We took our time leaving in the morning as we were hoping that the traffic in Bordeaux would die down. We have experienced more traffic jams passing thru Bordeaux than any city in France including Paris. So we lingered around the campground until 10 am hoping, but we still ran into a lot of slow traffic in Bordeaux. It wasn’t as bad as some of our other trips but it was slow crossing the city.
Ton was up for sunrise.
Once we broke out of Bordeaux the remainder of the trip was smooth sailing and we arrived at one of our favorite campsites in Orio Spain about 1:30. We had made reservations in advance, so check in was smooth, and we were settled in by 2pm. Our neighbors were Irish and English so we had a chat. with them.
Sunrise from our campsite. Not bad for $15.
Later in the afternoon we had a stroll into Orio for some recreational shopping. When we returned we were invited by the Irish neighbor to join him in the campground bar for an after dinner beer.
Ton loves the wide sidewalks in Spain. She calls them three generation sidewalks as often you see three generations of the same family out for a stroll together.
The drink turned into several, and we had a nice time learning about his very interesting life as first a Catholic Priest, and then a teacher in Ireland. Just as we were about to leave, our English neighbors arrived so we enjoyed some more time swapping stories about life in general and traveling in Europe. It was a late (for us), but enjoyable evening.
Tonight we are in one of our favorite campsites in France, the winery at Chateau Marquis de Vauban gives you the opportunity to park in the vineyard. We have been here three times and each time we stay here it makes us appreciate the choice we made to tour Europe by motorhome.
The weather on this trip has been fantastic, these are the most clouds we have seen in the last 10 days!
Last night we were looking for a place to camp about 300 kilometers south of Tours, and when I did the check Blaye came up as the best option. We visited the Chateau Marquis de Vauban winery on our very first trip to France before we purchased François. We also visited it a couple years ago when we were heading to Portugal. We were thrilled that we would get to visit again.
These black swans are in a pond 10 feet from the door of François.
Every time we stop here we have a splendid time just chilling and drinking good wine. The owners make you feel very welcome, and each time we have met nice people who are sharing the campground. Sometimes we park in industrial parks, and under freeways, but then a magical place like this comes along and we are filled with contentment.
Vauban the great French fort builder stands guard over the winery and the camping area.
Tomorrow we are going to stay at another old favorite in Orio Spain.
We were excited to head into Tours and see what it had to offer. As I said yesterday Tours does not get much love in the tourism press. Most guide books either don’t mention it or give it a passing glance. For this reason we had missed it in our past travels thru France.
The Rue Nationale possibly the longest stretch of straight road we have seen in any city in France. In the city center there are no cars only people and trams on the Rue Nacional.
Tours got off to a good start because the first person we met from Tours greeted us with a big smile, patiently helped us get our bus ticket sorted and smiled again when he handed us our change with a jolly Merci. It’s funny how encounters like we had with the bus driver can set the tone for a day, and a visit.
A half timbered home and Italian Restaurant in the Vieux-Tours.
Our first stop was the Vieux-Tours which is a section of the town that contains one of the largest collections of half-timbered buildings in France. It is also an area full of cafes and shops. But, probably because tourism is not a big thing here the shops are real shops aimed at selling to people who live here and not people passing thru. It makes for a very different dynamic, and a much more interesting one.
A packed cafe scene at Place Plumereau. Not one of the chalk boards advertising foods and the plat du jour were in English, another sign that this is not a city catering to tourists.
We decided we would return to the Vieux-Tours for lunch and headed off for the Roman ruins. I always assumed that Tours had something to do with towers as the French word for tower is Tour, but I was wrong. Apparently it is a corruption of Turonus who was the brother of Brutus who died fighting for Rome in France and is supposed to be buried here. It became a Roman town in the first century AD. It became an important part of Roman Gaul for several hundred years and had one of the largest amphitheaters in Gaul. I punched Roman ruins into the GPS and we set off on a 20 minute walk. At the end of the walk we were directed down a road to a wall and told we had arrived. We walked around the wall to the other side and found the front of the wall. This was the Roman ruins. The wall was part of the fortifications of the city during Roman times. While it was a nice wall it only took us a couple of minutes to decide to move on.
