Table of Contents for this Episode
Categories: French Departments, Off the Beaten Track in France
[00:00:00]
Annie: This is Join Us in France, episode 602. Six cent deux.
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: Vichy’s Story and the Best of the Allier Department
Annie: Today, I bring you a conversation with Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks about one of the least visited corners of France, the Allier Department, right in the dead center of the country.
We cover the spa town of Vichy, its surprising rich history from Roman baths to the infamous wartime government, the lovely city of Moulins, and a handful of villages worth taking a detour for.
This is your chance to explore a [00:01:00] part of France most visitors never seem to find.
Podcast supporters
Annie: Before we start, this show runs on listener support. If you want to work with me directly, I do itinerary consults, I have eight tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, and I do day trips around the southwest of France.
Everything is at joinusinfrance.com/boutique, and if you shop on Amazon anyway, starting at joinusinfrance.com/amazon costs you nothing, but helps the show.
For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Elyse today, I’ll discuss the modern stained glass windows that may be installed at Notre Dame de Paris.
Shocking, don’t you think?
Welcome to Allier
Annie: Bonjour, Elyse.
Elyse: Bonjour Annie.
Annie: We have a topic today that’s perhaps off the beaten path. [00:02:00] We want to talk about the Allier Department, which is dead smack in the center of France.
Elyse: Absolutely. Dead smack in the center.
Annie: And also the city of Vichy, which is the most famous city in this department. And the reason why we want to talk about it a little bit, even though we’re hardly, you know, like specialists about this, is that I was just there. And why did I go? Because I wanted to see this place that gets mentioned so much, Vichy, and it turned out that there’s other things in the Allier that I went to see as well.
And so there you go. So you’ve been there, right?
Elyse: Well, I’ve been there. I didn’t spend a lot of time.
Why Allier Is Overlooked
Elyse: We actually drove through the department going north a number of years ago, having done a summer vacation in the Auvergne area, which is basically the southern central part.
The Allier department is one of [00:03:00] those that are the least visited, I’d say, by people other than French people, and is probably one of the least known, even to us, because it’s a part of France that has no major important things that people say, “Oh my God, I have to go there.”
And the central part of France, which is really, it’s the northern part of the Massif Central, is the least populated part of France as well.
Annie: Right? So the Allier per se is not among the least populated departments in France. It’s kind of average. The department as a whole has 335,000 inhabitants. It’s about an average size for an inhabitant. So, you know, it’s a little bit less populated than average, but not by… It’s not the Corrèze or something.
You know, La Creuse, La Lozère, Cantal, Ariège, these are departments that have less population. But the population of the Allier is very spread out.
Elyse: No big cities.
Annie: Not really. I mean…
Elyse: [00:04:00] 25,000 is not big.
Annie: Right, Vichy is the largest, 25,000, but it is not the prefecture. That’s Moulins. And let’s see, what other town did I say I didn’t…?
Elyse: Montluçon
Annie: Montluçon is also in the Allier department, and I did not go to Montluçon at all, so we’re not even going to mention it. But I thought it was a very nice, a very beautiful place. I can see why people enjoy the outdoors in this area because really this is like hiking, biking, walking, fantastic, you know?
And it’s, you know, it’s fairly well off. The area is notdistressed economically in any way, that at least from the outside it looks like it’s doing very well.
Elyse: Which is interesting when you think about it because there are a couple of departments in the north of France that of course were heavily industrial. Maybe that’s the difference, that this is a part of France that was [00:05:00] never super industrial, that it was small businesses, or in the case of Vichy, it was the baths, the thermal waters and things like that, that brought people in because it seems like it’s the areas that once had industry that have all disappeared where there’s the most economic distress.
Annie: That is true. That is true. Yeah.
Vichy vs Moulins
Annie: So, I’ll leave you to talk about Vichy in a moment, because there’s lots of history. And Moulins is the one I’m going to mention a little bit, because I was surprised by it. When I was in Vichy, I thought, “Oh my goodness, there’s nothing happening here,” because I was there early December, and it was mighty dead.
Elyse: It was mighty dead, huh?
