Table of Contents for this Episode
Categories: French Culture, Hauts-de-France
Introduction and Greetings
[00:00:15] Annie: This is Join Us in France, episode 521, cinq cent vingt-et-un.
Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today on the podcast
[00:00:31] Annie: Today, I bring you a conversation with Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks about exploring Amiens, from Medieval marvels to Jules Verne.
In this episode we explore the city of Amiens, delve into the fascinating life of Jules Verne, and highlight the historical significance, must sees and must eat of this area. Why did this charming city captivate one of the most imaginative authors of all time? Listen to find out!
Thank you Donors and Patrons
[00:01:00] Annie: This podcast is supported by donors and listeners who buy my tours and services, including my Itinerary consult service, my GPS self-guided tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, or take a day trip with me around the southwest of France in my electric car.
You can browse all of that at my boutique: joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
And Patreon supporters get new episodes as soon as they are ready, and ad-free. If that sounds good to you, be like them, follow the link in the show notes.
For Black Friday, I am running a 20 percent discount on Patreon tiers between today, November 24th, and Christmas Day. This is great for those of you who want to sign up for the first time or gift a membership at a great price. Go to patreon.com/joinus for details. And thank you for your support.
The Magazine Segment
[00:01:55] Annie: For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Elyse today, I’ll discuss new expos that you can visit late 2024 and into March of 2025 in Paris, as well as some thoughts about Christmas in Provence, and why if you’re going there in December, you’ll find most Christmas activities in Aix en Provence, Nice, and cities in general.
Annie and Elyse
[00:02:30] Annie: Bonjour, Elyse!
[00:02:31] Elyse: Bonjour, Annie!
[00:02:32] Annie: We have a fun topic today, we’re talking about Amiens, the beautiful city of Amiens.
[00:02:38] Elyse: Very beautiful.
Jules Verne: A Lifelong Fascination
[00:02:40] Annie: And Jules Verne.
[00:02:41] Elyse: One of your faves.
[00:02:43] Annie: One of my favorite, from since childhood, really. I have been reading his books since childhood and I have been on a Jules Verne kick, yes, I finished my third novel by him this week and will probably continue.
I have… I want to do ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ as well. I haven’t listened to that one.
[00:03:01] Elyse: Now, when you say three books, you mean, so which ones did you actually listen, I’m assuming you listened.
[00:03:07] Annie: Yes, yes, yes, I listened to ‘Voyage to the Center of the Earth’, ‘Around the World in 80 Days’, ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’. These are the three I’ve listened to so far, and I’ve listened to them in English because we have a subscription to Audible that includes those books, so I can get them for free.
If I wanted them in French, which would be normally my preference, I would have to pay for them. So I’m like, I just want to know the story, I just want to hear the story again, because it doesn’t matter.
[00:03:34] Elyse: There’s actually a rather, almost kitschy series on TV right now, it’s called Nautilus, it’s one of those international series with some French actors, some American actors, some actors from… the lead is actually a guy from India. I mean, I don’t know, they’re from all over the world.
And it’s based on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. And so it’s very funny because the title is Nautilus, and then it says, in parenthesis, liberally inspired by, you know, and then, because it’s one of those that includes all the monsters and all the things in that, but then it goes off to do these other things.
So I watched a couple of episodes with my husband and he looked at me, went, I’m not watching anymore. And I thought, okay, I’m going to have to sneak watch this one, you know, because it’s pretty awful, but it’s so much fun, you know, really…
[00:04:19] Annie: Guilty pleasure.
[00:04:21] Elyse: Guilty pleasure, you know, just silly. It’s so silly, but it’s really fun.
Exploring Amiens: A Personal Visit
[00:04:25] Annie: Yes, but first we’re going to talk about the beautiful city of Amiens. I just visited just a few weeks ago, so it’s all fresh in my mind. And you did all the research about the history. So, take it away, Elyse, I want to hear all about the background and the history of Amiens.
[00:04:41] Elyse: With my claquettes, take it away. I have to say that I did visit Amiens, but quite a number of years ago, and it was in the heart of the winter. So, it was a very different experience, of course, when we went.
It was actually the same trip that we took to Lille, and we stopped there, we stopped in Arras, also.
I was absolutely amazed because I knew about the cathedral, I mean, when you read in the history books and the art books and everything about the cathedral. But I was absolutely stunned by how beautiful the old city center of Amiens is, and even in the dead of winter, because it does get cold there.
This is the Somme, this is north of Paris, and it’s in a region that gets nice, crispy, wet, cold, winters.
It was just lovely, with the canals and all the rest of it. I had this lovely memory of it, I must say.
Yes, we were there in August, so it was not cold.
It was not cold. No, no, I imagine not. It was not cold at all.
Historical Significance of Amiens
[00:05:33] Elyse: To begin with, I discovered that Amiens’ history is really ancient. I really did not know very much about it, beyond my obsession with the Middle Ages and cathedrals and things like that. And it turns out that it is a place that has really been a city and occupied for forever, and ever and ever. And even, remember when we went to the small prehistory, archaeology museum in the Pyrenees, I guess it was last year, we went and stopped and did that, right?
[00:06:02] Annie: Yes, the name escapes me right now, but yes.
[00:06:05] Elyse: Yeah, well, of course, one of the things you see in museums that deal with prehistory is you see all these flints, you know, and all these objects that are pre, that are really the beginning of what we call tool making and everything. And to my great surprise, the term that’s used is Acheulean and it comes from a neighborhood in the city of Amiens because it turns out that that’s where I guess at the very beginning of the 20th century, they found masses and masses of these tools when they were just beginning to develop the science of prehistory and archeology.
And so I’m so chauvinistic about the Southwest of France, you know, all the things are named after everything we know in the Southwest here, you know, except for that.
And it turns out that all the tools, when you go to an archeology museum to look at things prehistory and you see all the flints and everything, there’s a whole category of them that are based on the name that was given because they were found in the city of Amiens in this particular neighborhood
[00:07:07] Annie: Interesting. So there’s been people there for a long time.
[00:07:10] Elyse: For a very, very long time. Yep, I’m imagining that they were there at the same time at the wooly mammoths and they had nice fur coats, but I didn’t have one when I was there in the wintertime. I could have used one, actually, but other than that, Amiens it also has a very old history as in the sense of recorded history.
And it was very important even under the earliest kings of what we now call France, which really means it goes back from, to the very beginning because it was under the Romans. This is actually kind of funny because it becomes so complicated with the borders. It was the capital of what the Romans called Roman Belgium.
[00:07:47] Annie: Okay….
[00:07:48] Elyse: You know, because we have Flanders, that’s kind of this thing stuck between, I don’t know, I mean, it used to be the same kingdom as France, and then it became something else.
[00:07:59] Annie: Yeah, it changed hands a lot up there, yeah.
