive ramparts, towers, and great moats with water wheels. From there we went to Vitré and its medieval center dominated by a chateau; we had a delightful lunch outdoors for the first time in the trip. The sun was shining and it was warm. Then we found the tiny medieval village of Ste. Suzanne, where we toured more ramparts—smaller this time—and a very small but charming chateau built on the edge of the walls. It had an art exhibit hung in it; the young woman at the gate asked us (in French, of course) if we had liked the art and when we said no, not really, she said that no one did, including her. That night we found another Logis, but this one, in a tiny village called Saulges, had gone very up-market. Its rooms were modern motel, built out the back of the inn, and its restaurant was the most pretentious we encountered. Delicious, but a bit much. Next door, however, was a diminutive church dating from about the 10th century, vest-pocket size and most interesting.

In the morning we set out to look at a couple of Loire chateaux that we had missed on our trip two years ago, but we spent so much time looking for roads in the rain that we saw only Villandry’s gardens. As I mentioned earlier, we got to Chinon by accident, and although we didn’t stop we were fascinated by the caves built right into the cliffs along the river, windows, doors, and all. Every wine maker was trying to lure you in, but we resisted—wine tasting would be fun if you could buy, but our luggage was too limited and we didn’t want to cope with shipping.

The gardens of Villandry are incredible, even in the rain. They had been altered beyond recognition over a couple of centuries, but a Spanish doctor (married, fortunately, to an American heiress) bought the place early in the 20th century and set about restoring them to 16th-century splendor. The notices said they put out about 11,000 vegetables and 8,000 flowering plants a year, and that of course doesn’t include the acres of clipped boxwood hedges in fantastic designs, their interstices filled with flowering tulips, or the several hundred pollarded lime trees. We got totally sodden looking at it all, but it was worth it. We went on to Azay-le-Rideau for lunch, remembering some nice crêperies there from our earlier visit, and enjoyed a return to the same place we had eaten in before. The staff was highly amused at our soaked condition, and roared when in response to their “Bonjour” I shook streams of water off myself and said “Bonjour? Pas ‘bon’! Mauvais!”

Again we headed out, or, as I said earlier, tried to. After going around the hurdle of not finding the road, we proceeded well until we got to Le Blanc, a rather attractive river town with many roads coming into it. We circled in vain trying to find the D-10, coming repeatedly to a big intersection where the road ran parallel to the river; the signs pointed either across the river to Poitiers or to the Autoroute in the opposite direction. Finally, as we rounded the town square yet again, I spotted the tiny Office de Tourisme on a corner—actually with lights inside. (Offices de Tourisme make a general habit of being invisible, though if you can find them they are very helpful.) Don stopped and I ran in. The very nice lady and I sputtered along in French as I made our needs known, and she told me that if we took the road across the bridge, the one pointing to Poitiers (which was the opposite direction from where we wanted to go), we would find the D-10 over there. We did, and there it was. I suppose you had to be born there to know that.

We were aiming for the Creuse Valley, a spot recommended by the same guidebook that had taken us to places like Ste. Suzanne. We found the town of Crozant by driving through some very beautiful gorges and lakes—still in the drizzle. Our guidebook said the town had a couple of simple Logis, but if they were there we couldn’t find them, and the town is minuscule.

So we went back down the hill a little and checked in at the rather seedy Hôtel de la Ruine—a name explained by its proximity to the gate of the ruined chateau on top of the hill. It was the only room I have ever stayed in with fake fur bedspread and draperies—green. The chair covers were also green fur. It was also the only room I’ve ever stayed in that had a magnificent view from the shower—right out over the lake, taking in the ruins and the surrounding hillsides. But it also had the same view from the room’s window, reading lights on both sides of the bed (rare), a toilet (in a closet in a corner), and a full-length mirror—all the luxuries, and dirt cheap. We ate a terrific meal up the hill at an auberge that we think may once have been one of the Logis but that no longer rents rooms.

