Upon leaving our little castle village in the morning, we headed for the town of Amiens which apparently had the largest gothic cathedral in Europe. The cathedral upon arrival was actually somewhat underwhelming, it was a great church on it's own but I wouldn't call it the biggest or most impressive, Reims for example seemed far larger.
Food places were also scarce, so we got sandwiches from a little vendor and ate in the park. The internet had told us that the Amiens food speciality were their own kind of macrons, so we were keen to try them. They were actually really nice, and very different from usual ones, made of almond and very tasty.
After our lunch stop we made our way to le Touquet but it was fairly late in the day before we arrived so we decided to camp for the night and expore in the morning.
Unfortunately the next day was the dreaded Sunday of the week so we didn't have high hopes for shops to be open.
We were however pleasantly surprised, I suppose because it was such a touristy area most things were open! This patisserie looked amazing so we couldn't resist buying some little treats for later on.
Of course the original Chat Bleu was also in Le Touquet and we simply couldn't pass up such an opportunity!
So much chocolatey goodness. We settled on a little box of the traditional chat Bleu chocolate, the ones with the blue dots on top and the insanely good innards.
Le Touquet, in all its windy and rainy glory.
After stocking up on enough chocolate to maybe (if we were lucky) satisfy Yannick for one day, we headed for Boulogne Sur Mer a town further up the coast that I had read had a chateau dating from the 13th century, and within in it an eclectic museum from collectors in the 1800s. It's always an interesting concept to me, as antiquarians in the 1800s were numerous and it became a popular pastime. The positive is the interest in history and the collections preserved, the massive downside is the sudden demand for these objects had noblemen wandering all over Europe and Egypt and taking things at will losing all context and effectively stealing from the country. Additionally it started a market for only the attractive shiny objects of gold, causing 'uninteresting' things like pottery to be simply chucked away and the stratigraphy of sites to be completely destroyed.
There is no better museum then when it itself is placed in an awesome historical context. This gate also provided excellent cover from the rain.
Prepared to pay, we were happily surprised to be informed that as it was Sunday, the museum was free!! I enjoyed this surprised looking cow.
A little piece of home!
This dude looked awesome even if he was somewhat Voldemortesque with his glaring lack of a nose.
My favourite part of the museum were the foundations deep beneath, we had to rush somewhat as unfortunately the castle was closing by then, but we still saw some pretty awesome sights: from these vaulted chambers, to less finished tunnels of crumbling stone and dark water systems with water so clear it almost looked like it wasn't there. All of this was accompanied by the atmospheric 'drip drip' of the damp walls.
As Tolkien would say, halls of stone!
Here you can actually see some of the roman blocks that had been reused as foundation stones long ago.
And to finish off we picnicked in the car out of the rain, eating our delectable delights - if only we had bought more they were so amazing! Suspiciously enough, we all had the common theme of raspberry in our desserts, I wonder what that says about us?
No comments:
Post a Comment