The Roman wall in Tours.
Our next stop was the Les Halles de Tour, which is the central food market. But on the way we came across the Cathedral of Tours.
The Gothic Cathedral of Tours.
The Cathedral of Tours was started in the 1200’s and completed in the 1500’s. We have seen a lot of Cathedrals on our travels, and have gotten a little jaded, but something about this Cathedral appealed to Ton. She spent about 20 minutes walking around the square in front of it and photographing it from various angles and asking me about features on it, some of which I could answer (who new that after a few years looking at cathedrals in Europe I would know what a flying buttress was and could even give a coherent explanation of their purpose.)
One of the stained glass windows in the Cathedral.
The interior is relatively unadorned compared to many of the other Cathedrals we have been in, but we kind of liked that. But the stained glass was very beautiful, and what made the windows even better is each window had a detailed explanation pane by pane of the story contained in the window. It really was well done and helped us understand better the religious story being told by each window.
If you look carefully one of the gargoyles is “mooning” the town.
As we walked by the side of the Cathedral Ton noticed the gargoyles. Ton loves gargoyles so I lost her for another 20 minutes while she shot pictures of the gargoyles. While I was standing there I noticed one of the gargoyles was mooning the town. Apparently in the middle ages stone masons were a rowdy lot and would hide little protests in their work. This is the second Cathedral we have seen a mooning gargoyle, the other was in Freiburg Germany. The story there was that the town council had a meeting with the stone masons to tell them they were disappointed with the quality and the speed that the work was being done on the Cathedral. A couple of days later a very quickly carved and highly detailed gargoyle was produced mooning the building that the town council worked in. I wonder what the story is here.
This is a half timbered building also but the timber part is covered in slate to protect the wood. The carvings are of pilgrims as this building was a place for them to stay while passing thru Tours.
The market hall was supposed to have a great selection of local foods, including a large area devoted to mushrooms. Ton was very excited to see what would be on offer, but we forgot about the French lunch. When we got there it was basically shutdown as all of the food sellers had closed for the customary 2 hour lunch.
This Lebanese Cedar is over two hundred years old and stands nearly 100 feet high, and is over 100 feet around.
A little disappointed about missing the hall we decided to join everyone else for lunch. We had passed by many restaurants just setting up when we arrived. This time when we headed into the Vieux-Tours, they were all doing good business. We had spotted a cute looking cafe in the morning and headed back to it for lunch.
The exterior of the cafe we picked for lunch in the morning when we first arrived.
While most of the cafes were busy when we arrived there were only a few customers at the exterior tables, and one other couple inside. We sat down for a three course set lunch. The ambiance of the place was great with everything you could ask of a French restaurant down to the red checked table clothes. Unfortunately, the food was mediocre. The sparse crowd should have been a warning to us. We were a little disappointed but we enjoyed the atmosphere and the service was good.
The dome of St. Martins Basilica the patron saint of Tours.
After our three course meal we took a little stroll down the Rue Nacional looking at the modern shops. Part of the reason the Rue Nacional is so straight and the buildings look so modern is that Tours was heavily bombed by just about everybody who had bombs in WWII. The Germans leveled much of the old town in 1940 when they invaded France. Then because Tours was a major transportation hub the Americans and British leveled the area around the train station to restrict the Germans transfering troops to Normandy during the invasion. As a result much of the town had to be rebuilt after the war which resulted in straight streets and some areas of the town seeming to be on a grid pattern like in the US.
Balzac the famous French writer is from Tours, and this building was the school he attended when he was a boy.