Next day it wasn’t raining, but it was foggy, so our drive south through marvelous mountains was somewhat dimmed. We took a detour down to Uzerche, recommended as a singularly unspoiled medieval village, and enjoyed it; then we went to Tulle and tried to get some lunch. It was Sunday: all the bars were open and you could buy a drink, but you couldn’t eat. On our fourth attempt we found one place willing to serve food—not very good, but edible.

From there we headed for the Dordogne—a place where we have stayed twice and still love. We were able to get a room at our favorite Hotel Bonnet in Beynac, a delightful place with the river on one side and the Chateau de Beynac towering on the cliff in back of the hotel and village, and booked for two nights.

Next day we started off going to Sarlat, which we had repeatedly skirted in years past but never gone into. It is charming: a remarkably well-preserved town center, all pedestrian, with a nice walking tour devised by the Office de Tourisme—which was actually where the signs said it was. We took the tour and enjoyed it very much, though there was one problem. In the upper town, workmen were re-laying cobblestones where ill-advised modernizers had long ago put in asphalt, and in several places you couldn’t get through. We made our way on planks through one workplace, and the foreman, eyeing our walking tour paper, said something with a writing motion: it was perfectly clear that he was telling us that the Office de Tourisme should mark on the tours that these streets were closed! Nevertheless, he grinned and let us through.

We found a crêperie in the Court of the Fountain and after lunch drove on to the famous Rocamadour, southeast of Sarlat on a very wiggly road that had one praying not to meet a bus or truck. It was barely two lanes, and the outside lane—ours—dropped off without benefit of guardrail down a mountainside.

Rocamadour is built into these mountains: the cliff is actually one wall of the church, and the village clings to the mountainside in very precarious fashion. It was a famous place of pilgrimage; something like 265 steps lead up to the church, and the pilgrims climbed them on their knees. We had enough trouble on our feet, but we made it. The main street was junk tourist stuff, but once you started climbing it was good to look down on. We found a somewhat safer road back to Beynac by following our trusty guidebook and taking roads not on our map.

The next morning we headed for the Lot Valley, southeast of the Dordogne; we had seen it before, but it was on the way to the Gorges of the Tarn so we saw it again. This time we crossed the river to St. Cirq-Lapopie, a spectacular little village set high on a cliff with incredible views and picturesque houses. Enjoyed a walk and a lunch there, and then headed out again, ending up (after getting lost once more) in the town of Millau. Millau had little to recommend it, including the fact that almost all of its restaurants were closed on Tuesday nights. We finally found an open one, Au Bec Fin, where we feasted on asparagus with puff pastry, trout, salad, cheese, and dessert, all with a bottle of wine, for the princely sum of $27 for the two of us. Including tip. We particularly enjoyed the irony that the most expensive restaurant in Philadelphia, routinely named as one of the tops in the U.S., is called Le Bec Fin.

The next day, when we were going to view magnificent scenery, it was of course raining. We drove through the Gorges du Tarn and the Corniche des Cévennes, finding them beautiful despite the weather. Had lunch in a little town called Uzes, which might have been picturesque if it hadn’t been pouring, and then made the mistake of going to Orange. Don remembered that it had a good Roman theater and other ruins. Well, not only was the Roman theater less impressive than the many we had seen elsewhere (the seats were all new), but the town was not very attractive, was very ill-marked as to where things were, and was full of hideous traffic.

We finally got out, and after several false tries managed to find our way to Roquemaure, where we eventually located a hotel on our list after driving all over the place (the sign for the hotel faced the wrong way down a one-way street). It was fine, but we discovered the next day that we should have gone on to our backup hotel listing a few miles down the road, in Villeneuve sur Avignon. Roquemaure was without charm or interest except watching the dismantling of a small carnival, while Villeneuve had a terrific castle and all sorts of other things. I should have done a bit more reading on the area—I’d been too busy trying to navigate us out of Orange.

