Roundabout France…a driving adventure, part trois

On the road again…

That may not be my greatest photo ever, but one of the cutest things about French rural roads were the rows of trees planted along the sides. Here, the trees are well-spaced away from the road, but in other places the trees were quite close, often squeezing roads down to only one lane wide. But these lovely, shaded areas made the drive quite pleasant at times.

Our first stop after leaving the Pyrenees was Toulouse. We didn’t have much of an agenda for our afternoon there, so we just wandered some of the central city until we happened upon something interesting to look at. Toulouse is known as “The Pink City” because a lot of famous buildings are built with a pink stone, but we actually saw a lot more brick buildings than we’d seen anywhere else in France (or Europe in general), so it seemed a bit more redish-brown than pink. Regardless, it was quite beautiful, and quite lively. We’d grown a bit used to little rural towns, and being back in a sizeable city was a welcome change for the moment.

In particular, we enjoyed visiting the Basilique Saint-Sernin, an 11th century church built over the ruins of a 4th century church that was the burial place of St. Sernin (or Saturnin), who brought Christianity to the area in the 3rd century CE. It was both beautiful and yet much more plain than the giant gothic cathedrals we’d been seeing in many other large cities.

Of course, there were other reasons we stopped in Toulouse. One was because it was a good half-day drive from Claire’s place, so got us started on our journey northeast toward Strasbourg (our destination for dropping off our rental car). But, it also happened to be where a band I like happened to be playing a show that night. How convenient! So, after dinner, I dropped Jess at our hotel (near the concert venue, well out into the Toulouse suburbs) and went to the show.

This was probably one of the oddest art experiences I’ve ever had. The band was Asian Dub Foundation, a British group that mixes South Asian musical styles with reggae, punk, and more. I’ve enjoyed their music on and off for a good 15 or 20 years, so they’ve been around for quite a while. But this was no ordinary show. It was advertised as a “cine-concert.” Many years ago, they had preformed a series of shows that they were recreating now on a tour across France. The show was actually a screening of a French film from the 1990s, “La Haine” (or “Hate”), about racial and class tensions in France and the violence that these breed–particularly focusing on tensions between police and resident of a banlieue (ghetto-suburb?) of Paris. But, as the movie was playing, Asian Dub Foundation’s guitarist, bassist, and drummer played music over about half the scenes to augment the original soundtrack.

It was…interesting. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I was also utterly lost. My French isn’t very strong, so I could barely follow the movie. Luckily, I read a fairly thorough synopsis ahead of time. But, even with that, each individual scene was a bit of a mystery. Nevertheless, it was an intense film, so even without understanding all the nuances, it was still pretty impactful. The music was great, but I was pretty disappointed at the end when the band simply walked off stage after the movie. I had read about previous iterations of this show where they played a short set of their songs after the film ended. No such thing this time. So, it was enjoyeable, confusing, loud, violent, exciting, strange, interesting, and frustrating all that same time.

I only took video for a minute just to get a feel of what was happening, so this isn’t the best scene, but gives you an idea what the show was like. You can hear that there is a mix of the original soundtrack with the additional layer of ADF over it, making understanding the dialogue of the film quite difficult, though more so in other parts of the film where there’s more actual talking. (In this scene the main characters and their friends are running from a violent encounter with racist skinheads, police, and a number of their friends. One of the main characters prevents another, who earlier found a police officers lost gun, from making a very bad decison…)

We started a bit late the next day as we got kinda lost in the Toulouse suburbs, where it was surprisingly hard to find a decent-looking cafe for breakfast. But, when we finally got on the road again, it was back to our whirlwind tour of the French countryside. Our first stop was a random one. We stopped for lunch at a very popular restaurant in the little, seemingly nothing-to-write-home-about, town of Bozouls. It turns out that off the main road there’s a little medieval part of Bozouls, and even more interesting is the deep canyon there with bits of the town (old and new) both at the bottom and across on the other side. It was quite beautiful and we wished we had time to hike down, but we had other plans, so it was quickly back to the car and onwards again.

For our next destination, we wound up way off the main roads in a hidden river valley. We’d read that the Château d’Alleuze was quite beautiful, and in it’s own way it was. However, it was so far off the beaten path that there was no tourist infrastructure there–not even a place to park other than a little dirt patch on the side of the road. It was kinda neat to see an old crumbly castle with no major upkeep work, but it was also a little disappointing to have absolutely zero information provided there after a pretty long and windy drive. Regardless, it was a pretty place to stop…

From there we made a quick jaunt across the way to see the Viaduc de Garabit, a rail bridge constructed by Gustav Eiffel before his famous tower. You can see the relationship. A pretty spot, but not exactly mind-blowing.

