Table of Contents for this Episode
Category: Off the Beaten Track in France
Discussed in this Episode
- Laon
- Château-Thierry
- Fontainebleau
- Melun
- National Museum of the Gendarmerie (Melun)
- Vaux-le-Vicomte
- Vézelay (basilica
- hilltop town)
- La Grotte d’Arcy-sur-Cure
- Bourges
- Sarlat (hospital
- B\&B)
- Dijon
- Alésia battlefield
- Venarey-les-Laumes (near Alésia)
- Muséoparc d’Alésia
- statue of Vercingetorix (Alésia)
- Roman ruins at Alésia
- Colombey-les-Deux-Églises
- Croix de Lorraine (Colombey)
- De Gaulle’s house and museum (Colombey)
562 Pont du Gard, Dog Sleds, and a Dash of Chaos with Gregg Furey (Sept 7)
Annie Sargent: This is Join Us in France, episode 562, cinq-cent-soixante-deux.
Annie Sargent: Bonjour. I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey to the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
[00:00:31] Today’s Episode
Annie Sargent: Today, I bring you a conversation with Gregg Furey about exploring France’s hidden gems from small towns near Paris to Vézelay, ancient caves and the legendary battlefield of Alésia.
Annie Sargent: Gregg shares unique travel stories, practical tips, and a dash of chaos, including a hospital adventure, making this episode a must listen for anyone seeking authentic, off-the-beaten-path French experiences.
[00:01:02] Support the Podcast
Annie Sargent: It takes more than caffeine and chocolatine to make this podcast. It takes you. Many of you support the show by booking itinerary consults, using my VoiceMap tours, joining the boot camp, riding in my EV, or contributing on Patreon. Thank you for being part of it all.
Annie Sargent: If you want to keep the show ad-free or see what else I offer, you’ll find the link in the show notes or at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
[00:01:33] Strikes and Political Difficulties in France
Annie Sargent: For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Gregg today, I’ll discuss the announced strikes and political difficulties starting on Monday, September 8th. That’s tomorrow if you listen to the podcast as soon as it’s released.
Annie Sargent: And just so you know, the podcast is released every Sunday at 6:00 PM Paris time.
[00:01:55] Air Quality in Paris, ETIAS and EES requirements
Annie Sargent: I’ll also discuss good news about air quality in Paris and also about the ETIAS and EES requirements in France. That should start soon.
Annie Sargent: I’m not sure how to say ETIAS, but I think that’s how you say it. It’s E-T-I-A-S. Stay tuned. Lots of news, after my chat with Gregg today.
Annie Sargent: And if you’d like a handy summary of the conversation with all the useful links, subscribe to the newsletter at joinusinfrance.com/newsletter. It is indeed the best way to stay in the loop.
[00:02:40] Gregg and Annie
Annie Sargent: Bonjour, Gregg, and welcome to Join Us in France.
Gregg Furey: Bonjour, Annie. Ca va?
Annie Sargent: Ca va tres bien. Et vous?
Gregg Furey: Je me débrouille.
[00:02:52] Greg’s Unique Travel Experiences
Annie Sargent: So, we are going to talk about a trip that you took recently to places that most people don’t go to, which is why I was interested in talking to you. You did this évasion canine thing that I’ve heard about. I want to hear about that. You went to Alesia, you went to some caves in Arcey-sur-Cure. Anyway, you did some interesting stuff. So, let’s talk about this. When did this trip take place?
Gregg Furey: Well, it’s actually, I’m going back like the last three trips that I took to France.
Annie Sargent: Okay.
Gregg Furey: And in the very last trip that I took to France I ended up in the hospital. So I didn’t get to do a lot of what I wanted to do, and then there was a death in the family, so I had to cut the trip short.
Annie Sargent: Ah-huh. Yes.
Gregg Furey: Yeah.
[00:03:39] Exploring Small Towns Near Paris
Gregg Furey: But before we begin, I just wanted to mention that one of my most favorite things to do when planning trips to France now is I just pick a sort of a small town, maybe 30, 40 kilometers away from Paris, and I like to just go stay there for two or three days and decompress, you know, get over the jet lag.
Gregg Furey: So two trips ago, was when I ended up going toLaon, where they have the famous cathedral with the animals on the outside, and things like that.
Gregg Furey: So that’s kind of been my modus operandi for the last…
Annie Sargent: That’s an interesting way to do this. And how do you make your way to those places?
Gregg Furey: I rent a car and I drive super slow because I’m terrified of getting a ticket in France. And a lot of people honk at me, but I don’t care, so…
Annie Sargent: Yeah. So you try to just go maybe 100 kilometers away from Paris, from wherever you land?
Gregg Furey: Yeah, yeah.
Gregg Furey: Something I can drive in less than two hours, and discover some place where tourists don’t normally go. In the first episode that we did together,I found Château Thierry, was a place kind of like that. I mean, who goes to Château Thierry, you know?
Annie Sargent: Well, quite a few people, actually, I think.
Gregg Furey: Well, certainly a lot of United States Marines go there.
Annie Sargent: Exactly. Exactly. Right. It has an interest there for military people.
Gregg Furey: Well, and then, other times, I went to Fontainebleau.
[00:05:04] Visiting Melun
Gregg Furey: And then other times I went to Melun. My friend warned me not to go there, but I went there anyway.
Annie Sargent: What, spell that name?
Gregg Furey: M-E-L-U-N.
Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm. Okay. Melun. Yes.
Gregg Furey: It’s not the greatest of towns, but it’s very easy to access Vaux-le-Vicomte and Fontainebleau from there.
Annie Sargent: Right. So what made it not so great? Like it didn’t look scenic or didn’t have much of a historical city center?