[00:08:01] Elyse: Yeah. It changed hands a lot. And this apparently goes back very, very long time ago, because the Romans, I knew that, you know, they had created cities in what is now Belgium and end up in that part.
But it, it apparently included Amiens and Abien.
So Amiens is really some place that’s been on the map in a sense for forever, and ever, and ever. And one of the things that is there that you can see today, these famous, and now I’m going to try and pronounce this correctly because it bothers me when I don’t pronounce words in French correctly, the Hortillonnage.
[00:08:35] Annie: Correct!
The Hortillonnage
[00:08:36] Elyse: The Hortillonnage.
The Hortillonnage, which are absolutely, even in the dead of winter, they were just absolutely gorgeous to visit and see. And these are these flowering gardens that are in the midst of these canals that are all over the old center of Amiens. And it turns out that they go back to the Romans.
Huh. Well, it would be pretty handy to have canals right there where you grow your vegetable garden.
That’s it. In fact, that that is actually what it was that the apparently, this was all very big marshland. We’re on the river called the Somme, which is a major river in the north northwest of France that empties into the Bay of Somme, which is very, very famous.
[00:09:17] Annie: Right, and this river runs East to West.
[00:09:20] Elyse: East to West, right. More or less.
And apparently, you know, there are lots of tiny little rivers that run into it. And so the area was, for ever, and ever, a marshland with a lot of bogs, peat bogs. And it was the Romans who dug up the peat and turned this into a system of canals. Apparently, they think that at the time there were, it’s hard to imagine, that’s what they say, this is what I’ve read, that there were 10,000 hectares of canal. That’s a huge amount of canal.
[00:09:53] Annie: Yeah, but you know, that’s a lot of production of fruits and vegetables.
So, yeah.
[00:09:59] Elyse: And so what they did was they planted fruits and vegetables and they planted flowering plants to keep the soil from running off. And what they did was apparently the function of all of this was to feed the armies, feed the Roman Armies. And so that’s how they got started.
And for all of the centuries since then, there have been these magnificent canals, which have flowers on them, and still some of them have fruits and vegetables.
There are now 300 hectares, which is not bad.
[00:10:32] Annie: Well, yeah, It’s… it’s quite a lot, yeah.
[00:10:34] Elyse: For all through the Middle Ages, there were thousands of people who had jobs that were connected to them. And now, of course, they’re mostly just very beautiful. I bet you’re going to put up some pictures of them.
[00:10:44] Annie: I have taken a couple of pictures, but we didn’t take the time. So you, I assume you went on a tour?
[00:10:49] Elyse: No, we just walked, I had a guidebook, and we just did a walk that it is a path that takes you up and down a few of them so that you can see what they look like and it talks about their history.
[00:10:59] Annie: So we saw the edge of it. We saw one edge of it. We parked and walked a little bit, but everything we did was rushed because we only had, you know, eight days to see 12 days worth of stuff. So we had to hurry through a lot of stuff, which I never recommend people do. So this is funny because I tell people don’t rush, you know, but it’s hard not to when you have so many things on your list. It’s really hard not.
[00:11:26] Elyse: That’s true, especially because I know when you make a list, you make a very long list, in general.
Yes. But it is, these are what they call floating gardens. They’re not really floating, that makes me think of Japanese art when they talk about floating gardens. But these are little gardens in between these little canals.
And of course, they’re now mostly flowers which makes them absolutely lovely. And then this is part of the section it’s part of the center and the eastern part of the older part of Amiens. And so you also have all these beautiful houses in the style that’s very typical of there right on the canal. So it has a vague resemblance to what you see for instance the Holland and places like that. But they’re the canal, these are small canals these are not very wide you know, they’re just a couple of meters wide, you know.
[00:12:11] Annie: A little more some of them, the ones we saw were maybe three or four, but that’s probably, maybe 20 feet is wide for them, you know, that’s a lot. So, you said floating gardens. In French, the other names for hortillonnage is ‘jardin sur l’eau’. Okay?
So that’s why it gets translated into garden over water, but it’s not really over water, they just dug up these canals in between kind of square looking parcels of land.
And I know there are still people, maraîchers, who, you know, grow vegetables that they sell. And I saw one, I saw a YouTube person, it was a French TV program that they were replaying on YouTube, where they showed this lady, she was growing carrots in this mostly sandy, loamy kind of soil, and she says, we don’t have to do anything.
We put seeds and we keep the weeds away. But they don’t have to water because it’s just all like soaks up all the water.
And these carrots, you know, I mean, around where I live it’s full of argyle, you know, and clay. And so it’s, we can’t grow carrots here, like it’s not going to work. But up there, they were beautiful, those carrots, and she was just sticking, you know, getting carrots out of the ground saying, we don’t have to do anything, look!
[00:13:34] Elyse: And so interesting, because my husband has this obsession with wanting to find carrots that are grown in sand.
I’ve never understood why?
[00:13:44] Annie: Well, because they are sweeter generally. Yes, and they are straight. They’re nice and straight. Yeah, and the other place I’ve seen carrots grown like that was actually in Provence, where it’s not sand, but it’s a very light, very poor soil really. And so here, they just fertilized to get good carrots, otherwise you’d get nothing out of that. But no rocks anywhere.
[00:14:10] Elyse: It’s just that, yeah. And so I remember, but what’s so interesting is that I remember seeing these little canals in these gardens, even though we were there in the winter, there’s a whole part of them that actually come up almost to the esplanade in front of the cathedral. It’s like it goes from that part further east. I couldn’t say where I was actually standing, but it was wonderful because you were standing there and it must have been amazing in the Middle Ages when they were pretty much all over the place.
Now, I have no idea whether, and I really didn’t see anything written anywhere about whether or not, because of these canals they had to do a whole lot of work with DDT when the Allies showed up like they have in some parts of southern France or not, I have no idea.
It’s interesting because, it was Louis XI of all, you know, he called it as beautiful as Venice, he said it was as beautiful as Venice, he said it was the Venice of the North.
[00:15:05] Annie: But no building, no big structures, no. Right.
[00:15:08] Elyse: No, just these gardens with these lovely little houses, but they’re small houses.
They’re private houses.
[00:15:15] Annie: Yeah, there’s small, like, bigger than a garden shed, but not much bigger than a garden shed.
[00:15:19] Elyse: Just, you know, one floor up and very cute. And the only, these narrowed kind of little rowboats, it’s kind of a cross between a canoe and a rowboat that they use when they want to go up and down the canals, you know, so… just gorgeous.
[00:15:31] Annie: And I think, you can join tours, walking tours that the tourist office organizes, but you can probably just do a self walking tour as well.
[00:15:42] Elyse: Yeah, I bet you can, you know.
So that is one of the main features and it is, as a natural site, it is a World UNESCO Heritage Site. I mean, I guess it gets boring to hear us talk about this, me or anyway, but Amiens has a lot of things that are major historical sites and the gardens are just one of them, right? Yeah.