Annie: And so I was at a, having lunch at a pizza place, and I asked, I said to the guy, you know, like, “Is it always this quiet here?” And he says, “Oh, well, no, in the summer it’s not. You know, the warmer months we have lots of people who come for the baths and the treatments and stuff, and the [00:06:00] opera also brings a lot of people.
But, if you want more lively, you have to go to the prefecture, which is Moulins.” So I did, and I was very pleasantly surprised.
Moulins Culture Finds
Annie: Moulins is actually a smaller city, 20,000 people. The major industries are administrative types of industries. You have the National Center for Stage Costume in Moulins, and I visited that, and it was really impressive.
I mean, I have to say, I’m not into costumes and cloths or theater that much, but I thought they had amazing costumes in there.
Elyse: Do you know why it’s there? Is there some historical reason why it got set up there?
Annie: No, I do not know why it’s there, but I assume, we have national centers for different things in lots of different places in France, like the National [00:07:00] Center for the French Language is not in Paris, it’s a little north of Paris. Can’t remember the name of the town. Very often they put these national centers outside of Paris just so that it will attract more people, and also not to concentrate everything on Paris, which would be easily done in France.
That’s kind of a habit that we have.
Elyse: That’s true. But it is, I mean, the Allier department is certainly not next door to Paris. It’s 360 kilometers away, so it’s kind of interesting. I was wondering if there was a history of theater or something there.
Annie: It’s possible. I just don’t know. I just don’t know.
Guided Tour Frustrations
Annie: I didn’t take a guided tour in any of these places, not that I wouldn’t want to, but there were none to be had, which was a bit annoying to me. I wish all these places had VoiceMap tours at least, because then you could take a tour any time of year, you know?
But they don’t. They just don’t. And when I went to the tourist office to ask if they had anything like [00:08:00] that, they didn’t. So they just hand you a map, and good luck with the map, you know?
I don’t know any of these landmarks. How am I supposed to figure out which direction they are? It’s hard enough with an app, with a paper map, oh, my goodness.
Anyway, Moulin was very beautiful. So there is a little cafe in the center where I had lunch. It’s called Café du Centre, I think.
Elyse: Oh, how original?
Annie: Yes, it was beautiful.
Elyse: Art Deco?
Annie: Art Deco. It was absolutely gorgeous, and I was very lucky because I didn’t have a reservation, and they still had me. It was just me, though, so perhaps…
But, I will use some of the photos. Oh, just gorgeous place. The food was fine. It was, you know, like, you don’t go for the food in those places.
And it was bustling. There were a lot of people, all locals. I didn’t hear anybody speaking anything but French. Just people happy to be sharing a meal together.
It was very nice.
Bourbonnais History Bits
Annie: They have the Maison de Anne de Beaujeu, which is a [00:09:00] palace sort of thing, and I had to look her up because I didn’t know anything about her.
She was the eldest daughter of Louis XI, and she was the unofficial regent in the start of the reign of her brother, Charles VIII.
Elyse: Can we situate that in a particular timeframe?
Annie: This is like middle, she was born in the middle of the 14, so 1461, and she died in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, ba, ba, ba, 1491.
So she didn’t…
Elyse: Yeah, it was about the average.
Annie: Oh, no, no, no, sorry. I’m wrong. I’m wrong, I’m wrong, I’m wrong. That was not her death date.
Elyse: Okay.
Annie: Ugh, I’m so bad with these things, Elyse.
Elyse: She was born in the middle of the 15th century.
Annie: That’s what it is. And there were, I mean, the Bourbon kings came from this area, and as a matter of fact, the area is called the Bourbonnais.
Elyse: To this day, actually
Annie: Yes. So lots of history there, [00:10:00] and I would have loved to take a good guided tour from somebody knowledgeable. Clearly I’m not.
Elyse: I’m just curious, was it actually a castle or was it just like her city Renaissance mansion? Because that would’ve been the Renaissance.
Annie: It is a city renaissance mansion. Yes. Yes. And there is a museum inside, which is very interesting. It had some beautiful triptych. Triptychs, is that…?
Elyse: Hmm. Triptychs. Yeah.
Maison Mantin Time Capsule
Annie: It was very nice, and you can.., when you visit the Maison Mantin, which is actually more famous in this area. So the Maison Mantin was the private residence of a tax collector who had it all done up, and you can visit it.