Gregg Furey: Yeah, yeah. The most interesting thing I found in the city of Melun, and anybody could do this just driving through, was the National Museum of the Gendarmerie.
Annie Sargent: Uh-huh.
Gregg Furey: Yeah. That was interesting. That was very, very interesting. Because you got to see the evolution of the Gendarmerie from the time of Napoleon until modern days.
Annie Sargent: And you know, the word comes from “les gens d’armes”, which is something they use in the Conciergerie in Paris. I know this because I just did some research about this for my new Gothic Paris tour. So in the Conciergerie the big room that you enter is called La Place des Gens d’armes, but it’s spelled in two words, les gens d’armes. So the people of the weapons.
Gregg Furey: Right. Armed people, yeah.
Annie Sargent: And then they use that later, Les Gendarmes. But to French people, if you say the origin of the word, we don’t really know, if you don’t think about it, it’s like, “Oh, yeah.” But then when somebody tells you, you go, “Oh, sure, Les Gens d’armes. Yes, of course.”
Gregg Furey: Yeah. Yeah, both languages have a lot of words like that, you know. They started off as compound words, and then they just become a normal one-word word.
Annie Sargent: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:06:46] Hospitalization in France
Annie Sargent: So I’m kind of curious about your hospitalization thing. If you don’t mind, I would like to go into that to start with, because this is not something that happens to a lot of people, but it can happen. You can have accidents, you can have infections, you can have a variety of things.
Annie Sargent: And a lot of people who visit France are honestly over 50, and over 50 you tend to have more issues. So what happened to you?
Gregg Furey: Okay. I spent, probably almost a week in Vézelay, and visited a lot of interesting places near there I’d like to get into. But anyway, our plan was to drive, there were four of us, was to drive from Vézelay, stop one night in Bourges, and then continue on to Sarlat.
Gregg Furey: And if you see a map, you see you’re driving through nothing. I mean, it’s like in the middle of nowhere. Okay? So, we stopped for lunch in Sancerre, a beautiful town, beautiful views from up there. But I was starving, so I decided to go into this really, kind of like a dive of a restaurant. And I think I ate something bad there.
Annie Sargent: Ah-huh.
Gregg Furey: Because by the time we were in Bourges that night, I knew something was wrong. And I was sick. In fact, I was so sick that the next day, I couldn’t drive from Bourges to Sarlat, and my wife had to take over. And she did wonderfully, even having to deal with the roundabouts which she had never driven in before.
Gregg Furey: So, by the time we get to Sarlat, I’m so sick that I can’t see or do anything around Sarlat. I just stayed in the hotel room. And after about three days of being very, very sick and it was, you know, the GI problems, I thought I had some kind of food poisoning or something. But it wasn’t quite the same. After about three days of that,a friend of mine says, “You need to go to a lab and get your blood tested.” And that was something completely unusual for me. I’d never heard of that before. Anybody in France can just go to a lab and say, “Test my blood.”
Annie Sargent: Yes.
Gregg Furey: So, that’s what I did.
Annie Sargent: I mean, it helps if you have a prescription from your doctor who says exactly what the doctor wants tested. But if you just say-
Gregg Furey: I did, I did. Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Okay. Okay.
Gregg Furey: So I did that. The results came back in about four hours, and my doctor friend says, “Go to the hospital.”
Gregg Furey: So, I’m not going to ignore him and I go to the local hospital, and Daniel, the owner of the B&B in Sarlat, even before I went to the hospital, he starts apologizing to me about, “Well, this is a rural hospital. It’s not going to be anything that you’re used to.”
Gregg Furey: And it was raining the whole time, so, I get to the hospital. And no one can just walk into the ER. You have to stand outside the ER and you have to call the national number and a screener comes on and they didn’t have anybody who spoke English.
Gregg Furey: This was when I knew all these French lessons have been, they’re paying off now, right? So, I had to explain to him, the screener, in French, what my illness was, what all of my symptoms were. And then after that, a doctor comes on the line and I had to repeat myself again to the doctor.
Gregg Furey: So finally,the doctor who kind of maybe spoke English, he says, “Okay, we’ll let you in to see the screening nurse.” So, we stood out there for another 20 minutes wondering what’s happening and then finally I rang the intercom, and told them who I was and the screening nurse says, “Oh, yes. What’s taking you so long?” And then she came out and she got me and then back inside, we repeated the entire process again of being screened.
Gregg Furey: Mm-hmm.
Gregg Furey: I managed to show her my test results, and then she says, “Okay, we’re going to admit you, but first you have to go to the waiting room.” So, we sat in the waiting room for about four hours. Yeah.
Gregg Furey: And then after that I got an MRI. I understood what they were doing with that. But they kept explaining themselves to me in really rapid, local dialect French. And I had to keep telling them in my passable French, you know, “Will you please slow down? I don’t understand you.”
Annie Sargent: Right. Right. Right. So, this is not at all … Was this in the middle of the night?
Gregg Furey: By the time I got into the hospital, into the waiting room, it was about 7:00 at night, on a Saturday night.
Annie Sargent: Because, I mean, Sarlat is not a very large city. They have just under 9,000 inhabitants. So, I’m not surprised that they don’t have, you know, a full hospital. But around Toulouse where I live, and unfortunately my husband is prone to GI problems and so we’ve had very similar experiences.
Annie Sargent: But in Toulouse you don’t have to go through this intercom kind of situation. You walk in and you have a person in front of you, who then can manage. The difficulty… I can’t emphasize enough that French doctors may say that they speak English, but I wouldn’t count on it. Because they’ve had school English just like you’ve had school French and when you get to France you’re like, “Oh, what is this?” Right?
