June 3, 2019 Sarrians to Bourges

With great sadness, we left our beloved house in Sarrians to start our trek home via Brussels.

our driveway looking to the "road"

Tonight we are in Bourges, tomorrow and the next day in Reims, in search of a couple of great Gothic cathedrals. On Thursday, we arrive in Brussels to visit Dan and Paulette for a few days before driving to Paris to catch our flight home. I can hardly believe that we are near the end of our stay here. We've left so many things undiscovered in Provence. Perhaps it's us mellowing with age, but it seems that I'm just as happy to wander the streets in old villages as I am seeing the "must-see" sites like the Papal Palace in Avignon or the Pont du Gard (Roman aqueduct).

The road starts out familiar and we pass places we've seen or visited.

a round about near Orange - there's a military airbase there. We've seen & heard the jets practicing

La Garde-Adhémar seen from the highway

nuclear and wind farm energy near Adhémar

As we got near Lyon, in the Northern Rhone Valley, the only thing familiar is the Rhone River which we crossed several times.

a famous winery of Northern Rhone valley - but we didn't go this far north

The Rhone river near Lyon

Once headed west, we stopped at an "aire" (rest stop) for our picnic lunch.

We headed west as far as Clerment-Ferrand, along the northern edge of the Massif Central, a low range of mountains (5000-6000 feet peaks) separated from the Alps by the Rhone valley. Here we met clouds and a few showers.

Massif Central (lightish brown in south central France) separated from Alps (dark brown eastern border) by Rhone River valley.

As we skirted the northern edge of this range, we traveled up (and down) but only as high as 700 meters (2300 feet). The landscape changed from the vineyard, fruit trees and vegetable farms of Provence, on scrubby, inhospitable soil, to forested slopes that seemed to be primarily dairy farms. We saw lots of herds of white cattle (charolaise) in the fields.

Our road up the Massif Central

As we neared Clerment-Ferrand, we could see the Chaine de Puys - a chain of 80 extinct lava dome volcanoes, the most famous of which is Puy de Dôme, about 15 km from Clerment-Ferrand.

Lots of clouds and haze today, but that's the chain of puys (volcanoes) with Puy de Dôme the highest - we're already up 700 meters when I took this photo

Turning north, we came down out of the mountains to wide open valleys that reminded us of Wisconsin.

sorry for dirty windshield - coming down to valley north of Clerment-Ferrand

These fields were large like those in the midwest and mostly grains. Hay stood baled in large round plastic cylinders in fields recently cut.

the wheat is ripening - the fields were huge

The colors of the houses changed with more red and brick in the buildings. But there were still occasional fields of poppies.

houses in massif have steeper pitched, shingled roofs and are greyish in color

Finally, 552 km (343 miles) later, we pulled into Bourges around 5 pm.

houses in Bourges - this one is unusual

house  outside the city walls

The houses here are different, but Bourges like so much of France, shows evidence of Gallo-Roman occupation (ruined ramparts) and its old city has a large section of half-timbered medieval buildings.

lots of half-timbered houses

After settling into our hotel in the center of town (Best Western-Hôtel d'Angleterre) and finding a place to stash the car for the night,

Our hotel is historic - King Edward VII of England slept here!

our bathroom

our room - desk, frig, & coffee maker behind half-wall

we had some bits of cheese and bread left from making our sandwiches. We ate these in our hotel room which isn't really outfitted with table and chairs, or for that matter, a balcony. Aperos are a state of mind.

aperos

At 6:30, we headed out for a bit of a wander around town with a plan to find a place for dinner.

We found a lovely square, surrounded by restaurants and brasseries, most of which (restaurants) were closed because, well, because it's Monday. Nevertheless, we ate at a brasserie/restaurant that specialized in seafood. We each ordered moules-frites and dessert and ate them under the trees of the square finishing just as the sun set behind the buildings. A lovely, warm evening.

Place Gordaine - we sat at the top of the stairs on the left

moules frites

moules-frites accomplished

our restaurant

We decided to walk home via the cathedral which is our reason for choosing to come here. Oh, man, the cathedral does not disappoint, We will go back tomorrow to explore this high Gothic marvel first thing in the morning.

St. Etienne cathedral - high gothic -  13th century

Home again by 10:30, I have just enough energy to write the text for this blog post and download the photos. And now it is midnight and I have to get to bed!

back to our hotel