It’s really…
The Magnificent Cathedral of Amiens
[00:16:03] Elyse: And so Amiens it turns out, was a very big deal in the earlier part of the Middle Ages because there was a huge pilgrimage that began there.
And this is all stuff I discovered that I knew nothing about, because of course, I’m always obsessed with the stuff style of the gothic architecture and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And going into the reading and talking about it, because of course you go also to Amiens to see this incredible, absolutely incredible cathedral. But why did it get built?
This is the story that I’m going to tell because this is the most fun part of my research, actually. So it turns out that, as the county of Amiens, it was actually made into, like, there was the county of Flanders, and you know..
This is pre everybody’s united in one kingdom called France, everybody had the Dukedom county, so there was one that was actually the county of Amiens, that’s how rich it was, even in the early Middle Ages, thanks to the making of textiles.
This has been the center of cloth and textile making forever and ever, and ever, and then making drapes. In other words, drape what they called draperie, so that you could get cloth made there by bringing in the wool, and bringing in the linen from other places, this became really at the early part of the Middle Ages, one of the major centers for all kinds of textiles.
And it became very, very wealthy. In the beginning of the 1200s, there was a crusade in 1206, it was the 4th or 5th crusade, but I’m not keep, remember we, ages ago we did a podcast on them, can’t keep track, huh, there were so many, anyway… And the Lord of Amiens went on this crusade and he came back with an object.
And this object is called the Chef of St. John the Baptist. And so I’m looking up the word chef, right? ‘
Because I’m thinking…
You know what it is? I didn’t know what it was.
[00:18:00] Annie: Well, it’s a hat.
[00:18:01] Elyse: But it’s not in this case.
That’s what I thought it was.
Fooled you once, not twice, ha ha ha. It turns out, so I’m going, okay, we know that chef, C H E F, this is a word that’s used in French, okay?
It’s not the cook, and it’s… it can be the cook, and it’s not the head of the enterprise, it could be the head of the enterprise. And it could be a covering for your head, but that’s where it, it’s not a hat. What it is, is what they brought back, they made… Okay, now, whether this is real or not, that’s another question, okay?
[00:18:40] Annie: Bible stuff.
[00:18:41] Elyse: It’s Bible stuff. Okay. He brought back from Jerusalem, what is supposed to be the face of St. John the Baptist.
[00:18:50] Annie: I see.
[00:18:51] Elyse: Okay. That is, I saw a picture of it. So basically, obviously what it is, is really a death mask, okay?
Okay.
So it’s a death mask. So you see the eyes, the nose, the cheekbones and the jaw.
And this death mask had been set in an enormous piece of transparent quatz of a great value. I mean, it wasn’t a diamond, but you know, transparent quartz huge.
[00:19:17] Annie: valuable.
[00:19:18] Elyse: You know, a piece that covered the whole thing, then covered with gold work, and silver work all the way around it. And so it’s in the back, it’s flat, you know, those you can lay it, you can put it down on a table.
But the front of it is actually, looks like the face of St. John the Baptist. Okay.
And other than the crown of thorns, and pieces of the cross, which of course are relics that you have theoretically in St. Notre Dame and Saint Chapelle and things like this, this is one of the most valuable relics ever from Jerusalem that was brought back by a crusade.
And it was taken to Amiens because the Lord who got it, I don’t know how he got it, don’t ask me how much he paid because I have no idea if he paid or not.
Well, that’s another whole story that somebody will eventually find out, or not. But he took it back to what was at the time the Romanesque church that existed in the center of Amiens.
[00:20:19] Annie: Okay.
[00:20:20] Elyse: In a very religious city of Amiens.
And because of this relic, the pilgrimage began of people going to Amiens, and within the space of two or three years, brought in so much money, because when pilgrims come, they pay.They pay to go into the church because they pay, you know, to buy a candle, they pay to have a place to sleep, they pay to have something to eat, that he brought it back in the year 1206, and by 1220, they had enough money to begin the building of this magnificent, enormous, gothic cathedral to replace the old Romanesque one that had partly been falling apart.
[00:21:04] Annie: And they made it ginormous indeed.
[00:21:07] Elyse: And they made it ginormous. And not only that, but one of the things, there were several things of course that make the Cathedral of Amiens so incredibly special, but interestingly, from the point of view of just the period of time it took to build, this is one of the rare cases where it was finished in not even 100 years.
That is, it was started in 1220 and was finished, just about completely finished by 1290, which is really not a very long period of time, which is why it’s considered to be one of the most cohesive examples of Gothic architecture of any of the cathedrals ever built. Because they, even though it went to a little bit of what they call later, more of a more flamboyant, flamboyant Gothic with a little bit more details and curlicues in a few places, basically it didn’t change style.
It didn’t go from one period of time to another, to another style. And so it has this coherence in its architecture, which makes it absolutely incredible to see.
And then there are the statistics about this place. Things I didn’t know. I mean, I knew it was big. I knew it was one of the longest cathedrals ever built, but this is the one that blew my mind.
You can put Notre Dame of Paris inside it, twice.
[00:22:23] Annie: Wow. I mean, I’m not surprised. It’s really massive.
[00:22:26] Elyse: It’s massive. It’s absolutely massive. It is 145 meters long. 145 meters long is a football field and a half. That’s pretty big. That’s pretty big. It’s 42 meters high on the inside, and the only other church that they ever tried to make go higher was Beauvais.
And Beauvais collapsed.
[00:22:49] Annie: Right, but they built it again.
[00:22:50] Elyse: They built it again, but at the time that they were trying to build it, at more or less the same time, they couldn’t make it any higher. Just every time they got to 44, it was kind of the high jump, you know, you get to the high jump and then you go, I hit the bar, you know, this is it…
[00:23:04] Annie: Oh, Mondo, Mondo did, he beat his record again.
[00:23:08] Elyse: 26, I think it was 26, think this time, yeah, amazing, I know.
And the spire is 112 meters tall. It is gigantic. I don’t, you’re better at some of this stuff than I am, the inside volume is 200,000 square meters. I don’t even know how to translate in terms of space. I have no idea how you would translate that.
It’s humongous. It’s unbelievably enormous. It’s big.
[00:23:39] Annie: Yeah, I don’t know how to translate it into square feet, but it is a lot.
[00:23:43] Elyse: It’s a lot. And so, I mean, it’s magnificent. It’s also interestingly, got a coherent system of sculpture, both on the inside and the outside. And it only had a small amount of damage done to it during the revolution, not very much, which is unusual. Which they took the relics and saved them. But the statuary is usually what gets damaged a lot during the revolution and not too much of it got damaged.
Some of it did, of course, and incredible, incredible, incredible during both World War I and World War II, because Amiens was unfortunately the center of a huge amount of fighting in both World War I and World War II. In fact, one of the things to talk about in talking about Amiens is the Battle of the Somme, which took place just outside the city.