Gregg Furey: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Well, it’s the same with French people and English. If they’ve never lived outside of France in an English-speaking country, they never had a chance to really improve their English, and it complicates things. But they got you sorted out, right? After a few days you’ve …
Gregg Furey: Yeah. They gave me an MRI. They told me that it was in fact an infection in my GI tract. It wasn’t food poisoning. They insisted that I stay there for two nights. They put me in a room with some guy that didn’t speak standard French, so I really couldn’t understand anything he was saying.
Annie Sargent: How do you know he didn’t speak standard French? Like, that’s weird. You mentioned that twice. But I mean, Sarlat is not that … We don’t speak Occitan around here.
Gregg Furey: His family kept visiting, and I asked the nurses as well, you know, the nurses that could speak the French that I understand. I said, “How come I can’t understand him?” And she would say, “Oh, well, he’s just speaking the local dialect. It’s a very strong accent.”
Annie Sargent: Okay. A very strong accent, okay. Wow.
Gregg Furey: The hospital was very run down, it was like some place that was built in the ’50s and has never been remodeled or never been upgraded except for the medical machinery, and Daniel explained that the national government is trying to force the people of Sarlat to go to Bordeaux when they have major problems, because they’re trying to shut this hospital down. Because, like you said, there’s only a few thousand people that live in Sarlat, so …
[00:13:07] Medical “Deserts”
Annie Sargent: Right. Right. When people tell me that they would like to move to France, I tell them, “Look into this issue of désert médical, medical deserts,” because the center of France, kind of between Sarlat and all the way up to, when you get into the Vosges and places like that, that diagonal there is just not a lot of people, very, very few people.
Gregg Furey: That’s why I like it.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, but when you’re sick it’s a problem because you don’t have the … and they would much rather you go to the regional hospital. I assume this is a problem in the US as well. Like, you have regional hospitalsthat are much better.
Annie Sargent:
Gregg Furey: I’m in California now, and for instance, the cities in the very north of California, they don’t have hospitals anymore. People have to drive all the way to San Francisco now because medical people just don’t want to work in these places. In the United States they have no way to force them.
Annie Sargent: Right, and they don’t in France either. They incentivize them. They give them tax breaks. My nephew is a dentist, and he went to work in a very small town near Limoges, a little north of Limoges, for three years for tax breaks. He was supposed to stay there for five years. He couldn’t make it. He broke the contract. He’s going to pay the taxes, and he bought a practice in Toulouse.
Annie Sargent: So, it’s very difficult for young people to settle in these places because they have also a lot of really backwards type of people. Like for the dentist, he was telling me, “I can’t believe these people. They haven’t seen a dentist in 20 years,” and then they’re surprised that, you know, there’s a lot of work to be done. And like, “Ugh, well, that’s how it is,” you know? So it’s hard to incentivize young doctors to go to these places. They’re trying to, but it didn’t work in the case of my nephew, anyway. I assume this did not cost you an arm and a leg. I mean, you didn’t pay very much for it.
Gregg Furey: At the end of my visit there, two nights in the hospital, with everything, it was a little over $2,000 cash, to check out, which was fine because my insurance in the United States reimbursed me for that.
Annie Sargent: Okay. Okay.
Gregg Furey: It all worked out, yeah.
Annie Sargent: Let’s leave that behind and talk about the things that you enjoyed the most on these various trips that we want to talk about.
[00:15:28] Discovering Laon
Gregg Furey: Well, Laon is a wonderful city. I really, really enjoyed Laon. I wrote to you earlier saying that it was where Napoleon retreated to after Waterloo, but I was incorrect. Napoleon lost a battle in Laon, and if you go there you’ll see exactly why. Because it’s a city up on a … not so much a hill as a… What do you call? A mesa.
Annie Sargent: Okay. Okay.
Gregg Furey: The sides of the hill are steep, so it’s a town that’s very easy to defend, militarily speaking. But it’s a beautiful little town, about 25,000 people. And there’s artwork all over town. They’ve painted these murals of French heroes, so if you’re a fan of French history, you can go see these heroes all over the place. And then,Monsieur Marquette came from this town as well. That’s the guy that opened up a lot of Canada for France.
Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.
Gregg Furey: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: So Laon is about … I don’t know, it’s a tiny bit north of Reims. First of all you the name of the city, you spell L-A-O-N, and it’s just a little north of Reims, probablyan hour and a half or something, perhaps just an hour by car to the east, northeast of Paris.
Gregg Furey: Mm-hmm.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. So it would be fairly easy to get to from CDG, as a matter of fact, because you don’t even have to get on the Paris belt route, or very little, and then … you’re going northeast.
Gregg Furey: Yeah. Oh, and that was the first time … I wanted to show this to you. Maybe I’ll send you a picture of it.
Annie Sargent: They have a beautiful, beautiful basilica.
[00:17:09] Disque de Stationnement
Gregg Furey: That was the first time I ever used one of these.
Annie Sargent: Oh, les disques.
Gregg Furey: Right.
Annie Sargent: Les disques de stationnement, yes. So un disque de stationnement is something you use when you are supposed to indicate what time you arrived…
Gregg Furey: Exactly.
Annie Sargent: … because you can only stay there for a certain number of time, and so they will … It might be two hours, it might be an hour, whatever. How did that work in Laon?
Gregg Furey: Worked perfectly, but if you’re … as you know, if you’re out in rural, rural France, they still use these things.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, they do.
Gregg Furey: … And so, if you’re going to be driving a car, you have to go to a tabac and get one.
Annie Sargent: Your rental car didn’t have one in it?
Gregg Furey: Oh, no. No, no, no.
Annie Sargent: Huh. Huh.
Gregg Furey: No, because I don’t think they expected me to go to the middle of nowhere, so…
Annie Sargent: Yeah, Laon has this beautiful cathedral with a campanile and… so there’s three towers, as a matter of fact, and then you have a beautiful, kind of the entryway into the city, the old medieval entryway into the city is absolutely gorgeous. It’s famous, as a matter of fact.