We were trying to find a road above Avignon so we could bypass it, but somehow missed the road and ended up, as mentioned earlier, in Tarascon. Happy accident. After our castle tour we headed through the mountains to Sisteron, which Don had decided he wanted to see after spotting a picture of it in a guidebook. It is a spectacular site, with a river cutting through a deep gorge; the citadel is on one peak overlooking it all. We had lunch in the old town, and, having seen a sign “To the Citadel” opposite our parking lot, began to walk up to it. And walked, and walked. It was very steep and very high. Our mood was not improved by discovering when we reached the top that we could have driven up had we seen the signs inside the town. But the view from the top was worth the climb. We had done a good job of bombing the citadel during World War II, so a lot of it is rebuilt, but there is enough to make it very interesting.

We left Sisteron intending to head for Gap to spend the night, but Gap didn’t sound very inspiring and we realized we were almost as close to Briançon in the Alps. We really hadn’t thought of getting into the Alps, but there we were. That’s what comes with making up a trip as you go. We stayed at the Hôtel Vauban, named for the engineer/architect who fortified so many French towns including Briançon, and found a delicious dinner with a very attentive proprietor. The next morning we consulted him about routes, and bumbled along in French well enough to learn that the pass we were thinking of was not yet open for the spring and that one alternate road was filled with plus de camions—trucks. He strongly recommended another route and was absolutely right. We did take one brief detour—we were only about ten kilometers from the Italian border, so we whizzed over there, went across, turned, and came back. Now Don could say we’d been to Italy this trip. There are no border checks or customs stops in Western Europe any more. The old booths stand empty like unused toll gates.

The recommended road was spectacular. Every turn brought another view of snow-covered peaks receding into the distance. Cars were parked along the side of the road in many places; adventurous skiers who don’t want to bother with ski lifts and resorts just stop and go skiing. We were also somewhat alarmed by the plethora of signs that helpfully said “Risque d’Avalanche.” Thank you for sharing that with us, we said, and what are we supposed to do about it?

One thing that astonished us was the unattractiveness of the French Alpine villages. Not only were they grimly stuccoed in splotchy dark gray, looking dirty, but almost all of the roofs were rusted tin. It made the whole village look like a decaying slum, town after town. After the many beautiful and manicured villages we had seen all over France, and from our memories of picturesque Swiss villages on earlier trips, it was surprising and depressing. Only one, clearly a posh resort, looked cheerful and nice the way one expects. But the mountains made it all worth it.

We circled around Grenoble and had lunch in the old town of Chambéry, a very pretty place. Then on to Annecy, which was highly recommended by one of our guidebooks. It was right. An absolutely lovely town, set on a clear Alpine lake with mountains across the way, beautiful old quarter with canals running through it and thousands of flowers all over, the whole shopping area turned into pedestrian walks along with the old quarter—it was a delight. We managed to find the Office de Tourisme in the one modern building in town, after putting the car in a lot, and were given a list of hotels. “They’ll be very glad to see you,” said the cheerful young man. “There’s no one here.” Picked the Hôtel du Château, an old inn just across the alley from the château walls and a steep walk up from the old town. We looked at the room, which was so very pink that a stray bee was trying to gather nectar in it, and then retrieved the car to park in the tiny front area of the hotel. Then we pelted back down the hill to walk for a couple of hours around the town. One fascinating old building is planted right in the middle of a canal and is rather boat-shaped. We read menus of a dozen restaurants and finally chose one that turned out to be the most popular in town from what we could see—it filled up completely before we left. After dinner we walked over to the park along the lake and watched the tour boats in the sunset.

Next morning we drove around the lake first, then over a bunch of smaller mountains into Burgundy. We had lunch in the old town of Bourg-en-Bresse—a nice crêperie in the sunshine—and after considerable difficulty found the road northeast to Beaune. We pulled into the first parking lot we saw and discovered that one of the Logis hotels we were seeking was right across the street, so we took that as a sign and booked in for two nights. Of course Don then had to circle the entire town to get the car back to the hotel parking lot because every street was one way the wrong way. I thought he’d never get back; I had to wait in the lobby with the distinctly unfriendly concierge.