Tours is a nice town, it is sometimes called the little Paris. Why it has been by passed in the tourist trade is curious to us. It has everything you would want from a French city if you were visiting. But. . . if you want to experience a French city that has not had its soul ripped out by tourism, keep it quiet, but give Tours a look as I am sure you will enjoy yourself as much as we did.
We have been looking at Tours for a few days now and we finally decided to make it a stop. No guidebook of France is featuring Tours as one of the cities you should visit. Tours is the kind of town every country needs, there are a lot of things produced here, a lot of things are transported thru here, and a lot of people make a good living here, and it is a good place to live. What it doesn’t have is a lot of cool things for non-residents to look at. It is the French version of Pittsburg or Birmingham.
A pond near the campground.
Our original plan was to drive the 280 kilometers here, check in to the campground and head to town. Based on our quick look around town we would decide whether to stay another day and explore some more or get back on the Autoroute and continue driving to Spain.
While driving I remembered that quite often French campgrounds have extended lunches where you cannot check in. We figured we would arrive at about 1:15, while we were driving Ton did some research and it looked like they would open at 2:30, it was a little frustrating but early enough to take a run into town. But when we arrived there was a sign on the door saying they were closed from 12:00 to 3:30 for lunch. Nowhere but France would a business close for 31/2 hours at lunch. After some muttering by me we both settled in for the 2 hour wait. By the time they reopened there were 7 motorhomes waiting. We will visit Tours tomorrow.
We had a long discussion last night about what to do today. Initially there were two options, go into Paris or drive to Tours. Neither option appealed much to Ton though Tours is in out future as it is a stopping point on our way to Spain. After a lot of hemming and hawing we had not reached a decision when Ton saw that Fontainebleau was free today. So the decision was made and we were up bright and early for the 80 kilometer drive to Fontainebleau.
This guy featured heavily in today’s activities.
Ton had visited Fontainebleau during her student days in London and had very good memories of it. She had told me about it several times during our travels the last few years every time we blew by the exit for it on the A6 Autoroute. It had made a really strong impression on her then.
The other half of today’s featured family.
So we were up and off early for the 80 kilometer drive south from Paris. We made a quick stop in Samoreau a village close to Fontainebleau to make sure they had space for us in their campground, they did, so after checking in and doing a quick drive by of our assigned spot we headed over to Fontainebleau.
A wedding party posing at the main entrance to Fontainebleau.
This is a very large Chateau, probably the third largest we have seen, Chambord, and Versailles were larger we think. There are over a thousand rooms and multiple wings to the place that make it difficult to capture just how immense it is.
The church inside the Chateau.
The theme of the tour definitely is Napoleonic. The stories about all of the rooms talk about how Napoleon and his family used them. So I was a little surprised when I did some research to find that it had been a royal palace since the 1200’s, and the buildings we saw today were all in place when Napoleon occupied them.
The rear of the palace looking across the Carp Lake.
Between 1200 and 1780 it was constantly added on to by various kings until it was transformed from a modest (relatively speaking) hunting lodge to the giant building we see today. Most of the construction took place between 1550 and 1780.
The throne room.
Unlike Versailles, Fontainebleau did not suffer any damage during the French Revolution as it was far enough away from Paris to miss out on the chaos that affected royal buildings in the capital. As it was intact Napoleon used it as his official palace when he declared himself emperor.
The furniture all came from Napoleon as the original furnishings were sold off during the French Revolution.
We spent a couple of hours working our way thru the palace and we missed one section of rooms. There was a lot to see and some of the art and furnishings were spectacular.
A couch for Napoleon to recline on while he had informal interviews.
The grounds were quite large and included a very large man made lake. We were expecting more gardens, but there were no formal gardens. The grounds were effectively giant lawns with a few statues and a few trees.
This stream had a few wild flowers blooming just about the only flowers on the grounds.
At the end Ton told me she was a little disappointed. She remembers being awed by this place when she was a student. Today she was not awed, she was thinking that maybe because over the last few years we have visited so many different palaces and castles that they are losing their ability to wow her.