Unfortunately, you cannot take any pictures in there, which really annoyed me. But it’s done up. It’s like these dark woods, these beautiful lush [00:11:00] fabrics, beautiful staircases. The lady told us the whole history. I’m pretty sure I bought a book, but I can’t find the book. And I’m a disaster today, Elyse.
Elyse: Yes, you are.
No, but seriously, I think what happens is that when you go to a part of a country, which I think for us is, you know, there isn’t that much of the country that we neither of us know at all.
But it’s hard to retain everything because it doesn’t have a reference from something we already know.
Annie: You can say that again.
Elyse: So, so I forgive you for this.
Annie: Thank you. Thank you. I’m just asking for more guided tours is what I’m doing because at least a guided tour, you know, the guide would probably just bring it to life a little better, you know? And I’ve done several in the meantime as well.
Elyse: I just wanted to make a comment because people out there might wonder why a tax collector was someone who was super rich in what I assume is the Renaissance [00:12:00] time period or maybe just a little after, yeah.
Because tax collectors, who are usually minor nobles, pretty much everywhere or higher up even, it was considered to be perfectly normal as part of their practice to skim off a percentage off of the top of everything they collected, and that is how they got rich.
And nobody thought that was anything wrong with it, see?
Annie: Right.
Elyse: It was just part of what this is like, “Oh, good. I’m going to be a tax collector. Yummy, yummy, yummy. I can build my mansion.” And so that’s why.
Annie: Yes, and there’s still countries where skimming off the top happens a lot.
Elyse: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Annie: Yes. And so, this man built himself a nice mansion. This mansion was caught up in some legal issues because he donated… He didn’t have any children, and he donated it to the city, but the city didn’t do anything with it.
And then he had put in a kind of a stipulation in his will that if the city [00:13:00] didn’t develop it in the way he wanted them to, after 100 years, it would revert back to some distant family members. And so the city got their ducks in a row and eventually did renovate it and did do the museum and all of that, because he had… he was an art collector, and he had bought a lot of pieces and so forth.
And so it is sold as a place that was locked up for 100 years and, like, some sort of time capsule, and they have not changed it very much since then.
And it is very interesting to see the time capsule effect is real, because it hasn’t changed much.
Elyse: So does that mean artwork and furniture and things like that? Everything. Basically left as is.
Annie: It was left as is. And it’s very interesting because, for instance, this very lush place didn’t have a kitchen [00:14:00] because all his food, the kitchen was in another part of this Renaissance mansion. It’s a strange, interesting place, and the guide tells you, you know, he collected this from this place and that from that place and et cetera.
I thought it was beautiful,but I wish I could have taken photos because then I would remember it better.
Elyse: And it’s interesting that you were not allowed to. It’s strange. Yeah.
Annie: Yeah, anymore, it’s a bit backwards. But anyway, that’s called the Maison Mantin. So overall, Moulins I thought was lively, pleasant, just really nice, much more lively than Vichy.
Elyse: Let me ask you a couple of questions, because I don’t know Moulins really, I mean, I may have driven through it, but honestly don’t remember. Is it surrounded by hills? What’s the landscape like?
Annie: Not particularly. There’s probably some hills.
Elyse: But it’s more flat?
Annie: Yeah, I mean, there’s some small hills, but it’s not like big, you know, big hills or whatever.
Medieval Villages Stops
Annie: There are several very beautiful medieval [00:15:00] villages between Vichy and Moulins. Since I drove, I stopped a little bit west of Vichy, you have the village of Charroux, which is a plus beau village de France, which I thought was very cute.
It was very dead again, but December, yeah. But there were some very friendly people. I talked to several people, including a guy who was distributing calendars.
Elyse: Hmm.
Annie: And he was walking… He was doing this with his dogs, so we chatted about the dogs and the calendars and whatever. And he was very interested in my car, so you know, of course I liked him. I was coming up to my car, and that’s how we started. He’s like, “Oh, that’s a, that’s an interesting looking car. What is it?” And you know, anyway.So very friendly locals. I can tell that in the summer it probably gets a lot of visitors and has the normal for these plus beau village. So it would have, you know, cafes and restaurants and art [00:16:00] shops and whatever.