Gregg Furey: Right. Right.
Annie Sargent: So yeah, it would be a lovely, a lovely place.
Gregg Furey: And the cathedral itself is very unique because it has all the statuary of the animals on the outs- I don’t think any other cathedral has this.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, no, not that I can think of.
Gregg Furey: And then when I was in the cathedral, I learned about why they put the statuary of the cows on the outside of the cathedral, because according to the legend, when they were building the cathedral, the local cows came and volunteered their labor, to help them haul the stones up the hill to build the cathedral. And then once the cathedral was built, they quit. So they see it as some kind of a miracle, you know, that they had these faithful cows helping them build the cathedral.
Annie Sargent: In many ways, medieval people had a more progressive way of handling animals. To them, first of all, it was a rarity to own either a cow or a horse or a large, or even a donkey,you know, a large animal of that sort. These were precious belongings, I guess, they were always belongings, but they were precious because they were rare, and you could do a lot of cool stuff with them. And they did not eat them as a rule. Like, they would not… in a famine, that was the last thing you would eat. You would eat your chickens and your ducks, even your dogs and cats, but not the horses and the cows because, well, they can give you milk, you know, and you can make cheese out of that.
Annie Sargent: So it’s really… They had a very, I think a very good type of relationship with large animals, and they even thought that they were answerable to God. There’s a very funny story of when the people said that this horse was evil because it was kicking people, whatever, and the bishop refused to condemn it to death, even though the town had judged the horse to be evil-
Gregg Furey: Mm-hmm.
Annie Sargent: … and were trying to force his owner to put it to death, and the bishop said, “No, we can’t do that.” But they thought of animals like having a agency, I guess. Animals could be either evil or not. well, that’s great. Laon looks like a lovely city that perhaps people should put on their radar for a visit.
Gregg Furey: And I wanted to add too that, every restaurant we ate in there, at least all the ones near the cathedral, were just excellent, just really excellent and not expensive. That’s another thing I love about going, you know, far away from Paris. You get great hotel rooms at not much cost, and the food is half the cost that it is in Paris.
Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Wonderful. Great recommendation.
Gregg Furey: Yeah. Another thing that I did in Laon was to take a tour of the underside of the city. I think they called it the Souterrain tour. It’s offered in English. And there they show you how they mined the stone from underneath the city in order to build the cathedral.
Gregg Furey: And that was very interesting. I’ve never seen anything like that anywhere in Paris, even though obviously Paris was built the same way, you know? They go underneath, get the solid rock, and then bring it up to the surface. That was very, very interesting,tour well worth it.
Annie Sargent: Yep. And they use these machines called écureuil, which means squirrel. It’s a very hard word for Americans to say, écureuil, it’s like a wheel…
Gregg Furey: Yeah. Yeah. It’s a human hamster wheel.
Annie Sargent: Yes. It’s used to lift stones, and very heavy things out of quarry or to the top of cathedrals as a matter of fact. These were very common implements, just like we see cranes today, well, they used to see écureuil all the time.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Gregg Furey: And don’t forget, everyone is working down there by candlelight.
Annie Sargent: That’s true. In the souterrain, yes, in the tunnels, that’s how you would do it. Yep. Wow. That sounds like a fun activity.
Annie Sargent: Do they have, like, local specialties, food things that you had never tried before?
Gregg Furey: I… No, I don’t think so.
Gregg Furey: Nothing that came to mind. Like I said, all the food there, though, was just great.
Annie Sargent: That’s great. All right, what else did you do that you want to mention?
Gregg Furey: Let me see. In Laon we stayed there for about three days. I’d say you could see it in two days, you know? It’s a city worth two days. Yeah.
[00:22:49] Exploring Vézelay and Nearby Caves
Gregg Furey: No, that’s about it for that city, and then this last trip, we went to Vézelay.
Gregg Furey: Aha.
Gregg Furey: Now that was where we found a lot of interesting things to do. First off, it was raining. We were there in September.
[00:23:04] Exploring Neolithic Art in French Caves
Gregg Furey: And so the first thing we did, because it was raining, was we decided to visit the nearby caves, La Grotte d’Arcy-sur-Cure.
Gregg Furey: This was an unknown hidden gem, also out in the middle of nowhere. It was about 20 minutes from Vézelay, it’s privately owned. I think the farmer owns the land on top of the cave,
Gregg Furey: and the family owns the land up there but it was a very interesting cave, and one thing that I learned while I was there, I took a picture of the poster as well, I think I sent it to you, is that, it’s not just in the Dordogne where they have caves full of Neolithic art. They’re all over France. There are 76 of them on that poster and most of them areMonuments Nationaux.
Annie Sargent: Yes.
Gregg Furey: Yeah. So, they’re protected by the government and the government makes sure that people don’t go in there and tag it or, in general, hurt anything.
Gregg Furey: So we arrived there and we managed to get in on a tour which was only in French, but the guide was so nice. At the end of every little presentation, he would try to explain to us a little bit in English. It was very nice.
Gregg Furey: So, the Neolithic art in there, is almost as old as the art in the caves down south, and of course it’s the same style, and you can see things in there like, little children’s hand prints on the wall. It’s just amazing. This cave goes back, I would say it goes back for a good third of a mile, maybe half a kilometer, and they also discovered music in this cave, and if you go on YouTube and you look up, there was this group that did a concert in there, ASA, A-S-A. You just look it up on YouTube. You can see the concert that they did in the cave.
Gregg Furey: Another interesting thing about this cave is that it is one of the few caves in France where there are also Roman remains because there’s a small lake in this cave, and in there they have found artifacts from Roman pagan worship. The Romans used to go in there and make offerings to their gods.