The Carp Lake does have very impressive carp in it.
We headed back to our campground in Samoreau, and I was really charmed by it. The campground is on the banks of the Seine river and when we arrived they were having sailboat races. There is a small restaurant on the banks of the river that was doing booming business as a large percentage of the population of the town were enjoying the beautiful spring day with friends. I was clinched on the place when Ton casually mentioned that Django Reinhardt had lived here most of his life, he is one of my favorite jazz guitarists.
The locals chilling on the bank of the Seine River in front of our campground.
We took a quick stroll along the Seine to end a very nice spring day in France.
We had thoughts of going to Paris but on the way to the train station we ran into a market near the campground and spent some time looking around. It was a pretty small market, but the different vendors were busy. These markets are very common throughout Europe. Most towns have them a couple of times a week, and in bigger towns they are often daily. While the prices are slightly higher than the supermarkets they are well supported.
A fruit and vegetable stand with a mixture of locally grown and imported goods.
Across the street was a very popular bakery, that had a long line stretching out the door the whole time we were there. We were curious about the food inside, but were never able to get inside.
This bakery is on the corner of the street that the market is on.
After spending about an hour walking around checking out the Saturday sites in our little corner of Versailles, Ton suggested we do laundry. So our trip to Paris was put aside and instead we headed back to the campground to knock out our laundry.
In addition to fresh vegetables and meat, pre-cooked foods were widely available.
A couple hours later we had all fresh clothes, and Ton asked if I wanted to head into Paris. By then it was mid-afternoon so we decided to take it easy around the campground. I did walk over to the rugby field next to the campground and watched a game of high school aged kids, the home team was running away with the game at half time so I headed back to François to rejoin Ton.
Most of the stalls were doing steady business the whole time we were there.
As we do this longer, and as we get a little older, these down days where we hang around become a little more common. We are going to be busier tomorrow.
Today will be short. We were up early as we are shifting to Paris. It was a 300 kilometer drive, but it involved crossing Paris at mid-day. We had one stop in mind for the day which was one of the two Costco’s in Paris.
There was a circus in the parking lot next to Costco.
We arrived at Costco without any incident and went on a shopping spree to stock up with cool things we don’t see in our Costco at home and some old friends we do. François needs new tires and I was hoping they could do them here. We had everything worked out, I would buy the tires now, they would order them and then hold them for me until, we passed thru going north on our way back to Amsterdam then they would install them. Just as we were to seal the deal I mentioned that François was 3 meters tall and everything collapsed, their doors can only accommodate vehicles 2.75 meters tall. So I am still looking for tires.
Eventually we walked out with a large chariot (the French word for shopping basket) full of food, and a bottle of wine from Chile to add to our collection of French and Italian wines. Another interesting (at least to Ton and me) thing is that the days we do the least are often the most expensive. Due to tolls, buying fuel (at Costco), and groceries we spent 400% of what we budget per day while traveling.
Today we wanted to visit a town about 25 kilometers away to check out a restaurant Ton had read about. It is famous for its seafood. It’s funny how sometimes a place is so very different than what you expect. We expected Boulogne-sur-Mer to be a sleepy fishing village. To our surprise when we arrived we found a bustling city with heavy traffic. Instead of a few local fisherman we found a waterfront full of giant seafood factories with semi-trucks backing into loading docks to be dispatched with various frozen seafood for markets throughout and France, and the rest of Europe. Our impression was that Boulogne was a much bigger and busier town than Calais. When I checked though Calais is about 30% larger than Boulogne so again impressions do not always line up with facts.
The street art on display was quite beautiful, parking to enjoy it was hard to find.