Whether it was on purpose or not, neither the Allies nor the Germans bombed the Cathedral of Amiens. There was some damage done by collateral damage, explosions, because a lot of Amiens was bombed. A lot of it was destroyed, especially in World War II. But they purposely avoided trying to destroy a good chunk of Amiens Cathedral, which of course is not the case in some of the other cathedrals in northeastern France.
So, it’s an incredible cathedral, it’s massive, it’s impressive when you stand on the Esplanade in front of it, just looking up at this cathedral and the structure itself. And when you think that it was built 800 years ago, in not that long a period of time, it is really quite remarkable.
[00:25:17] Annie: They must have had a lot of very talented craftspeople because it’s truly, you know, yeah, it’s amazing.
[00:25:26] Elyse: It’s amazing. Of course, they were inspired by Notre Dame of Paris, but this comes just a little bit after when they go for it big. They go for it even bigger than… Notre Dame was like, okay, we did this, now we can go for it. This is the largest Gothic cathedral basically that ever got completed in France.
[00:25:47] Annie: Yeah.
[00:25:48] Elyse: It’s absolutely beautiful. And it’s more beautiful in relation to the structure of the building and the sculpture. There are others that, of course, are famous for the colored stained glass, like Chartres and places like that. But this one is the physical presence. When I went there, my husband, who never gets intimidated by anything, there were two or three young people doing restoring work on some sculpture on the outside façade, and he just blithely climbed up the scaffolding to join them.
I said, what are you doing? He said, I’m just going to go ask them a couple of questions, you know, and I stood there down below. He just went up to the top of the scaffolding, you know, hello. He didn’t get thrown overboard, which is pretty good. But anyway, so Notre Dame of Amiens is just absolutely an amazing thing to behold.
It was damaged ironically in the 1500s by a fire, which of course, a lot of things got damaged by fires in the 1400s and 1500s, and that was the most serious damage that it ever had.
[00:26:54] Annie: So can you still see the relic of John the Baptist’s face? Because I don’t remember seeing anything about it there.
[00:27:03] Elyse: I didn’t either. So, I don’t know. I mean, it’s got to be, it exists because there are current photographs of it.
So, maybe it’s hidden away in some treasury and you have to get special permission to see it.
[00:27:15] Annie: Okay. I’ll look into it. If I find anything, I’ll put it in the show notes.
[00:27:19] Elyse: Yeah, because when I saw the pictures of it, I went, Oh, wow. It reminds me of Sainte Foy, the head of Sainte Foy that’s in Conques, but this is actually a real death mask, so it’s really fascinating to see because it’s spooky under this enormous piece of crystal.
[00:27:34] Annie: Yeah, I’d love to see the crystal. I love those…
[00:27:36] Elyse: Well, apparently the gold that I don’t know if it was, if I remember correctly, it was at the time of the Revolution or just another time, but the gold work got more or less scraped off and they replaced it with silver.
Well, whatever, you know, I mean…
[00:27:50] Annie: That’s okay.
Some people like gold. Some people like silver.
[00:27:53] Elyse: Yeah. I mean, I’m sure they made, did something nice with the gold, hopefully. Anyway. The other thing is there’s a belfry. Did you go up to the top of the belfry?
[00:28:02] Annie: I did not, but I did hear the lady at the tourist office say that, I think there’s like a hundred steps that you have to take, but there’s also an elevator.
So they do some of both, but again, short on time.
[00:28:16] Elyse: Yeah, I mean, belfry, we just walked past. That was basically all we did. And it was really the guard tower to oversee when it still had its ramparts and everything, because it was built, it was actually built starting in 1244, which meant just that they would be working on the cathedral.
[00:28:32] Annie: There are a lot of very beautiful belfries in that whole area. The north of France is really famous for its beautiful belfries and most of them you can visit. My knees were like, no.
[00:28:45] Elyse: Yeah, well, I’ve never gone up to the top of Notre Dame for that reason, you know, so…
[00:28:50] Annie: I have gone to the top of Notre Dame before my knees…
[00:28:53] Elyse: Ah!
[00:28:54] Annie: …were a problem.
[00:28:55] Elyse: Pre knees, huh?
Yeah, well,
(Mid-roll Ad Spot)
The Jules Verne Circus
[00:29:00] Elyse: And then there’s another structure, but I know you’re going to talk a lot about Jules Verne, but it turns out that there’s a circus building there called the Jules Verne Circus.
[00:29:08] Annie: Right, so it’s the Cirque d’Hiver, The Winter Circus, which they renamed the Cirque Jules Verne. But they, so there’s a tradition in France of Christmas shows at circuses. And some of these have permanent buildings and some do not. In Toulouse, we don’t have a permanent Cirque d’Hiver, but they do, even to this day, a big construction to do Cirque d’Hiver for the kids.
And the City of Toulouse gives tickets for families who work for the city to take their kids to the Cirque d’Hiver. Yeah, it’s a tradition, it’s a Christmas tradition.
[00:29:51] Elyse: But this is, it turns out to be the largest permanent circus building in France.
[00:29:56] Annie: And the house that you can visit, where Jules Verne lived is not far at all from the Cirque d’Hiver.
So you can see them both at the same time. I don’t think you can go in unless you’re going to a show at the Cirque d’Hiver, but you can see it from the outside, it’s quite nice.
[00:30:15] Elyse: Quite nice, yeah. It’s a very interesting looking building. Although, I mean, it was built at the end of the 1800s, but he was the one that officially opened it when he was living there.
Yeah, he actually was the person who broke the bottle of champagne on it, or whatever they did at the time, you know, I guess that’s for boats, but the equivalent of that, you know, just cut the ribbon. Cut the ribbon, yes.
He lived there for a very long time. And before you start talking about him and his books, I just like the fact that the way he wound up in Amiens is because he was invited to a wedding.
He was 28 years old and he was invited to a wedding. And it turns out that he met this young woman who was the sister of, I can’t remember now if it was the sister of the groom, or sister of some of the, one of the wedding party, this young widow. He fell in love with her and that was it. And then he moved to Amiens and he is quoted as saying it is the perfect city.
[00:31:13] Annie: Yes, that’s what he was famous for saying, yes.
[00:31:15] Elyse: It’s lovely. I love that, you know. He was quoted as saying that about the city, and Violette Le Duc is quoted as saying about the cathedral, that it was the ultimate, most perfect example of Gothic architecture ever. So we have lots of perfect in the city of Amiens.
The Battle of the Somme
[00:31:31] Annie: So a few things that you can visit around Amiens as well before I get to Jules Verne. This is the area where the Bataille de la Somme took place. And if you’ve read ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’, that’s the Battle of the Somme, is the Western Front.
You can visit many sites. But there are a couple that are particularly interesting to English speaking people.
Villers Bretonneux is maybe 20 kilometers away, and you can visit it. There’s a memorial. There’s a history part. It’s very interesting. Another one that doesn’t have quite as much around it, but apparently is very, very impressive, is Le Cratère de la Boisselle, or there was another name for it.