In December, there’s nothing.
Elyse: I mean, unfortunately or fortunately, I don’t know, a lot of these small villages, even the ones listed as the plus beaux village, the people who are left in the winter are the old people often. The relatives, because it’s usually the families that come in the summertime, you know?
Annie: Yeah. So I wouldn’t say a old like in 100 years old or something.
Elyse: No.
Annie: But like mature adults, yes, like 40 and up.
Elyse: And they live there and work in Moulins or something like that, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah.
Annie: Exactly, exactly. And the other cute little town that I stopped at is called Billy. And Billy has a medieval chateau. It was very nice. I’m sure the history would have been very fascinating, but again, not a soul around. No nothing. Nothing. And so don’t go in December, okay? Just…
Elyse: You know, I mean, let’s face it, even if you come down [00:17:00] into the Aveyron, the areas that are only an hour and a half, two hours from here that we’ve gone to and visited a lot, most of those beautiful villages tend to be relatively dead at that time of year.
Annie: Yeah, they do. Just places that I’ve read about, but I have not been to, you also have, in the Allier department, you also have Bourbon-l’Archambault. Is that a village? Well, 2,500 people, so, eh.
Elyse: Okay.
Annie: And they have thermal baths as well there.
Elyse: Ah.
Annie: They do agriculture, crafts, things like that. There’s another place called Souvigny.
1,800 inhabitants, give or take. So they have a priory and a Romanesque church. They have a place called La Palice, more or less 3,000 inhabitants. Agriculture. They do some small-scale manufacturing, some tourism, but I have not seen it. [00:18:00]
Forests Valleys and Wine
Annie: Now, the Allier also has major forests. The Forêt de Tronçais is very big.
And there are towns like Cerilly is nearby, small, like a, you know, it’s 1,300 people. So this is timber tourism, eco-tourism, which, you know, it’s getting bigger and bigger, this eco-tourism thing. Which is, places that you visit where everything is going to be organic, I mean, you won’t be able to buy a Coke anywhere near there.
Like…
Elyse: Do you think so? Yeah. No, no.
Annie: Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. All of these bio stores, because I like Diet Coke, and a lot of places where I go, I’m like, “Oh, I’d like… It’s my treat in the middle,” you know. No, uh-uh. No, they won’t even buy them. They won’t sell them at all. The eco-tourism is getting bigger and bigger.
You have the Sioule Valley, which I had never heard [00:19:00] of either. I can see your face. You haven’t heard of it.
Elyse: I don’t even know how you spell that.
Annie: S-I-O-U-L-E
Elyse: Okay, Sioule.
Annie: Sioule. It’s a valley. And there’s a town called Ebreuil in the middle of it. That’s E-B-R-E-U-I-L.
Elyse: This is good for a French lesson.
Annie: Ebreuil.
Elyse: Okay.
Annie: There’s a ton of these little towns, beautiful little scenic places. The Sioule haskayaking. It’s a gorge, so you can do kayaking. You can do scenic drives. They have some wine as well in this area. There’s the Saint-Pourçain AOC, and I had a glass of it, in Moulins when I…
Elyse: Is it a white or a red?
Annie: It’s a white. It’s a white. And I didn’t think it was all that outstanding, but it was good. I saw that it was on the menu in the cafe in [00:20:00] Moulins where I had my lunch, so I was like, oh, because I had just driven through the whole vineyard, so I kept seeing, you know, Saint-Pourçain this, Saint-Pourçain that. I didn’t take a tour, I don’t know anything about it. I just tasted a glass.
Winter Travel and EV Cold
Elyse: It’s interesting to me because that’s an area that I would not think had grapevines because of its climate, because it tends to be rather cold and wet in the winter.
Annie: Yes, it was very cold. As a matter of fact, it’s the first time that I had an issue with my EV, because when I pulled into Vichy, it was late at night, it was, like, almost 10, and my state of charge was low, and I just didn’t have it in me to go charge immediately. I didn’t have a plug where I was staying, which is…
Ah, if you have a plug where you’re staying, it’s so much better. Anyway, so I just left the car, turned off the car, went to bed. And the next morning it was complaining that it couldn’t even preheat the car because it didn’t have enough, you know, traction battery left. So, it [00:21:00] got cold. It got very cold.