We almost abandoned our quest as we could not find a place to park François. All of the street side parking in the city was full. There were a couple of large parking lots by the port, but they also turned out to be full. We tried to get into a lot that looked promising but the entrance was barricaded, which led to me backing François down a narrow street for a couple of hundred yards to get turned around. Just as we were driving out of town I spied a street that looked to have available parking. It took a couple of attempts to find the entrance, but we finally had a place to begin our day.
The pleasure port in Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Boulogne-sur-Mer’s other attraction beside seafood is a UNESCO tower in the old town. We walked up the hill to it but were disappointed when we got there. As we were standing in front of it in a large square, Ton asked me where it was and I pointed at it and she said, it is supposed to be beautiful?
The church belfry taken from the moat of the castle in town.
Having gotten our morning walk in we decided to head back down to the port to Tons restaurant. Local ambiance was not what drove people to this place as the view out of the windows was of the loading area for a giant fish processing building. To get in we had to navigate a couple of tables of workers on their lunch break and step over a large dog which was sprawled across the sidewalk. But when we entered the decor was first class, and the place was jammed. When we got to the hostess she asked if we had reservations I said no and she said nothing available until 2pm. As I was having this conversation an older gentleman was standing next to the hostess stand, he made eye contact and gave me a glance that said hang on, he then had a long conversation with the hostess and at the end kissed her on both cheeks, and then looked at us and said 2 minutes. In less than 2 minutes we were shown to a very nice table. The meal was wonderful consisting of three courses of local fish dishes we were wowed by the food. This was one of the best seafood meals we have had in Europe and was definitely worth the walk.
The 2 Caps scenic route.
We took a scenic route back to Calais. There are two capes that face each other across an inlet in the English channel each with with white cliffs similar to smaller versions of the cliffs of Dover on the English side. In between the towns are dune lands and pastures with rolling hills it was a very nice drive to our final destination of the day the 2 Caps Brewery. After a little GPS misadventure we arrived at the brewery hoping for a table over looking the beautiful countryside. It turns out it is not a cafe, but a place to buy beer to take away. They did offer tastes of beer similar to a wine tasting. We tasted the beer and it was excellent, so we walked out with 6 large beers, and 6 small beers, we just have to find a place to store them in François.
We enjoyed a relaxing morning and Ton whipped up a nice breakfast before we set out for Calais. We began by repeating our walk from yesterday up the promenade to see a giant mechanical dragon that had caught Tons fancy. It is a giant thing on wheels that is about 30 feet tall, for a significant fee you can purchase a ticket to ride on the back. Right as we entered the promenade I saw it in the distance moving around. By the time we arrived it had retreated to its lair (in this case a large glass building), and it didn’t look like it was coming out. We hung around hoping for a few minutes but then the crew that operates it walked away so we decided to move on.
The dragon is impressive it even shoots fire out of its mouth.
We had a pleasant stroll thru town, and while it was windy we decided it was slightly less windy than yesterday. The first part of the town is on an island and guards the mouth of the ancient harbor that put Calais on the map. Today the main town is on the mainland, and the old town is mostly restaurants and hotels catering to tourists.
This statue of de Gaulle and his wife commemorates the fact that she is from Calais and they were married here in 1924.
We had seen a large clock tower off in the distance from the campground that is attached to the Hotel de Ville (town hall) so that was the next stop on our impromptu walking tour. In addition to the clock tower which wasn’t as nice up close as from a distance there was a statue by Rodin in the gardens.
Actually the clock tower and town hall look nicer in this picture than I remember in person. While it looks old it was built in 1925.
The statue by Rodin commemorates 6 burghers of Calais who surrendered the town to the English after a long seige in the 1300’s. They were to be executed but the English kings wife intervened to grant them clemency. I liked this piece a lot but Ton was not as impressed.
The six burgers of Calais by Rodin.
Calais was once a center for lace production so we decided to head to the lace district and check out the church there. After another longish walk we arrived at a square full of cars with a large church. Ton wasn’t impressed she looked at me and said since we walked all of this way I will take a picture. She took her picture and said what is next?