The main attraction in Beaune is the Hôtel-Dieu, a medieval hospital now (only since 1971) turned into a museum. It has a fantastic turreted colored-tile roof in all sorts of patterns, a great hall with all of the cubicles containing the hospital beds, kitchens, a chapel, and finally, in a special room, a huge Rogier Van der Weyden altarpiece of the Last Judgment that is spectacular. Of course you can’t get too close to it, but suspended in front of it on a track is a giant magnifier that can be moved up and down and side to side by a switch so you can examine the details closely.

We walked around a good bit more, following the medieval walls for a while. They have all been turned into caves for the wine makers, but again we resisted. After checking all the menus we settled on the restaurant next door to the hotel, which turned out to be quite an experience. The proprietor, a tall, skinny man with shaggy hair and a huge mustache, makes a great joke out of greeting everyone at the top of his lungs, taking orders ditto, and also saying goodbye. “BON SOIR ET BIENVENU MADAME ET MONSIEUR! JE VOUS EN PRIE, CETTE TABLE ICI!” “BON, M. LE PRESIDENT! VOUS VOULEZ LE BOEUF BOURGIGNON ET LE POTAGE! C’EST BIEN! ET LE VIN, BON! ET UNE PETITE CARAFE D’EAU!” Of course everyone in the place breaks up every time he opens his mouth, which creates a great feeling of community. We liked it so much we went back the next night.

On our in-between day we took an excursion that turned out to be longer than we expected, though well worth it. We headed out through the country toward the west-northwest. The scenery was wonderful: hills, rolling fields covered in spring wheat, blossoming spirea in the hedgerows, fruit trees in bloom. We drove through a town called Semur en Auxois, which was not mentioned in any of our guidebooks, and were surprised to find it to be a marvelous little town, with intact city walls, a very well-preserved chateau, and beautiful gardens. Next we went to another walled town, Avallon. It had a very unusual Romanesque church: it was set on the side of a hill and stepped down toward the altar. Nice gloomy atmosphere, and quite beautiful. Then we drove through a lovely little river valley past some wonderful old inns to Vézelay, which has one of the most famous Romanesque cathedrals in France—La Madeleine. The town is on a steep hilltop, so we walked up to the cathedral from halfway up. It was a wonderful experience. There was a sung Mass going on inside the cathedral, which is very light and airy for Romanesque, and the sound was incredible. We just stood and listened and looked for a long time. Don, of course, noted that the arches both in the center and in the side aisles were quite distorted, and expressed some concern about the stability of the building when we left. We found a really nice little crêperie halfway down the hill for lunch.

Driving back took a bit too long, though the scenery was lovely. Don was getting very tired; he insisted on doing all the driving the whole trip and most of it was mountain roads—or at least very curvy hills. We finally made it and took a nap.

The next morning we drove a short distance to Dijon and with considerable difficulty (lots of road construction) managed to find the great museum in the Palais de Duc. Huge, on three floors, a real labyrinth, and it is only one wing of the palace. No wonder they had a revolution. We found a place across from the old market to have lunch, and then headed for Troyes.

Troyes started off being traumatic. The tourist center was not where the town’s own many signs said—it had moved, and they hadn’t bothered to put a sign on the door of the old building pointing to the new one a block away. But we finally located it, and they gave us a list of hotels and a map. Of course the map didn’t show the blocked-off and one-way streets, so we got lost and ended up outside the city limits, where we hadn’t meant to go and had no map at all. Finally we ended up on one road that was actually on the map and that led to one of the hotels—not the one we were looking for, but we didn’t care at that point. We found it, a funky-looking place that had all the necessities, and stopped immediately. The pleasant proprietor comprehended when I explained that we had “seulement une serviette pour deux personnes” and conveyed that we would find more towels on the radiator outside the room when we returned from dinner. The bathroom was as big as the bedroom: we decided that pre-remodeling it had been a separate bedroom.

