June 4, 2019 Bourges, Fields and Forests

We didn't get out of the hotel until 10 am this morning as we had our croissants and coffee in our room and it took that long to get everything to fit back in the suitcases.

Breakfast

We have a bit more stuff than seems to fit back in the suitcases right now, but I'm hoping when we use up the foods and re-pack for the trip home, it will all fit. Fingers crossed, or the underwear stays in France.

these children were exploring the history of their town with their teachers. Seen while we were loading the car.

We moved the car to a parking place near the cathedral and motored the half block over rough cobbles (teeth and butt jarring cobbles) to the square in front of the church. I needed 15 minutes to just look at the outside of the church and soak it all in. It's high Gothic - built between 1195 and 1250ish - and monstrously tall - as if reaching to God in the heavens above.

We studied the portals. The center had carvings of the Last Judgement and was undamaged by the various wars of religion and Revolution. However, the heads of statues on the right were missing - a sure sign of damage in the Revolution.

Saint Stephen (for whom the cathedral is named) was also intact as was St. Ursinus, founder of the church in Bourges. Archbishop (and Saint) Guillaume didn't fare so well - his head is missing.

And the portal with the life of Mary is totally missing its statuary. Not sure why.

The soaring height of this cathedral is awe-inspiring. To imagine the workers, draftsmen, and architects as well as the sculptors and stained glass artists putting together this end product is mind-boggling. It is a work of both genius and faith.

Then we went inside. The double aisle on either side of the nave makes the church seem longer than it it. Side chapels off these aisles create more intimate worship environments.

The ambulatory which circles the back behind the altar contains mostly original stained glass from the same period as Chartres Cathedral - about 1215. The colors are so vivid and there's something about the blues that is rarely captured even today. We couldn't stop taking photos of these windows. And the colors of the photos don't do justice to the brilliance of the colors in the windows themselves.

We left quietly, a bit overwhelmed by what we had seen, but unable to take in more of the details of this cathedral. A quiet walk through the park next to the cathedral helped calm our jumbled thoughts.

We continued along a few more streets, before getting a sandwich at Les Halles (the permanent market building found in most large French cities). We had planned to buy meat and cheese to make sandwiches with the baguette Dave had bought at breakfast. But, of course, the shops were closed for lunch and only the restaurants were open.

We ate lunch on a park bench before leaving town around 2:30, searching for gas and bathrooms (and a grocery store for cheese) on the way out. We found a Carrefour where I found cheese and Dave got gas. We found a sketchy toilette in the mall that Carrefour was part of.

That reminds me to note here that while we have been sharing photos of beautiful villages and well-preserved towns, that's not the reality for most of the people who live in the towns and cities. Especially in larger cities like Arles and Avignon, there are areas that are run-down and clearly poor in resources. There are large blocks of apartment buildings - 5 or 6 stories high with no architectural interest and paint peeling on the walls and shutters. Many of these seem to house families of North African or Middle East descent and women wearing hijabs and khimars are frequent in these neighborhoods.

From Bourges, we traveled northeast, skirting well south of Paris to avoid the snarled traffic of its ring roads. This is where the Fields and Forests come into the day's commentary. I'm a terrible photographer in the best of circumstances, but taking photos out the window of a car moving at 80 mph is definitely problematic. However, I can tell you that we traveled the whole way through a landscape that could have been any of the upper midwestern states. There were endless fields of grains, large by even US standards.

Gone were the windbreaks of cyprus and bamboo. The only punctuation to the never-ending valleys was a small woods every now and again. There weren't even farms with their buildings and household gardens. It's as if farmers must live in the towns and villages that we could see every 20 or so kilometers. And even more midwestern in feeling were the grain elevators, just like we'd see at home.

We also saw lots of wind turbines - sometimes it seemed like they were the ones planted and sprouting out of the fields.

The  houses and building techniques are different here too. Roofs are more steeply pitched and we see a lot more red brick.

We arrived at Reims just before 7 pm and had to search for our hotel. We're staying at something called an AppartHotel where we have a little studio apartment in the old part of Reims (which will make it easier to get around on my scooter without moving the car). It's not that we couldn't GPS to the right location, but we couldn't recognize it as it looks like all the other apartment buildings in this part of town - and in fact it is part hotel, part apartment complex built around a beautiful and quite large inside square. It has access to the complex by key and offers various services to travelers (like breakfast and pizza made on site). It's small, but should suit our needs well for the next two nights.

Dave's been out reconnoitering and has found bakeries for tomorrow's breakfast and a 4 Euro per day parking garage for the car. We're now sitting in our bedroom with our window open to the square below having aperos as dessert. But the Tavel rosé is just as tasty at 10:30 as 4:30.

Tomorrow we check out another Gothic cathedral.