Annie Sargent: Interesting. Yeah, so, like you mentioned, there are painted caves all over Europe, as a matter of fact. It’s just that the paint has faded because they have been exposed to the elements, and some of them are still to be discovered. There has to be an incident at some point that closed off the entrance. Otherwise, all of this work disappears because, I mean, we’re talking, you know, some of these are centuries old.
Gregg Furey: Yeah. Thousands, thousands of years old.
Gregg Furey: The guide for this particular cave was saying that they think these are around 30,000 years old.
Annie Sargent: Right, so that makes them quite old.
Gregg Furey: Yeah. During the last Ice Age, this is where people holed up and managed to survive.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. And they don’t really know what they did in these places, that’s why doing music in them is interesting, because the acoustics is usually pretty good, at least in some parts of them, and so they wonder if these were places that were used for religious ceremonies of some sort, or … they don’t have remnants that show that people lived in the caves long term, which makes sense because caves is, you know, we say caveman, but you can’t live in a cave if you’re not a mountain lion or a bear or an animal like that. These are the animals that would go hibernate in the caves, and you did not want to disturb them. People typically lived in shallow shelters, so still kind of holes in the wall, but shallow walls that they could just cover the front of, and be protected from the elements.
[00:26:50] The Historical Significance of Vézelay
Annie Sargent: The caves of Arcy-sur-Cure sounds like a really fun thing to visit, and it’s not far from Vézelay. So I didn’t tell you where Vézelay is, and this is not a town that most people will have heard of. So that’s southeast of Paris, but quite a long way, the nearest big city, it’s between Dijon and Bourges…. and a little bit to the north of that. So, you know, middle of nowhere, definitely.
Gregg Furey: Yeah. The claim to fame of Vézelay, and one of the reasons I wanted to see it, was because in their basilica is where Richard the Lionheart met his troops, and the pope joined him there too. And the pope gave him the blessing to go away on the second crusade.
Annie Sargent: Uh-huh.
Annie Sargent:
Gregg Furey: And so when you go there you can see that the opening of the basilica is, the doors are big enough that you can ride your horse into the courtyard.
Gregg Furey: It’s much different than most churches. And around the courtyard is a balcony. And you can imagine the pope up there, you know, doing his thing, and Richard the Lionheart telling his troops about all the wonderful things they’re going to do once they get to Jerusalem.
Annie Sargent: Wow.
Gregg Furey: Very interesting. And then on top of it, the basilica was destroyed during the revolution of 1789 by overzealous revolutionaries. And it wasn’t restored until the mid-1850s. I think it was during the reign of Napoleon III who was very big on restoring a lot of the things that were destroyed during therevolution.
Gregg Furey: It’s very well restored, and there it sits awaiting your eyes out in the middle of nowhere.
Annie Sargent: Wow. That’s got to be… It looks stunning. I’m looking at photos. It looks beautiful.
Gregg Furey: And it too, Vézelay it’s smaller than Laon. I thinkthe population is less than 1,000 people, but it’s a beautiful little hilltop town, again, for defensive purposes. It’s good to havehilltop towns.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, so I’m looking on Wikipedia, it says that the municipal population is 464 inhabitants in 2022.
Gregg Furey: Sounds about right. Yeah.
Annie Sargent: So that’s very, very small. And with a surprisingly beautiful, beautiful church. It’s another one of these beautiful top of the hill type of village, with a very gorgeous cathedral, or basilica, and a few stately buildings. It looks like it’s very nice.
Gregg Furey: Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful little town.
Annie Sargent: Excellent. So if you are visiting that part of France, which I fully intend to visit more myself, this is probably the part of France by now that I know the least because it just seems to be out of the way.
Annie Sargent: But, you know, sometimes I think I should stop doing so manyactivities, like writing VoiceMap tours and just go visit France. Like, just go.
Gregg Furey: Yeah. Yeah.
Annie Sargent: You know? That’s… You guys have tempted me so long, I might just go do that.
Gregg Furey: Well, Vézelay is really worth it, and beautiful hotels there. You know, Vézelay still also attracts,at least according to the people I spoke to in the town, it still attracts religious pilgrims. Not a lot, not like, you know, La Compostelle or those other famous pilgrimages. Because there was an abbey there as well, it’s still considered an importantreligious historical site.
Annie Sargent: Wonderful.
Gregg Furey: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Fantastic.
(Mid-roll ad spot)
[00:30:25] The Battle of Alesia and Roman Conquest
Annie Sargent: You went to Alesia. Now, another one I don’t know anything about. I want to hear about that.
Gregg Furey: Alesia. Okay. I wanted to visit this because I’m a fan of Roman history, and as you know, I’m a fan of military history. So Alesia supposedly, at least according to all the experts of the time, and very few have managed to disprove them, that is where Julius Caesar, I think it was around 32 BC, finally conquered the Gauls. And basically turned most of Eastern France and Southern France into Rome, Roman territory.
Gregg Furey: So this was a very famous battle site where Vercingetorix, chief of the Gauls, holed himself up on another hilltop town, and Julius Caesar said, “Oh, okay, no big deal. We’ll just surround the town with a wall and we’re just going to stay here until you starve to death.”
Gregg Furey: And that worked out fine until the buddies of Vercingetorix showed up,according to Roman historians,250,000 of them, all these mad Gauls, you know.
Gregg Furey: And so Julius Caesar says, “No, we’re not going to leave here. We’re going to build a second wall to protect us from the other Gauls.”
Gregg Furey: So there they sat and they fought several battles back and forth, and finally the Gauls on the outside gave up.
Gregg Furey: And eventually Vercingetorix from the inside gave up and surrendered himself to Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar hauls him off to Rome, lets him sit in prison there I think for six years, and eventually publicly executes him. And the Romans have throw a big party like they like to do after they conquer people.
Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Vercingetorix is a very famous name. I mean, you’ve told me more about him than I ever knew. So you know, it’s so long ago.
Annie Sargent: …
Annie Sargent: But if you read Asterix, the cartoons, you’ll hear the name.
Gregg Furey: But Alésia is not a town, is it? Is it just a battlefield?
Gregg Furey: It’s just a battlefield, but at the top of the hill, aside from the statue of Vercingetorix, there’s Roman ruins up on top of the hill. So apparently after Julius Caesar won, as they were known to do, he parceled out the land to his soldiers, and they built this fully functional town on top of the hill, which you can go visit the ruins of.
Annie Sargent: All right. So this Alésia that we’re talking about is just northwest of Dijon. It’s not a town. The town is called Venarey-les-Laumes, but there’s a Muséoparc d’Alésia, so there’s a museum there, and that’s probably what you visited.
Gregg Furey: Yes, yes. There’s three big things to see there, the statue of Vercingetorix, the hilltop ruins of the Roman town that was there, which are very well preserved, and then alsotheMuséo…
Annie Sargent: Muséoparc d’Alésia.
Gregg Furey: Yeah, yeah.
Annie Sargent: This looks cool.
Annie Sargent:
Gregg Furey: It is cool. That is one of the coolest museums I’ve ever visited. You can go in there and play with Gaulish and Roman weapons. Yeah, you can put them on and pick up swords.
Annie Sargent: And it’s in the middle of nowhere because it’s surrounded by little villages that nobody’s ever heard of.
Gregg Furey: Right, right, not even villages, they’re like little hamlets of a couple of hundred people.
Gregg Furey: Beautiful countryside.
Annie Sargent: So, it’s on the D905 between Montbard and Vitteau. Wow. This is definitely off the beaten track here, Gregg.
Gregg Furey: Yeah. Yeah.
Annie Sargent: But it’s not too far from Dijon. If you’re visiting Dijon, and you have a car, is that where you were staying in Dijon when you visited this place?
Gregg Furey: No, no, we were staying in Vézelay.
Annie Sargent: Oh, you were staying in Vézelay. Okay.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, which is not very far, let’s see Vézelay, from this Muséoparc is just an hour, a little more than an hour to the west.
Gregg Furey: Yeah, you just zip down, I think it’s the A6 that’ll take you most of the way there. But then you have to get off and once again drive through the middle of nowhere. The people at the museum, they were surprised to see Americans there.
Gregg Furey: And they also said that, more or less, the only visitors they get are busloads full of schoolchildren that are there on trips to learn about French history.
Annie Sargent: Right, right.
Annie Sargent: That would have been cool, man. I would have loved to do that as a kid. I think I would love to do it now.
Gregg Furey: And if you go there during the summer, they have battle reenactments between Gauls and Romans. You can go and see them.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah, fight it out.
Gregg Furey: Pretending to slaughter each other, you know.
Annie Sargent: Fun.
Annie Sargent: These guys have fun.
Gregg Furey: That’s great fun.
Annie Sargent: No, no actual blood please.
Gregg Furey: Right.
Annie Sargent: All right. We have time to talk about one more place, and then we’re going to have to stop chatting.
[00:35:31] Charles de Gaulle’s Legacy in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises
Annie Sargent: What’s the last place you want to share with us that you particularly enjoyed?
Gregg Furey: This is another place off the beaten path, and that is Colombey-les, Les Deux Églises.
Annie Sargent: Ah, yes. Okay. I know more about that one.
Gregg Furey: Okay. Have you been there?
Annie Sargent: No, I have not.
Gregg Furey: Oh, okay.
Annie Sargent: But I have heard about it because ofDe Gaulle, right?
Gregg Furey: Yeah. Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Yes. Okay, do tell.
Gregg Furey: Okay. This was the place where De Gaulle decided to buy a home and settle, I think in the late 40s after he finally, I guess retired, I think he called it withdrawing from public life.
Annie Sargent: Correct.
Annie Sargent: Yes, because there was a referendum, and he lost the referendum, and so he said, “Okay, I quit.”
Gregg Furey: Yeah. So, he bought a house over there, which you can still visit. It’s a very modest house. I have to tell you,I’m a fan of Charles de Gaulle insofar as I see zero evidence that he was ever tempted by corruption.
Annie Sargent: Yes.
Gregg Furey: Just nothing. You know, the man had France at heart, and that was it for him. If he could just work for France, he’s fine. None of his children died rich. He didn’t die rich. He had this very modest house out in the middle of nowhere. again, there’s another museum there which is a very good museum. It tracks both the history of France during his lifetime and his life.
Gregg Furey: So you get to see just everything, you know, if you’re a fan of World War II in the French perspective, it really brings it to life.
Gregg Furey: You know, him having to flee to England and the broadcasts and then what he did, you know, once D-Day was launched and things like that.
Annie Sargent: Do you remember what the museum is called?
Gregg Furey: Ooh, good question.
Gregg Furey: I’ll try and find it and put it in the show notes.
Gregg Furey: You can’t miss it when you’re driving towards it, because there’s that humongous Cross de Lorraine.
Annie Sargent: La Cross de Lorraine, yes. Yes.
Gregg Furey: Right.
Annie Sargent: He is buried there, right?
Gregg Furey: Yes, he’s buried there. I visited his grave. I think I sent you a picture of that as well. Extremely modest grave, just him and his family.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, normal French grave.
Gregg Furey: Normal French grave, but the really impressive thing, aside from his house and the museum, the thing that impressed me the most were if you go into the graveyard next to the church are all the plaques from all these groups of people in France thanking him for what he did. And that was very, very moving.