Troyes is an amazing assemblage of half-timbered whole neighborhoods—very attractive and atmospheric, with a lot of pedestrian walkways. We had a great dinner outside at a little restaurant in the old city. Our only complaint was that both the cathedral and the basilica of St.-Urbain were only open from 10-12 and 2-4, which was the first time we had ever encountered such a limit. We were too late for the afternoon opening, so we had to hang around the next morning killing time until they finally decided to open up—tardily, of course. The basilica is supposed to be a remarkable late-Gothic opening up of stone walls with terrific windows, and I guess it is but since it was raining that morning and dark we couldn’t see it as well as we hoped. The cathedral is huge—five aisles. Really amazing, though clad in scaffolding like most of them.

We drove through more rain to Laon, but it began to clear a bit as we got there. It has a beautiful site: it is known as “The Crowned Mountain,” because the great cathedral has seven towers and is on the peak of a very steep, long hill. We managed to park and then found the hotel we were seeking, the Bannière de France, which has been in business since 1675. It was neat. Don retrieved the car and managed to insert it into the hotel’s Le Parking garage. (Most of the older hotels in both France and Spain have parking garages about the size of an American two-car one and squeeze at least ten cars into them.)

The hotel’s floors tilted every which way—you climbed the stairs listing to starboard, went slightly uphill at the top, and then coasted downhill to the room. It gave a certain air of uncertainty, but was fun. We went out to see the cathedral, which has statues of oxen all over the towers commemorating the beasts who hauled the stones up the hill to build it. We ate a delicious and extremely filling dinner at the hotel, and then went out for a walk on the ramparts. It was gorgeous—the sun was setting and the view was incredible.

Next morning we drove the short distance to Reims and, amazingly, found the road to the cathedral very well marked and located it easily. It was wonderful, especially the inside west wall—the great rose window still extant plus side rose windows (most unusual) and the whole wall covered with statuary. Workmen were trying to hoist a crane in the transept for reasons we didn’t fathom, so they had it stretching all the way across the nave with a rope leading up to one of the vaults. Don looked up and wondered what made them think the weight wouldn’t pull the vault down. There was even more scaffolding than usual on this one outside—it has been under restoration since World War One.

Some policemen helped us find the road out of town, unable to understand why we didn’t want to go on the autoroute, even though we said “Nous n’aimons pas les autoroutes.” They gave us very detailed instructions; I listened intently but completely lost them right after the direction to pass by the derrière of the cathedral and turn right at the second feu (light). I think I got the next turn, but after that I just kept nodding as they went on and on. Naturally we got lost, and ended up briefly on the autoroute until we found a way off. I had just never thought of a cathedral having a derrière.

The remainder of the day was not a great ending. We got to Meaux, which was supposed to have a very nice Relais de Silence hotel, and found more rain. Ate lunch in a café that looked much better outside than inside and then tried to find the Office de Tourisme. We followed all the signs in one direction (on foot) and couldn’t find it, so we went around outside the walls and tried in the other direction. It started pouring, we were—still on foot—on a heavily-traveled road, and I began to feel that we were going to walk all the way to Paris. Found more signs, which led to the same street we had been down before. Finally, drenched, we stopped in a doorway on a square, and when I looked back the way we had come, there it was. The only sign on it was facing the wrong way down a one-way street, so we had passed it twice without knowing it. We went in, and they told us that the hotel we wanted was not in Meaux, but several miles away. By this time we were tired and wet and disgusted, so we got in the car and drove off.

The rest was funny. We finally stopped at a mall area that had a bunch of motels and found one called the Fasthotel. We got a room like a roomette on a Pullman car—neat, clean, well-lighted, all the necessities, and about ten feet square including the bath. One of us had to stay in bed while the other dressed. Looked out the window and discovered that by pure chance we had located right next to the road we were intending to find the next morning to get to the airport. So we headed out for the Carrefours mall just over the way, and on our last night in France we ate pizza in a mall—but with a bottle of wine!