It was… Like, the whole time it was freezing.
Elyse: Oh, I bet. Yeah.
Annie: It just never stopped freezing.
Elyse: It’s the center of the country. It really gets cold there.
Annie: Yeah, yeah, December, you know, December. There’s a place called Le Donjon, 1,000 inhabitants. That’s pretty. There’s another place called 10. Hérisson that is so cute.
Elyse: Oh, that sounds cute.
Annie: Town called Hérisson, which means hedgehog.
Elyse: Means hedgehog, yeah.
Annie: They do tourism and local crafts, 600 inhabitants, I mean, very, very small. So there are plenty of little places like this that you can visit in this department.
It is welcoming, it is nice, cold in the winter, dead in the winter, except for Moulins.
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Settling and Getting Around
Annie: But really a place that’s worth considering, and I’m thinking, you know, people who arelooking for a place to settle in France, it might not be, if you like that sort of climate, not mountain, but not [00:22:00] coast either. It’s a bit likecontinental sort of climate, that would be good, and you’re not that far from the fast train to Paris.
Elyse: Well, actually, it’s also for people who’ve been to France several times and who are interested in renting a place for a few weeks in a place that has a lot of nature and small towns and villages, that sounds like an ideal place to discover.
Because I was thinking as you were mentioning these, all these villages and towns, in France, anything over 1,000 or 1,500 is considered actually to be a town, not even a village anymore.
It means it has a pharmacy. There’s usually at least one doc- you know, nurse on call. I mean, it’s interesting because France is filled with thousands of these tiny places like that, you know?
Annie: Yeah, France is very rural. People don’t realize it, but it’s extremely rural. And so, you will have tiny villages among tiny villages.
Elyse: In this area around the Allier, I mean, first of all, there’s a [00:23:00] train from Vichy which goes directly to Paris, and that’s part of its history. But it was also, if you settle in an area like this, you have Clermont-Ferrand, which is a big city, even if it’s not a city people might want to spend a lot of time in, that is also on a train line that’s only 55 kilometers away, so you’re not that far from other things.
Annie: Driving distance is not bad. I mean, it’s really doable.
Clermont Ferrand Detour
Annie: And Clermont-Ferrand, I did… I mean, it’s not in the Allier Department, I went for a few hours, and it’s very hilly. It has a lot of black stone.
Elyse: It’s lava.
Annie: It’s lava. The cathedral is built of black stone.
Elyse: That’s right.
Annie: It looks like you’re in, like, some sort of…
Elyse: Oh, what’s that superhero that’s all in black? Oh, I don’t know, but I was thinking of Harry Potter more than anything.
Annie: Oh, the guy, the guy with the little s- spi- the, Spider-Man? No. No, Spider-Man is in red. No, like, he’s in black. He has little tiny ears. Batman. Batman. [00:24:00] It looks like Batman country, man.
Elyse: Everything’s in Clermont is built with the lava that’s from the ancient volcanoes right around there.
Annie: It was really strange. Like, ooh, where have I landed? The cathedral, I just looked at the cathedral, and I parked in the city center.
Elyse: You didn’t go into the cathedral?
Annie: Yeah, I did, I did.
But I didn’t do much else. I mean, I walked around the city center. I was charging my car, I needed an hour or two for lunch and charge a car and go.
So I just walked around during that time. But it feels different.
Elyse: Different. I know a little bit more about it because it’s a big rugby town. It’s a very big rugby.
Annie: So at your house it gets mentioned.
Elyse: So in my house, rugby is important, you know?
Annie: Yes, yes. But I have to say that the drive between Clermont-Ferrand to come back to Toulouse or towards Brive,it’s stunning, stunning. Like the Smoky Mountains, it’s Smoky Mountains [00:25:00] level beautiful, and it does have smoky mountains as well.
Elyse: It does have Smoky Mountains… It is actually a gorgeous, gorgeous route to take, you know, and you can go all the way into the Alps that way.
Annie: All I did was just took the freeway. I wasn’t doing anything scenic particularly.