Annie Sargent: Well, you know, I mean, if we can talk politics for just a second, de Gaulle wasn’t wrong about a lot of things. I know he pissed off a lot of English and American generals because he was so dead set on keeping them away from France.
Gregg Furey: Yeah, yeah.
Annie Sargent: But recent events have shown us that you have to be self-sustained when it comes to your defense. You just have to.
Gregg Furey: When I’m practicing French with French friends, and they complain about American things kind of invading French culture, the thing I say to them in French is, “De Gaulle was right. The Americans are the new imperialists, but they’re doing it culturally. They’re not doing it, you know, by marching into your country, they’re doing it by selling you Levi’s 501s, you know?”
Annie Sargent: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Which French people are all too happy to purchase because there is a lot of … there is a lot of … you know, they’re great products made in … I mean, like, right now there is this kind of movement, nascent movement to buy EU, and it’s really hard to replace a lot of American both platforms and products with EU-based ones.
Annie Sargent: Because we have just relied on American-made goods and, you know, software, kind of cloud thingies that are really well done and at a good price, and we just use them.
Gregg Furey: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Annie Sargent: And so it … We’ll see how this leads us. But, yeah, I have great admiration for De Gaulle myself. Obviously, he was out of power before I was born, so bit too young to have seen him in action.
Gregg Furey: I love his sense of humor. Yeah. If you ever see him in action with journalists, his sense of humor is just so dry, you know? You really have to be in tune with what he’s saying in order to get his jokes.
Gregg Furey: Yes, yes. And he was this kind of stick of a man, really tall and really thin and striking in that way as well because he stood out one head above most people. Yeah, yeah.
Annie Sargent: Anyway, interesting.
[00:40:13] Final Thoughts and Future Travels
Annie Sargent: Well, this has been a very wonderful conversation because I appreciate that you’ve given me the desire to go see places that I genuinely had never really considered, and a lot of them are around Dijon. It’s interesting. I think I need to spend some time in that area because I just don’t know it, like, you know, around Vézelay and all that. And probably Vézelay would be a good place to base yourself out of, right, if you want a more of a rural place to stay rather than the city of Dijon, obviously.
Gregg Furey: Colombey has quite a few hotels in it too.
Gregg Furey: Colombey-les-Deux-Églises. I got the distinct impression that that’s another place where French schoolchildren get bused to in order to … You know? “Look, here’s our history.” You know? “You have to learn this.”
Annie Sargent: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Fantastic.
Annie Sargent: Well, Gregg, thank you so much for talking to me again. Yes, this is your second time on the podcast. I hope you have many more great trips to France. Are you ever coming south, though? You have this habit of staying to the north a lot.
Gregg Furey: You know, one thing that I don’t like is hot weather.
Gregg Furey: I think I will visit the south, but I’ll do it in the wintertime.
Annie Sargent: Yes, yes. Wonderful.
Annie Sargent: Well, Gregg, thank you so much, and wishing you many more happy trips to France and no more visits to any French hospitals.
Gregg Furey: At least not rural hospitals.
Annie Sargent: Merci beaucoup.
Gregg Furey: Okay. Thank you, Annie.
Annie Sargent: Au revoir.
Gregg Furey: Au revoir.
[00:41:50] Thank You Patrons!
Annie Sargent: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus.
Annie Sargent: And a special shout out this week to my new Join Us in France champions, Trish, and thank you, Elizabeth Parks and Beverly Brown for editing your pledge up.
Annie Sargent: Would you join them too? You can do it for as little as $3 a month, but if you can afford it, of course, I would love to have you pledge more so you can have access to more of the rewards.
Annie Sargent: Go to patreon.com/joinus and to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/elysart.
Annie Sargent: This week I published the rerun of my Zoom meeting with patrons. Always a lot of fun. Thank you to the many of you who show up. It’s always wonderful talking to you.
[00:42:49] Tour Review
Annie Sargent: Somebody left this review of my tour this week. That’s the one I’ve chosen to read, there’s been many, but this person wrote, “Wow. I just finished the audio tour for The Marais.
Annie Sargent: I truly enjoyed every minute of it. I would have missed so many historic sites if I just walked around looking and shopping. Annie was very informative and the directions were so easy to follow. I usually cannot follow Google walking maps, so I was impressed that Annie kept me on track with her directions.
Annie Sargent: I will definitely do some more of her audio tours.”
Annie Sargent: Well, thank you very much whoever you are.
[00:43:25] Podcast Listeners Discounts
Annie Sargent: And podcast listeners get a big discount for buying these tours from my website, and it’s best for me as well, because I get to keep more of what you pay instead of giving it to Apple or Google.
Annie Sargent: To use your code, open VoiceMap, tap Tour Codes at the bottom right, enter the code and download the tour.
Annie Sargent: You don’t have to use your tour credit immediately. It just sits in your account until you’re ready.
Annie Sargent: Want to use it on a different device? You can also do that. Log into your account.
Annie Sargent: And you can also listen in virtual playback from anywhere in the world, so that’s perfect if Paris is not in your immediate plan. Take me in your pocket with VoiceMap.
Annie Sargent: If you’re planning a trip to France, you know your vacation time is precious and you don’t want to waste time chasing tips and outdated information.
Annie Sargent: That’s where my itinerary consults come in. Run your ideas by me, and I’ll help steer you in the right direction for you. You’ll spend less time worrying about your trip and more time enjoying France. If you want to learn more, you go to joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
[00:44:34] Strikes Coming Up
Annie Sargent: All right, let’s talk about those strikes coming up. Usually I’m pretty cool cucumber about strikes, but I think these are going to be a bit big. So heads up, if you’re planning to be in France the week of September 8th, again, that starts tomorrow, keep an eye on your calendar and on transit apps because there’s a major round of strikes to be expected with widespread discontent bubbling over.