Anyway, it’s a big old crater, ginormous crater.
[00:32:24] Elyse: From the explosions? Now, I’m assuming that most people know a little bit about the Battle of the Somme, but maybe not, because World War I is less known to Americans than World War II is in general, but it is considered to be the biggest battle ever fought in World War I and over a million people died.
[00:32:44] Annie: Right, it took place between July 1st and November 18th of 1916.
[00:32:50] Elyse: It was awful.
[00:32:51] Annie: It was along the northern, well, along the Somme River. It was primarily fought between British and French on one side and German Empire on the other. And they wanted to have a decisive breakthrough.
They wanted to relieve the pressure from Verdun, which is further east and a little further south.
They wanted to force the Germans to expand resources in the Somme. And on the first day alone, the British army suffered over 57,000 casualties, which was the worst day in its military history. There were enormous losses, but the allies continued their offensive for many months and they captured small bits of territory and you know, back and forth, back and forth, but they did not have the significant breakthrough that they were hoping for.
And yes, like you said, by the end of the battle, more than one million soldiers were wounded or killed, making it one of the worst battles ever in, of human history, period. And it’s remembered as a battle of futility, like they just wouldn’t give up. I know sometimes people say that it’s disrespectful to even mention the futility of war, but I think you can both have respect and admiration for the courage of the people who gave their lives and at the same time say, you know, perhaps we shouldn’t do that because it didn’t advance anybody’s purposes very much.
[00:34:31] Elyse: Not particularly.
[00:34:32] Annie: Yeah.
[00:34:32] Elyse: It is, I think, with Stalingrad, the two worst battles ever in human history.
Ready?
[00:34:37] Annie: So yes, the Battle of the Somme is, you know, if you want to visit the area with that in mind, you can.
You can definitely have that as your theme and go from site to site.
[00:34:50] Elyse: It is just that, you know, because WWI and WW II, unfortunately, were in that area, Amiens is a city that had to be rebuilt several times. And what’s nice is that some of the little houses, they rebuilt in the old style, some of it is just very modern, you know, because the second time around it was pretty rough to have to rebuild all of that.
[00:35:12] Annie: Yeah, yeah.
All right.
Jules Verne’s Life in Amiens
[00:35:14] Annie: (half) Let’s talk about Jules Verne.
So, like you mentioned, he considered Amiens to be the perfect city. And he lived there most of his life and that’s where he wrote most of his major works.
He’s a pioneering author. He wrote adventure novels. So these are like travel logs with incredible adventures.
[00:35:34] Elyse: But they were also, weren’t they, he was really interested in advances in science and predicting what could eventually happen. It’s like it’s a combination of that and fantasy.
[00:35:45] Annie: Right, so he was one of the precursors of science fiction. Meaning that he included some bits of science. And at the time, you know, France was at the cusp of scientific discoveries and they were always neck and neck with England trying to have the best scientists and the most discoveries and all of that.
So it was the era, the air of the time, was you know, let’s advance science and make as many discovery as we can. And he did include a lot of tidbits. He talks about instruments that they used to explore the earth and likewise. In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, he talks about the instruments that they used to measure their position and things like that, so, yeah.
So he was born on February 8th, 1828 in Nantes, which is not superfar from Amiens, yeah. And he died on March 24th, 1905 in Amiens.
I don’t know how old he was, let’s see 28 to 1905. Yeah, he was a good age.
Yeah, it was a good age.
He went to Paris at age 20 to study law.
He followed in his father’s footsteps, but he quickly became more interested in literature and the theater, and he started to write. At 29, so 1857, he marries Honorine de Viane Morel a widow, who had two children. And she was from Amiens. So that’s why they moved to Amiens, because that’s where her family was from.
It was very, I guess, open minded of him to marry a woman with… you know, a widow with two children.
[00:37:28] Elyse: I don’t know, and there’s other people we’ve looked at who, it turns out in the 1800s, a lot of people married widows. I don’t know, maybe husbands died a lot.
[00:37:39] Annie: And it’s, so she had more money than he did begin with.
Perhaps it was a way to secure a living while he was trying to make a name for himself in writing. But he was a prolific writer and fame came pretty quickly.
I should mention that they had one biological child. He had one biological child.
He adopted his wife’s children, and he had one biological child with her as well, Michel Verne was his name, and he was born in 1861.
Let’s see, in 1863, he was 35 when he published his first major novel, ‘Five Weeks in a Balloon’, ‘Cinq Semaines en Ballon’, which is the next one I want to read.
[00:38:25] Elyse: Now, how is that different from Eighty Days Around the World in a baloon?
[00:38:28] Annie: It’s completely different.
It’s a different story, different characters, but it’s all in a balloon. Yes, ballooning was huge. That’s why there was a, kind of a nod to it in the Paris Olympics with La Vasque, you know, that rises up in the air because this was the era of ballooning, both hot air and hydrogen, both manned and unmanned.
They had many, many trials, trying different balloon things. I’m terribly afraid of those things. I would never go in one of them. They’re used still to this day to visit beautiful, you know, to float over the city.
Jules Verne’s Early Inspirations
[00:39:06] Annie: At any rate, I can’t tell you very much about ‘Five Weeks in a Balloon’, ‘Cinq Semaines en Ballon’, because I haven’t read it since I was a child. But I read all of his books. Oh, when I was a child, yes, I was an avid reader.
The Appeal of Science Fiction
[00:39:17] Annie: I love Jules Verne. That’s probably why I still love science fiction. Because in science fiction, you get to put characters in situations that are very unusual. But I mean, you know, it’s always the same problems that they encounter.
These are problems you would encounter in everyday life today. But since they encounter these problems in a completely different universe, it’s easier to bring up a lot of, you know, uncomfortable things that we wouldn’t want to harp on about too much because it would make us, you know, unpopular.
[00:39:52] Elyse: It’s funny because the two books of his that I read that I loved were 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and basically, what the one that goes into space, which is what, De La Terre à la Lune. My two obsessions was exploring what’s under there and what’s up there, you know?
[00:40:11] Annie: Yes, yes, yes, yes. yes. So his first popular, first major novel, Cinq Semaines en Ballon, Five Weeks in the Balloon, and it became a great success. And it marks the start of a very prolific career.
Jules Verne’s Move to Amiens
[00:40:23] Annie: He moved to Amiens at age 43, with his wife and children. He wanted to be out away from Paris, which I know a lot of our listeners are going to think, oh, how strange that he wants to be away from Paris, but lots of French people want to be away from Paris.
[00:40:40] Elyse: And Amiens is a lovely place, and it’s only 115 kilometers from Paris.
[00:40:44] Annie: It’s not that far, really. You could do it, as a day trip from Paris if you wanted to, on a fast train. At age 54, 1888, he purchased the house at 2 rue Charles Dubois in Amiens, where he would live and write for the next 18 years.