Elyse: It’s the Massif Central which has a lot to visit actually. It’s just that winter is not the best time to go there.
Annie: Are you questioning my choices?
Elyse: No, I know you were coming back from Paris, so there you are.
Annie: Well, I had to stop somewhere.
Elyse: And you were curious, there you are.
Annie: Yeah, I want to stop all the places I’ve never heard, I’ve never been.
Elyse: It’s true that there are a whole bunch of places in the Massif Central that are stunning, but they are not the most well-known parts of France.
Annie: Correct. Okay, now enough blabbering from me.
Vichy WWII Shadow
Annie: Please tell us about Vichy.
Elyse: Well, okay. So this was really a fascinating thing to do research about because, like I think almost everybody, unless you’re really [00:26:00] young, and I’m wondering now what the young people know about any of this anyway, if you mention the name of the town Vichy to me, my entire association is basically with the World War II and the government, the factice government that was set up in the town of Vichy.
So it’s very difficult to disassociate the history of the town and all this from that particular time period. Which ironically, I was thinking about it after I wrote up my notes, covers four years.
I mean, we’re talking about a town that is almost 2,000 years old, and this little period of four years has made such an imprint on history that it’s hard to get beyond that in some ways.
Annie: And it’s funny because what I figured that in Vichy I would see monuments or things related to the Vichy government during World War II. I did not.
Apparently there are some, but [00:27:00] I didn’t see them. They are not prominent, okay?
Elyse: They’re– no, they’re not.
Beyond War Memories
Annie: In Moulins I saw Place des Déportés right by the Maison Mantin. Actually it might be right on Maison Mantin.
But otherwise, you don’t really see a lot of mention of World War II in that area, even though it was heavily involved.
Elyse: Certainly heavily involved, and I think that it’s a very conscious choiceto not eradicate the history, but to say we have to go beyond that.
Annie: Yeah, yeah. There’s a lot besides, so yeah.
Elyse: So, to my great astonishment, and actually for my pleasure, I went back and discovered how rich the history of Vichy actually is, and what’s, of course, unfortunate is that most of that has been sort of, you know, overshadowed, by what happened in World War II.
Romans And Hot Springs
Elyse: But Vichy is on the map because of its thermal [00:28:00] waters.
Annie: Uh-huh, yes.
Elyse: And it turns out, and I know when we first started doing these podcasts, after a while you would get annoyed with me because I’d say, “Well, this town had a Roman blah, blah, blah, blah.”
In this case, we do have to talk about the Romans. It turns out that, of course, everyone I think now knows, the Romans liked taking baths.
Annie: Sure, yeah.
Elyse: They were a people, as a culture, that considered bathing every day as part of what you do.
Annie: They were correct.
Elyse: They were correct. And they did, of course, do these big public baths.
And when they came through places like France, which of course became their empire, they were always happy to come across a spot that geographically had springs that were thermal baths. And lo and behold, because they had set up, you know, their kingdom, one of the capitals was what is now Lyon.
And so I guess, in their spreading out, I mean, who knows how that, you know, actually happens. Probably the local Celtic tribes knew about it anyway. [00:29:00] They discovered that this area… And I’m not even sure, I’m not big on geology at all, I have no notions really of geology. But it turns out that along the Allier River, which is where the Vichy, the town of Vichy is, there are these hot springs everywhere.
Annie: Yes.
Elyse: I mean, for whatever… You know, if we get my husband to come in here, he’d probably explain why, but whatever. That’s just the way it is. And so they were, “Whoopee! This is wonderful.” And they created a whole system of baths, of thermal sites, that were extremely important. And what happened was that even in pre-medieval times, the town, which at first was called Aquae Calidae, which is very easy, very easy to remember because it just means warm waters, you know?
I mean, it’s like, let’s not make a lot of trouble and make a fancy name. Let’s just call this place what it is, you know? It also became a center of industry for the 400 years of the [00:30:00] Roman Empire.
Sigillee Pottery Boom
Elyse: And so to my great astonishment there’s a kind of pottery that’s very famous in France that is famous since that time that still exists.
You can actually go to some crafts places and still find it. That is called sigillée.
Annie: Never heard that word.