From there, we found we were running short on time to hit some of the other destinations we had hoped to see, but we decided to squeeze in one quick stop at another town we found on the official list of “Les Plus Beaux Villages de France,” Montpeyroux. By the time we arrived, we were pretty much the only tourists in town, and all of the businesses were shuttered for the day. It was nice to take a quiet walk around the narrow streets of this little village, even if it felt a bit like a ghost town. The views it commanded over the countryside of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of France were quite spectacular.

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Finally, in the evening we arrived in Vichy, famous spa town and former capital of the Nazi-collaborationist government of France. We wandered about the streets and parks, enjoying the “belle epoque” architecture, a bit of difference from the endless stream of medieval little towns. In the morning we visited the Hall des Sources, a glass structure that encloses four different natural springs whose water you can drink. Jess and I tried the one that’s open to the public–the other three are limited to “members only.” Given the strong flavor, they’d better have some real healing powers…otherwise it’s not worth it.

The funniest bit of our time there was randomly encountered in the park on our way back to our hotel for the evening. We heard sounds, saw lights, and eventually wandered over to the casino where an incredibly goofy light show walked visitors through the history of Vichy through visuals and music. I’ll apologize for not videoing the best parts, but here’s a taste of what the 1800s bit looked like. The music got pretty goofy as the show reached the 21st century, but I’ll spare you that…

The next day was a bit more gray, occasionally rainy, and to some extent that reflected our mood a bit. This leg of our journey (Pyrenees to Strasbourg) was quite a bit more driving on the one hand, and the sites were only “very nice” rather than “spectacular” (see France, Part 1 for those spots), so we were getting a little bit exhausted from the non-stop pace. Regardless, we soldiered on since “when are we ever going to get the chance to do this again?” was a major thought in our minds. Also, it was still quite wonderful, even if slightly less over-the-top amazing than the further south sections of France.

So, our somewhat gray day began with a quick stop in another little medieval village, Semur-en-Brionnais. We decided not to visit the tiny castle there, but quite enjoyed the gorgeous little Collegiale St. Hilaire, the local 12th century church, and wandering through the flowering back alleys of the more residential sections of the town.

On the road again, we continued to pass town after town and view after view that we would have loevd to stop at, but there was just too much to see. One such spot where we did make the effort was a quick pull off to the side of the road to see the gorgeous Château de la Clayette, floating in the midst of the river, which we just happened to be driving by…

[An aside for my friends who enjoy the game “The Castles of Burgundy”: we wondered if this counted as a “castle” of Burgundy or simply one of the very useful “buildings” portrayed in the game. As we drove across Burgundy, we also pondered other aspects of the game. We did see a medieval quarry outside Montpeyroux (near Burgundy, but not in it), but we noted the landlocked nature of the area and wondered where all those boats are supposed to be coming from in the game. We also saw tons of cows, but rarely chickens or sheep, and never pigs. Also, definitely no yellow tiles on the landscape. What gives? Why isn’t the game more like reality? Hmmm…]

[Back to our regularly scheduled blogging…] Speaking of cows, one thing we noted as we drove about France was the uniformity of the cows. Not that all the cows were the same, but any single group of cows was always clearly from the same breed, as opposed to cows in the US who seem to be of all sorts of shapes and colors lumped together. This, of course, makes sense given the highly local and specific nature of cheese making in France, Italy, and the like. One of the other outstanding features of the landscape was sunflowers. We saw thousands of fields of drying, decaying sunflowers. Is that how sunflower seeds are harvested? From the dead plants? We saw a few tractors plowing through the dead fields, scything the plants down. We were curious how that all worked, but never learned…

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We spent the middle of our day in Mâcon, a city with an old medieval core, but that has clearly grown and thrived in the modern era as well. We saw a few standout buildings there, including the Maison du Bois, with strange wood carvings on it, and the Eglise St. Pierre, another beautiful church. We picnicked along the waterfront, enjoying the view of the somewhat more modern parts of the city as well.