Annie Sargent: And while it’s hard to predict exactly who will join in, the mood feels sour this time around. So what can you expect? There’s going to be uncertainty ahead of time. No one knows in advance exactly how many people will strike. Strike participation often becomes clear only the day before or sometimes even the morning of, that’s why websites like cestlagreve.fr are helpful. But keep in mind they’re often based on declarations and plans, not final numbers.
Annie Sargent: The second thing you can expect is delays, not total shutdown. Even during major strikes, not all services grind to a halt. Some trains may run, certain metro lines will run, some RERs will run, but they might operate on reduced schedule. Buses often still run.
Annie Sargent: Expect delays, cancellations, crowding, that sort of thing.
Annie Sargent: For high-risk travelers, just stay put. If you’re really risk-averse or on a tight schedule, your safest bet is to stay in the city you are already in rather than attempting long distance travel.
Annie Sargent: What you can do instead? Well, obviously monitor the apps you used to book flights, trains or ferries, they typically send real-time updates if your travel is disrupted. You can check cestlagreve.fr each evening for an idea of where walkouts are planned, but remember, plans can and do change on very short notice.
Annie Sargent: Plan for flexibility. If your journey is nonessential or reschedulable, I guess, consider postponing or rearranging, especially if you’ll be traveling between cities. Stay calm and informed, strikes can be inconvenient, but seldom catastrophic. Alert apps, official transport websites, and your lodgings will help you navigate.
Annie Sargent: And if you really must get from A to B that day, rent a car, reserve a car. You can drive, okay?
[00:47:20] Political Uncertainty
Annie Sargent: And there’s also a political twist this time. Adding to the uncertainty, the prime minister, the French prime minister, obviously, has announced a vote of confidence in parliament, which she is expected to lose.
Annie Sargent: That could trigger snap elections, meaning that even if you make it through flustered train platforms and packed metros, the broader political shifts could ripple through public services and schedules over the coming weeks. So let me recap.
Annie Sargent: Number one, expect delays, but not everything will be shut down.
Annie Sargent: Number two, use your booking apps for real-time alerts.
Annie Sargent: Number three, check c’estlagreve.fr but understand it’s not a guarantee.
Annie Sargent: Number four, consider staying put if you’re very risk averse.
Annie Sargent: And number five, political developments may add more uncertainty for the next few weeks I would think.
Annie Sargent: So easy travels is not guaranteed this week, but with a bit of flexibility and attention, you can ride it out. Safe travels and, you know, have your croissant apps ready, I guess. That’s what I do is just, ugh, grab another croissant and a bottle of water and hopefully it’ll pass.
[00:48:44] Air Quality in Paris
Annie Sargent: Air quality in Paris.
Annie Sargent: This is great news. According to a new study by Airparif, the city’s air has become much cleaner over the past decade. Between 2012 and 2022, air pollution dropped by nearly 40%, an improvement the mayor of Paris calls unprecedented.
Annie Sargent: How did this happen? Well, it’s a mix of European rules requiring cleaner cars, Paris’s low emission zones, and policies that reduce space for cars in the city.
Annie Sargent: Add in cleaner heating systems and industrial improvements, and the results are clear. Less nitrogen dioxide, fewer fine particles, and better air for Parisians to breathe.
Annie Sargent: The health impact is huge. Air pollution is linked to respiratory and heart disease, and Paris used to see about 1,800 premature deaths a year from dirty air, but Airparif reports that deaths linked to fine particles have dropped by nearly a third.
Annie Sargent: That means thousands of lives saved. And the best part, experts say this is not the limit. Pollution levels in Paris are still above World Health Organization guidelines, but there’s room to improve even more before 2030 when tougher European standards kick in. In other words, the policies are working and Paris could cut another 40% in the next decade.
Annie Sargent: So while the City of Light still has work to do, the air Parisians breathe is cleaner, healthier, and heading in the right direction, which is wonderful.
[00:50:33] EES and ETIAS
Annie Sargent: Let’s talk about the EES and ETIAS in France because there’s been a lot of confusion, a lot of questions about this. So first, EES, that’s the entry exit system.
Annie Sargent: You don’t need to do anything or pay anything. The first time you arrive, they’ll take your fingerprints and link them to your passport. After that, it’s all automated. I noticed the machines were already installed at CDG recently, though not in use yet. I expect they’ll be switched on very soon and there’s been systems like that going into the US for a long time.
Annie Sargent: So this is just something we’re implementing in France, that has been around for a long time.
Annie Sargent: Now, the ETIAS, E-T-I-A-S, that’s different. That one will require action ahead of time and a small fee. The good news is that there’s a six-month rollout period. So if you forget to do it at first, you won’t be denied entry.
Annie Sargent: And honestly, since this program has been delayed again and again, the latest pushback is to the end of 2026. I wouldn’t hold my breath. When it does launch, don’t stress, I’ve done similar electronic entry permits in places like the UK, the US for French citizens.
Annie Sargent: Both took only a few minutes. You just download the official app, scan your passport, pay the fee, usually get an email confirmation in 5-10 minutes. So the bottom line is EES will happen automatically and ETIAS will require a little prep, but nothing dramatic and neither one should ruin your trip, okay?
Annie Sargent: My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan, who produced the transcripts.
[00:52:25] Next Week on the Podcast
Annie Sargent: Next week on the podcast, an episode about boot camp 2025 with a few of the wonderful people who attended this year, and announcements about boot camp 2026.
Annie Sargent: So that’s going to be exciting. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together.
Annie Sargent: Au revoir.
[00:52:47] Copyright
Annie: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent, and Copyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.
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Episode PageCategory: Off the Beaten Track in France