Elyse: You’ve seen pictures of it, I’m sure. It looks like what the kind of pottery, the color is the same as what we use for cassoulet, you know, the nice reddish brown.
Annie: Yeah, yeah.
Elyse: It was famous starting ages ago, and I know about it from my classes of art history, that it became one of the major products that the Romans exported because it was so beautiful.
And what it is, it’s this very beautiful thin pottery with this reddish brown glaze that was embossed. And the sigillée is that. It’s this beautiful, these designs on the outside that are actually embossed. So it’s shiny, it’s reddish brown, and it has… They’re not designs that I know of with pictures.
I mean, it’s just sort of abstract patterns and things like that.[00:31:00]
Annie: How do you spell it?
Elyse: S-I-G-I-L-L-E-E.
Annie: Okay.
Elyse: And it became one of the major exports of this whole area for the entire Roman Empire. And they also had foundries for bronze because they had so much running water in the area. So it turns out that Vichy, what was not yet called Vichy, was very, very, very prosperous and very rich.
And it had all of the aristocratic Romans coming from the areas around Lyon and everything to come and did what we do, which is go for a weekend and have a nice time in the thermal baths. And so it was on the map from the very beginning when it became Gaul.
Annie: Interesting.
Elyse: And it really was wealthy. It’s a place that’s wonderful for archeologists who are still doing digs everywhere, because they’re coming up with all these artifacts, and they’ve discovered that there were more foundries than they thought and more pottery than they thought.
Medieval Lull And Renaming
Elyse: And all of this, of course, you know, changed a [00:32:00] little bit in the Middle Ages when it, the Roman Empire basically fell apart, and you getthese small city-states, I mean, when before France was really unified, which you have, you know, the Bourbon area, the Counts of Toulouse had this area, the Counts of Provence had an area.
And this area came under the ancestor of this, of the Bourbon, in the Middle Ages. And at some point later on, we skip a whole bunch of centuries, when the area was given to one of the dukes of Bourbon, they decided to change its name. And one of the reasons they changed the name is because they gave a chunk of property, I don’t know.
I mean, I honestly, in terms of the city of Vichy, I can’t say what it was, if it was in the city or on the outskirts. But they gave one of these aristocrats a whole section of land, and the name Vichy comes from his name.
Annie: Ah, okay.
Elyse: So it just got switched over to this thing, and in the ancient [00:33:00] times it was called Viquier or something like that.
And little by little, by the time we get to basically the French language, it came to be called Vichy.
Annie: Yeah.
Elyse: So, it’s really strange because the name of course is just because of this guy who was given a big chunk of this land, and it has nothing to do with the fact that, you know, it was the warm waters and stuff like that.
So in the Middle Ages, it kind of was the period where it went back to being just kind of a sleepy feudal area, you know.
Annie: Mm-hmm.
Elyse: I have no idea really, they don’t talk a lot about what the major activities were for a period of a few centuries. And then you get into the period of time where you mentioned Anne of, I can’t…
Annie: Beaujeu
Elyse: which is basically you know, the…
Annie: Anne de France.
Elyse: Anne de France. So, you know, by the time we get to the end of the 1300s, we’re really in full bloom of Middle Ages in France, and you [00:34:00] have royalty pretty much everywhere. And the baths come back, interestingly enough, that is when the idea of this area being a good place to go for baths comes back.
Because let’s face it, one of the things we do know is that in a good part of the Middle Ages, there were lots of parts of France where even the royalty was not into bathing all the time.
Annie: Yeah. No.
Elyse: You know? I mean, that’s why Versailles, they say, was not necessarily a place you wanted to spend a lot of time.
And, so basically it got put on the map again when it became the region of the Bourbonnais.
Annie: Right.
Elyse: And that is when it started to be rich again, and it was rich because of all of these kings who had this as their own little provincial area. And then it got attached to this whole area didn’t get attached to France until 1527, which is really relatively late, because that’s already after the death of Henry IV.
So it’s interesting that this part…
Annie: The Bourbons were over.[00:35:00]
Elyse: Yeah. I mean, the Bourbons were… Well, no, because Henry IV is…then he had the Louis that came after him.