One of the cooler stops that day was in the medieval village of Brancion. We wandered the village and visited the beautiful old castle there. The castle also clearly had a little game for kids to play, with characters hidden in various corners, but we had no explanation for them, so they simply made us laugh. The village had a beautiful church with the tomb of a crusader and some medieval frescoes they were trying to preserve despite the damp air of the interior. It was a pretty lovely stop as the clouds were clearing after a somewhat bleak day…

Finally, in the evening, we arrived in Beaune, another thriving city with a beautifully preserved medieval core. (I know, repetitive, ain’t it. But, this one really was quite lovely.) Jessica, in particular, enjoyed her first go at escargot and a glass of Burgundy wine.

I also quite liked the Basilique Notre-Dame in Beaune, which I visited alone the next morning. Sadly, the display of medieval tapestries was closed for the morning, but the church was a great example of how stained glass windows are replaced over time, and even in one space can reflect a variety of different eras and styles.

Our last full day of driving was dominated by the vast military architecture of Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban. Most signifcantly, we visited the imposing Citadelle de Besançon. It was constructed under Louis XIV to protect this region of France which had been passed like a hockey puck from one monarchy’s control to another. The Citadelle has multiple incredibly thick walls, each surrounded by moats, with basically a small city inside. To make sure the Citadelle could operate under siege they dug a massive well down through the rock, but it turned out (oops!) that the water from it was brackish, so they ended up making a series of water-collection cisterns throughout the Citadelle. There was similarly a massive flour mill, a huge housing unit, and more all within the inner walls. Of course, none of that is even vaguely useful today, so what’s there? A zoo. Yup. There were monkeys and kangaroos, and even an aquarium in one of the courtyards. It was a bit surreal walking around this massive fortress while hearing the howler monkeys doing what they do best. (Audio not recorded for posterity. My apologies.) The views from the ramparts were also quite stunning, and it was obvious why this was such a great strategic location.

We later had lunch in the town of Belfort, at the foot of the hill with another of Vauban’s massive fortresses. This one is pentagonal in shape [and clearly inspired the wonderful board game of the same name, so I was a bit disappointed that there were no dwarves, elves, or gnomes running about the town. Again, a shocking realization that games and reality are not one and the same.] The town was quite lovely, with a variety of architectural styles from the last several hundred years, and the view up to the giant lion statue and the fort were nice on this sunny day as well.

We then made perhaps the quaintest stop of the entire trip in the village of Eguisheim. Now clearly in Alsace, a region that has gone back and forth between Germany and France over the centuries (even just in the past century), Eguisheim was dominated by half-timbered houses painted in a bouquet of colors. The town basically has a few concentric circles of houses built along cobblestone streets, surrounding a small inner circle of central buildings. You can clearly see that many of these date back to the fifiteen- and sixteen-hundreds, as many are inscribed with the dates of their construction and even who built them and often a symbol for their profession (baker, mason, winemaker, etc.). I know I said that some of this portion of the journey was getting a little boring and less lovely than the previous bit, but Eguisheim was definitely a standout, and really they beginning of a series of incredibly lovely Alsatian towns.

The next of those towns was the much larger and more urban Colmar, where we spent the night. It featured much of the same lovely architecture as Eguisheim, and, while not as cute, it was quite pleasant strolling through its more bustling streets and along the canals in the “Little Venice” section.

On our last day of driving, we made two brief stops between Colmar and Strasbourg: Riquewihr and Mittelbergheim. Both were listed in various places as some of the most beautiful towns in the area, but, while Riquewihr was similarly cute like Eguisheim and the like, we found Mittelbergheim to be a bit drab and completely devoid of any signs of life. It did, however, have the advantage of being surrounded by lovely vineyards, so looping back to our car through there was a bit of a saving grace for our last stop.

From there it was a quick zip up to Strasbourg to return our car. They were very thorough in inspecting the car for scratches, and I was lucky to have video to prove that a few of them were there before we started driving it. Annoyingly, after that inspection, they announced that there would be a €135 charge to wash the car. We had 45 minutes left before the return was actually due, so we hopped back in the car, zipped to the car wash, and paid just €4 for a quick wash. That seemed a lot better. Grrrr for Europcar trying to rip us off. But, otherwise, I’d say our first car rental in Europe was a success (although I’m still holding my breath to see if I get a bunch of speeding tickets in the mail–see France, Part 1). Highly recommended as a way to see more of the country…

I think I’ll save writing about Strasbourg for another day. Until then, take care my friends…