Thursday Sept 5, 2024 Pernes-les-Fontaines

 

Lazy morning, well deserved. I made a pot of coffee and Deb made tea. The laundry we hung on a broom between two chairs with a fan blowing on them are dry enough to wear. Clean bodies and clean clothes and nothing scheduled is feeling pretty good.

We had breakfast here, moved some more clothes around. Things don’t dry very quickly after the big thunderstorm last night.

The weather forecast called for rain yesterday but the gods decided we deserved a nice day so a little overcast but no rain all day.

We walked into town and talked to the nice lady in the tourist office. She spoke perfect English (did a foreign exchange to Ohio when she was 15) and we got some ideas on what to see. There is a walking tour route that takes you around the entire city (small city) inside the fortress walls. Along the route are numerous fountains, lots of artisans in tiny workshops, some bakeries and restaurants, four museums (we saw them all) and narrow little streets that remind me of a mouse maze. We got lost a few times but that was half the fun. It’s bizarre to be in a city that is 1000 years old. Except for the modern cars you see here and there (the streets are either pedestrian only or too narrow to park in) you would not guess what time period you were in.

We found the Battu Patisserie and got a baguette and a pastry to split. Half the locals here are walking around with a baguette under their arm so we fit right in. We saw our landlord walking back home with a baguette under his arm.

There are three or four gates to the city, each built at a different time starting in 1100 or so. We stopped for coffee at a small cafe near one of them. We found the bicycle museum before it closed for the mid-day two hour break (everything closes mid day for a couple hours). The guy that invented the derailleur was born and lived here and he got mad that someone passed him on a faster bike and figured out how to put second gear on his bike. That of course led to a third and fourth and now we have 21 or something. He died in 1930 crossing a road, when he was hit by a tram. He has a statue somewhere nearby and a museum named after him. On that note we saw about 20 police cars and motorcycles roaring by outside the city walls and it turned out to be a bicycle race going through.  

We got off the walking route and decided to walk home, have lunch and take a midday break like everybody else does here. “When in Rome…”.

We later went back inside the walls and resumed the trail we started this morning. We saw the Resistance Museum which dealt with what happened during WW2, The costume museum, which had beautiful handmade period clothes, and a another museums of some rich man’s. All the museums are free and simple and in beautiful condition. Unfortunately, there is no English so you kind of have to guess what’s going on. Deb figured a lot of it out since she did learn French way back when.

We met the Untours leader, Anne, on one of the back streets on her way to the dinner we were having with the other Untours couple from North Carolina, Roger & Ann. Untours does an orientation to get you acquainted with driving rules and what to watch out for. We had a nice dinner and a couple of drinks and got to know the other couple a bit. We may see them next Tuesday when we play Petanque.

We walked home in the dark down our little side street and Deb started planning tomorrow. Looks like we will do a short driving loop around the other small towns in the area. Maybe we will have clean dry clothes again tomorrow!!