So he rented it first and then he bought it.
The Maison Jules Verne Museum
[00:41:05] Annie: And now it is the Maison Jules Verne museum that I did go into, we did take the time for that, and it’s a lovely house.
Lots and lots of visitors in August, but it’s very interesting to see. You know, you can see among, it’s a maison… it’s a rich person’s house.
[00:41:23] Elyse: Does it show you, like, the Victor Hugo house or the Monet, where he worked, actually?
[00:41:29] Annie: You can see his desk. You cannot approach his desk.
You see it from little balcony, but yes, you do see that. You see some bedrooms. It was a big house. It’s over several levels. I thought it was just a very fun visit, but see, this is at age 54.
So it took a while, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
Jules Verne’s Later Life and Legacy
[00:41:50] Annie: At age 60, 1888, he becomes a city councillor in Amiens and he held that position until 1904.
And he participated in every aspect of cultural life, local, political and cultural life. And he died in Amiens in 1905 after a long illness. He’s buried in La Madeleine cemetery, just on the outskirts of Amiens.
I went to his cemetery as well. He has a lovely grave. It looks like a man coming out of a book and reaching up to the skies.
It’s a beautiful, beautiful place. Amiens clearly loves Jules Verne, so you will see a lot of nods to him.
Honestly, his books are fantastic because you get to just go into fantastical stories.
Exploring Jules Verne’s Novels
[00:42:41] Annie: So I was mentioning earlier that these are travel logs with adventures. Voyage to the Center of the Earth, this crazy guy who wants to see the center the earth and all sorts of things happen along the way that are completely impossible. Obviously, it’s a novel, okay? But it’s fun. And they almost get killed many times, and they get rescued, and they get spewed up by the volcano at Stromboli and…
[00:43:09] Elyse: It’s the kind of fantasy, but it has a certain element of reality in it. That’s what I love about it, you know?
[00:43:16] Annie: Right, so the characters are a bit cookie cutter. I must say like the crazy uncle who thinks about nothing but discovering the universe is funny. The character in ‘Around the World in 80 days’, the proper British guy who won’t, you know, he doesn’t talk to anybody except for the people at his club.
[00:43:37] Elyse: Right, exactly, right.
[00:43:38] Annie: It’s just adorable. And then he goes on all these adventures. And along the way you get to discover other countries, other cultures.
[00:43:46] Elyse: Did he travel?
[00:43:47] Annie: A lot. Yes. And that’s what fed his, you know… it’s like he was doing research about a place for a trip and then he included incredible things that happened, while on this trip, that of course would not happen on a normal trip. At least probably you wouldn’t want that stuff to happen to you during a normal trip. You don’t want to be captured and, you know, no, you don’t want any of this stuff to happen to you.
Surprisingly, of the three I have revisited since childhood, my least favorite was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea because it’s more, it’s stiffer.
[00:44:30] Elyse: It’s fishy.
[00:44:33] Annie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t know. I didn’t like it as much as the others. But I will continue, you know, I will continue reading. Mysterious Island, The Mysterious l’Île Mystérieuse.
[00:44:43] Elyse: That’s really fun.
[00:44:44] Annie: So I want to listen to that one as well. De la Terre à la Lune, so From the Earth to the Moon, I want to do. I want to read five Weeks in a Balloon, Cinq Semaines en Ballon. There’s some that I don’t really…
[00:44:56] Elyse: How many did he write? Do you have any idea?
[00:44:58] Annie: I know he was very, very prolific in his 30s and 40s. I didn’t look how many exactly he published, but he published at least a dozen major novel that were always well received. They’re easy to read. It’s not like it’s complicated. It keeps you on the edge of your seat a little bit because you wonder what’s going to happen next. Oh, what terrible thing will happen next?
[00:45:22] Elyse: Well, I wonder if they weren’t like with Dickens, they were done in chapters so that you always wonder what’s going to happen next. You know, they publish them that way to anticipate. It was very common at the time to do that.
[00:45:34] Annie: I didn’t look that up, but Jules Verne books are not that long.
[00:45:38] Elyse: They’re not that long, no.
[00:45:40] Annie: I mean, Dickens by comparison, just…
[00:45:42] Elyse: Right, Dickens was extremely long.
[00:45:44] Annie: Yeah, very, very long. Lots of descriptions. Jules Verne descriptions are pretty basic. He sets the stage, I mean, he can write a good description, you have the visual, you have the auditory, you have the smells, he talks about all of the things that surround you, but he doesn’t go on and on for a whole chapter like Victor Hugo or Dickens, you know, which they do go into a lot.
[00:46:09] Elyse: Fascinating for instance, Melies who was one of the first people to ever try and do anything like cinema used his stories as inspiration, for instance Méliès who was one of the first people to try and do things like cinema was the first one to do you know, flying to the moon,. Man on the moon. I mean, all of these things, they allow you to think about other stuff, you know.
[00:46:26] Annie: Yeah, things that, I mean, clearly, they couldn’t do any of this stuff, you still cannot go to the center of the earth, by the way.
[00:46:32] Elyse: No no.
[00:46:34] Annie: 20,000 Leagues, probably you can, yes. And to the moon, definitely, but to the center of the earth, it’s still not possible.
[00:46:42] Elyse: That’s not bad after a hundred years, actually, when you think about it.
[00:46:45] Annie: Yeah, so he, he kind of push the envelope about what was possible and also inspired a lot of young people.
Jules Verne in Film
[00:46:52] Annie: Now, surprisingly, the movies, because I was looking for a movie and I ran into The Nautilus that you mentioned. And I just, I was like, it’s Jackie Chan doing funny faces, and no, it’s, for me, it wasn’t the same No. Okay. But I didn’t find very much, like, I wish there were like some epic movies that kind of stick to his stories, because his stories are pretty good.
[00:47:17] Elyse: There aren’t any?
[00:47:19] Annie: I couldn’t find any, you know, so they just did ‘The Three Musketeers’ again.
Those have been done like, you know, over and over again. And I wish Jules Verne would get the same treatment.
Because, really, it’s fun.
[00:47:32] Elyse: It Is very, it’s really a lot of fun. It’s true.
Culinary Delights of Amiens
[00:47:34] Elyse: So should we end by talking about some of the goodies that you can eat that come region around Amiens?
Yes. Let’s talk about food. Let’s talk about food. I’m actually surprised that there’s a famous pâté de canard that comes from Amiens, I don’t know why. Why should I be surprised? I don’t know. But anyway, they have Le Flamiche, which I love. It’s kind of, well, I really shouldn’t eat it, but I like it.
It’s basically another version of, like a pissaladière, but from the north because it’s got cream and pieces of bacon on an open face crust.
[00:48:09] Annie: So it’s like a flammekuche.