The church in the lace district.
The art museum was free today, or possibly is free everyday we never quite sorted that out, but we arrived about 10 minutes before it officially opened at 1pm and took a seat in the lobby. There were four workers at the front desk staring at us and we in turn stared at them while we waited for the countdown to the stroke of 1pm. Finally, at 12:58 one of the workers came over and invited us in, only to be chastised by another worker, she then turned sheepishly to us and said 2 more minutes. Precisely at 1pm we were presented our free tickets and allowed to enter.
The entrance to the art museum in Calais. They are very punctual but the price is right.
It was a mix of art from many ages and while small there were some interesting paintings and sculptures from different ages that kept us engaged. A large part of it was being remodeled so the displays didn’t take that long to get thru.
We liked this dress with a face hidden in it.
There was a film running about a French artist named Zlotykamien who may have been the original graffiti artist. He started out as a fairly renown artist in the 50’s, but was looking for a different canvas for his work. He found it by painting figures he called ephemerals on walls in cities. Art is in the eye of the beholder, I am not sure if I came across his stuff on a wall in Calais I would recognize it as the work of a famous artist. You can look at the picture below and be your own judge.
A series of ephemerals by Zlotykamien.
The next stop was the highlight of the day for me. This region is famous for a dish called the Welsh Sandwich. It is a dish consisting primarily of melted cheddar cheese with something floating in it. Why it is called a Welsh sandwich is a bit of a mystery as there is no bread in it, and no direct connection to Wales. We headed to the L’Hovercraft Cafe as they were supposed to have the best Welsh Sandwiches.
My Welsh Sandwich Complet. The most traditional of the 18 Sandwiches on the menu.
We sat down and I opened the menu to find they had 18 different Welsh Sandwiches on the menu. I went with the traditional one which consists of ham and an egg with lots of cheddar cheese. As a fan of cheddar cheese I was in heaven, but even I had to admit it was a lot of cheese. To give your heart a complete workout it was served with fries. Ton ordered the plate of the day which consisted of potatoes swimming in a different kind of cheese and a charcuterie plate.
Tons dish also had a healthy amount of melted cheese.
We decided at lunch there were a couple of other places in the region we wanted to stay so we decided to add a third night to our stay here. When we arrived at the campground I asked for a third night and they were happy to oblige, and then told me it would cost €1.20. It turns out if you stay three nights the third one is free except for a tax. We were quite pleased.
Today was a day to move. We enjoyed Delft but it was time to get on the road so we decided to make a pretty long jump down to Calais France. It is a place we haven’t visited on our travels.
We made one stop on the way out of town to have a mechanic look at a problem we have with François. We are getting an alarm when we start the truck that there is a fault with the airbag. We had hoped the place yesterday could deal with it, but they told us we needed to go to a Fiat garage. Our second stop at Fiat service centers (the first one did cars only and directed us to the one that does Ducatos our van.) We met a very nice and chatty guy who checked out François confirmed it was a problem with the computer and told us we were all right to drive as long as we didn’t have an accident. We have a date scheduled to return at the end of the trip to get the problem taken care of.
A ferry departing the port of Calais. It was named after Oscar Wilde who I always assumed was English, but turns out to have been Irish.
The drive was uneventful except for a major detour in Antwerp due to a tunnel being repaired. We followed the signs for the detour, but at the last second I made a wrong turn and went the wrong way on the freeway so we got to repeat the detour. I was not happy with myself or the Belgian traffic people who marked the detour!
Beach huts on the 4 mile long Calais Beach.
We arrived at the campground in Calais about 3:30 and settled in. The day looked beautiful with bright blue skies. Unfortunately the wind was howling and the wind chill was 41 degrees. We bundled up and tackled the promenade along the beach. The beach is beautiful fine sand and the promenade is full of interesting looking places, most of which were closed up for the season. The weather is supposed to be better tomorrow so we will spend more time exploring.