[00:48:10] Elyse: Exactly, and it’s good. And then one that I won’t eat, but there you are, and that’s the Andouillette. Uh, I will not go near it. I won’t sit at the same table with it either, you know.
[00:48:22] Annie: Smells, it smells. That this is not the Southern US Andouillette. This is the French version, which is pungent.
[00:48:27] Elyse: Oh boy, it is strong. Then they have two things that I love and that is the gâteau battu, you know, which is on the broche.
So that, you know, you get that here, even at the Christmas market, I don’t like, they say it comes from there. Who knows if it’s actually true?
And then the macaroons, they have a whole specialty. I remember getting some in a bakery. Of course, that’s one of my things, right the bakery. And then they also have some kind of a beignet that is actually, they call it the beignet from Amiens. I don’t really know what makes it particularly special, to be honest, you know.
[00:49:00] Annie: I had a Ficelle Picarde, you did not mention. So it’s also a local dish and it is like a, so imagine a wrap, but inside they put like a bechamel with mushrooms and it’s wrapped. And I think there was some ham in it and then they cover it with cheese and put it under the broiler and it’s served with fries. And it was quite good. They also serve the welsh, that they serve up in that area. I wouldn’t say it’s high gastronomy, but it’s good.
[00:49:35] Elyse: I think that whole region going into Flanders is very similar, the specialties are tend to be, you know, for cold weather specialties a lot, and then of course there’s little beignets and then little cooked pastries and things like that. But they do use a fair amount of cream and meat, it’s not a Mediterranean style at all. You know, it’s very similar to what you can get in Lille, actually. But it was very good. To be honest, I just know we ate in a nice little restaurant.
I don’t really remember specifically what we had, but it was something very charming, you know?
[00:50:06] Annie: Yeah, so I would recommend that you visit Amiens. You probably need, if you want to go up the belfry, really explore the cathedral, go to the Hortillonnage, enjoy some Jules Verne. I think it’s worth two days, but probably you don’t need much more. If you want to go explore the Battle of the Somme area, you probably need at least one extra day, perhaps two, because that’s more spread out. And to see the Battle of the Somme, you need a car.
[00:50:38] Elyse: Yes, you need a car. And one of the things you can do, we went by car because we were traveling around the area. It’s actually a place you can stay and then do even another side trip. For instance, to go to Arras, which is quite interesting and very beautiful as a very small city. Amiens is about 165,000 people, which is a nice medium sized city for France.
But Arras is very interesting and not very far away, it’s about 50 kilometers away.
I say the S at the end, Arras.
Well, I don’t know up there if they say it or not. I don’t know if they say Arras or Arras. I
[00:51:10] Annie: They say it in the South, you know.
[00:51:11] Elyse: They say it in the South and don’t say it in the North, so who knows, you know.
That big huge square is the largest square in France.
We should talk about it in another episode, yeah. It’s beautiful!
And you can go to Beauvais and see the church that almost made it, the wannabe church that not quite… yeah, didn’t beat out Amiens.
You can actually do something, which I’ve always wanted to do, you can go visit the Baie de la Somme.
[00:51:37] Annie: That’s what all the French people, when I said I was going up there, they say, Oh, you have to go to Baie de la Somme, but we didn’t have the time. I’m telling you, we needed four more days. We had eight and we really needed 12 at least. If you want to really enjoy that northern, you know, La Picardie, Les Hauts de France, I think you need a good 12 days, and you could probably do it in 15 days and not get bored a single time. Like, there’s plenty to do up there.
Thank you so much, Elyse!
[00:52:09] Elyse: You’re welcome, Annie.
Au revoir, everybody!
Thank you Patrons
[00:52:19] Annie: Again I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patreon supporters get new episodes as soon as they are ready and ad-free. Please be like them, follow the link in the show notes.
Patrons get many more exclusive rewards, for doing that you can see them at patreon.com/joinus.
And a special shout out this week to my one Join Us in France champion: Casey Amistead, she’s the only one this week. Last week, there was a whole bunch of them. But to all of my current patrons, it is wonderful to have you onboard in the community of travel enthusiasts and Francophiles who keep this podcast going.
And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/Elysart.
This week, I am working on a very informative booklet about driving in France that I’ll publish for my higher tier Patreon supporters.
Tour Reviews
[00:53:22] Annie: Let’s talk about some reviews of my tour this week, including one that I had to respond to because, it was a bit strange. Here’s the first one. And so you have to know that most people who leave a review, they don’t leave their names.
And as a matter of fact, most people just give it five stars and be done with it. But a few people give their names. This person is called Nicole Hartje, and this was on November 18th, 2024. She wrote: ‘This tour was so lovely and interesting. We’ve learned a lot of cool little details to share with our friends when they visit us here’.
Ah, so she probably lives in France. ‘The GPS was spot on and the sound quality was great, highly recommended’.
The day before that, there was a post from an anonymous explorer who did not leave his name or her name, on the 17th of November, 2024. This person wrote: ‘This is the worst app / tour ever. The GPS is way off so you never know if you’re going in the right direction, there is super annoying music playing all the time. I travel extensively and have done hundreds of tours, but this was the worst. I finally gave up, don’t waste your money’.
Okay, so I had to respond to this and I said: ‘thank you for your feedback, there is no music on my tours. Other clients have not had your experiences with the GPS. I’m sorry you had this happen, but perhaps it was a technical issue with the phone and your settings. I hope you’ll consider trying another one of my tours’. And indeed, there is no background music on my tours.
There’s the occasional little, kind of bumper music. Like, you know, if I talk about a fight, there might be some fight sounds for a second. But that’s about it. There’s no background music. So this person was probably, they probably had something playing on their phone, they didn’t even realize it.
Apparently, TikTok is famous for doing that. I don’t use TikTok, so I don’t know.
Also, if the GPS doesn’t work, well, sometimes it has to do with the fact that it’s really overcast, and because the GPS needs clear view into the sky, and sometimes your phone just needs a reboot.
At any rate, I’m sorry that this happens to some people, thankfully, it’s very, very few people who experience this. And these were about my Latin Quarter tours, both of those.
About my Eiffel Tower tour, somebody called Danielle Rhodes, on September 12, 2024 wrote:
‘Nice way to prepare us for the Eiffel Tower ascent, in a relaxed way that helped us skip the lines. Good recommendations for the restaurant inside of the museum.
Yes, I do explain how to skip the lines. I’ve said this on the podcast many times. Sometimes I feel like I’m a broken record, but I do put these wonderful tidbits in the tours.
About my Saint Germain des Prés tour, Harry Conaway, on October 28th, 2024, wrote: ‘Annie was great, provided lots of substance, plus some jokes, current tidbits, and some practical tips. A delight.’
Well, thank you very much, Harry.
About my Ile de la Cité tour, Gilles Firon on November 17th, 2024:
‘VoiceMap was the structure in my random day in Paris. Thank you’.
So this is really important. If you are going to Paris and you don’t have the time to make a plan, all you need to do is download one of these tours.
Go to whichever looks interesting to you, whichever you haven’t seen before. Download the tour before you arrive, that’s really important, you want the tour fully downloaded from somewhere you have good WiFi. And not spotty hotel WiFi, because if it can’t complete the download properly, then it’s just not going to work right.
But that’s all you need. Once the tour is properly downloaded, then, man, you can take it without even data or anything else. The GPS will work whether or not you have a data contract in France, or if you have roaming in France. And once you’ve downloaded the tour, you have it, it’s going to work without anything else.
About my Montmartre tour, an anonymous explorer wrote on the 6th of November, 2024:
‘Good commentary and great history lesson, well done. Thank you very much’.
And last, but not least, my food tour of Les Halle, this is an older one, April 16, 2024: “I like the way she presents the stories. Love the tour’.
Well, thank you very much. Yeah, the tour, the food tour was fun to do. It doesn’t get sold as much, which I don’t understand why, because it’s really, really interesting, and it’s a really good way to learn about French food.
But there you have it. People, I guess, prefer, instead of spending 10 bucks on a self guided tour, they want to pay 200 for a guide that will take you into the same shops and tell you to try the same thing.
Whatever. Okay. Thank you so much for those reviews.
And podcast listeners get a big discount for buying these tours from my website. But if you buy directly from me, remember it’s a manual process, because I am not a robot or an AI or anything like that, so it will take a few hours before they get the codes. I sleep as well.
I sleep too much sometimes, I think, especially in the winter. Oh, it’s so good to sleep. I love this stuff. If you want to read more reviews of these tours, go to joinusinfrance.com/VMR and that sounds for VoiceMap reviews.
Itinerary Consults
[00:58:54] Annie: I also do itinerary consults for people who would really like to talk to someone who’s been there, done that.
There are two levels, the Bonjour, which is quite inexpensive, and the more in depth, the VIP service. It costs more, but you get more stuff out of it. And you can buy that from the boutique.
Also, if you’d like to support the podcast and discover some of my favorite products, head over to joinusinfrance.com/Amazon. Every purchase made through this link helps me keep bringing you more great content and it will not cost you anything extra. And thank you for your support.
Just today, I got an, a message from someone who said, Oh, how do I do your Amazon link? Because she remembers the Amazon link.All you have to do is type injoinusinfrance.com/Amazon. It will take you to my travel smart shopping list, you can buy something from that or anything else you want. Just click on one of those products, anything like there’s a wonderful map of Paris right there, click on that, you don’t have to put it in your basket, continue shopping on Amazon, whatever you want to buy, and the podcast gets a small commission. And it doesn’t cost you any extra, I swear, I swear, it’s all free.
Christmas in Provence
[01:00:14] Annie: All right, let’s talk about Christmas in Provence.
If you’re considering visiting Provence during the holidays, let me tell you why Aix en Provence is one of those places that truly embraces the Christmas spirit. It’s packed with charm, lights, delicious traditions, but be warned, the rest of Provence can feel a little bit sleepy during this time. So if you want festive vibes, Aix en Provence is a good destination for that.
I had a consultation with someone just this week who wanted to go with his elderly mother and she’s all gung ho about going to Provence and that’s when he can come with her, Christmas time.
And I was like, ah, can I talk you into going to Strasbourg or Paris instead? No, they wanted to go to Provence. So if you do that, which is fine, you know, if that’s what you want, that’s what you want. But if you do that, make sure you go to a city. Because, every time I Google about Christmas in Provence, I find these beautiful, beautifully written blog posts that will repeat 50 times ‘ the best of Christmas in Provence’, and yet, provide you with no specific places where you can go. And that’s because there’s very few things happening in Provence at around Christmas time.
Christmas is a very heavily family oriented holiday. There are a few cities that do well. Avignon, not so great. Aix en Provence, quite well. Nice also has a lot. But what happens is they have events spread out throughout the whole month of December. They have stuff for kids. They have stuff for you know, older people. They have all sorts of events. But it doesn’t pack it all in the way it does in Strasbourg, right?
Strasbourg, you can’t miss it. Like, how? It’s everywhere. It’s all it is for the whole month of December. So if that’s what you’re looking for, then consider going to Strasbourg, consider going to Paris.
If you’re considering Paris, listen to episode 368 called: ‘How to Enjoy the Best of Christmas in Paris’, where I list all the places I have been to personally, that I know have put on a great Christmas show in Paris.
So Paris doesn’t turn into all Christmas like Strasbourg does or Colmar does, but there’s a lot of stuff to do around Christmas.
So consider where you’re going in Provence and don’t expect, you know, that every street corner there’s going to be somebody saying, selling Santon or whatever. It’d be nice, but that’s just not how it works.
Events in Paris
[01:02:42] Annie: Let’s talk about some of the events going on in Paris now and going forward. There are a lot of expos going on. The Musée de la Libération has some festive activities to celebrate the fifth year of this museum.
At the Maison de Victor Hugo, they have a show for children.
They have something called Illusion Conjugale Perdue, so Conjugal Illusions Lost, at the Maison de Balzac, starting on the 20th of November.
At the Petit Palais, they have something called Ribera, Ténèbres et Lumières, so it’s, you know, something about the light.
Again, La Maison de Victor Hugo does something called François Chifflard.
There’s a Modigliani and Zadkine Expo at the Musée Zadkine until the 30th of March.
A bunch of things, Rodin and Bourdelle at the Musée Bourdelle.
Paris is constantly teeming with expos and activities, and if you want to learn about them, you can sign up for their newsletter. It’s the Paris Musée newsletter. So it’s musees-paris.fr
Go to that website, sign up for their newsletter. I’m not sure if they send it in English as well as French. Mine was in French. But they really do a good job listing all of the things going on in Paris, and it’s usually in chunks. There’s a season that goes between November and March, and then at some point in March, they’re going to put on a new exhibit season, but Paris is fantastic that way, lots and lots of things going on all the time.
My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Cristian Cotovan who produced the transcripts and make the podcast sound good.
Next week on the podcast
[01:04:42] Annie: Next week on the podcast an episode about Christmas in the Alsace region with Eddie Hamalian. I know a lot of you will be heading to Strasbourg and the Alsace in December as I did a couple of Christmases ago. And you can hear all about that in episode 431 of the podcast.
It is estimated that a couple of million people make their way to Alsace every year to enjoy the Christmas spirit. So there’s a lot to find out about. So tune in next Sunday for this episode.
And remember, patrons get an ad-free version of this episode, click on the link in the show notes to be like them.
Thank you so much for listening and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together. Au revoir.
Copyright
[01:05:25] Annie Sargent: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and Copyright 2024 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.
Subscribe to the Podcast
Apple Google Spotify RSSSupport the Show
Tip Your Guides Extras Patreon Audio ToursRead more about this transcript
Episode PageCategories: French Culture, Hauts-de-France