Annie: Oh, yeah. Okay.
Elyse: But what I find curious is that this particular part was fought over. It’s like there must have been the Savoy or the Provençal or whoever it was, but this particular part just didn’t get annexed to France until that date, which seems awfully late in terms of the history of all this stuff.
And then what happened was that you get the aristocrats who are searching for something outside of Versailles. It’s interesting because, you know, I mean, let’s face it, there were aristocrats and royals and nobles everywhere in France. I mean, every region had its castles and its nobles.
But when you get into the early 1600s, that is when Vichy becomes the Vichy that we really know today.
Sevigne Makes Vichy Chic
Elyse: And you have one of the people that put Vichy on the map is someone that is very famous in the [00:36:00] history of France, and that is the Marquise de Sévigné.
Annie: Sévigné, yes. She also had a residence on the Place des Vosges, and it was being renovated. I don’t know if it’s open again.
Elyse: Ah, well, we’d love to go and visit it if it.
Annie: That would be lovely.
Elyse: It would be lovely. Now, she was extremely important as an intellectual. She was, of course, a member of the nobility, and she was famous and is still famous for her letters.
Annie: Right. She wrote letters to her daughter, and they were usually scandalous. About all the scandals.
Elyse: She was the greatest gossip in the world. Yes. And her letters are actually in book form. You can actually find them, you know, and you can– Well, it’s really good to read all this gossip. It’s just really great. Did you read them?
Annie: Yes, I read him as a kid.
Elyse: Do you remember?
Annie: No. No. But I remember reading, I don’t know who bought me the book though. I think it was my godmother.
Yeah, it was a tiny little book, Bibliothèque Rose, you know, it was [00:37:00] like summarized for kids.
Elyse: She is really fascinating. Maybe we should do even a podcast about her because she was one of these aristocrats who was actually an intellectual, and this was her way of getting around all of the things that women are not supposed to be able to do, you know, as a writer and everything.
And so what happens is she had problems. She had a lot of rheumatism. She had a lot of arthritis. How she decided to go there, I really don’t know. But she went to Vichy on the suggestion of somebody that she knew, and she had a cure there in the baths, and she wrote about it, and she sent her letters back to her daughter and to all the people she knew in Versailles, and she put Vichy on the map.
Annie: Aha.
Elyse: She said, “The waters are miraculous. The paralysis in my hand, because I write so much”, she said, “I need to have my hand back.” She said it, it all went away from doing this cure. And so she had a house built for herself, a mansion built for herself in Vichy, and she would go back there regularly. And thanks to [00:38:00] her, members of the royalty and the aristocracy started to build houses and started to go there.
And so starting basically in the 1600s, Vichy became the place to go if you wanted to do a cure.
Annie: Yeah. Kind of a treatment of a week or months or whatever of thermal baths and treatments.
Elyse: What’s interesting is that it’s not that close to Paris, you know? It’s what? 360 kilometers away. So this is not like you don’t get there in three hours, you know, if you’re in the 1600s and early 1700s.
Annie: Well, today if you drive, yes.
Elyse: Yes.
Royal Spa Town Era
Elyse: So the next people that were actually important in making it even more famous and important are two of Louis XV’s daughters.
Now, he had a whole slew of daughters who never got married.
Annie: Oh!
Elyse: They hated his mistresses. They were probably, you know, the kind of sourpusses that never get married that, you know, just like jealous. Oh, who knows? You know, that’s the reputation they had anyway.
But two of [00:39:00] them decided that they were going to do what Madame Marquise de Sévigné had done, and they went to the baths in Vichy, and they wrote back, “Dear Papa, this is disgusting here. We need to have our own chateau. There’s mud everywhere, and even if the waters are miraculous, we don’t want to mix with the hoi polloi.” So Louis XV gave them the money to build an exquisite place for them and for the royal family in Vichy.
Annie: Nice.
Elyse: And thanks to them, all the other royals built a house in Vichy as well.
Annie: Yes, it does look very posh. Like the city center looks very posh. It’s not medieval. There, I mean, there’s probably a few medieval houses, but it’s mostly, you know, like, I don’t know…
Elyse: Exactly. It’s 1700s. It’s basically, I mean, they really, their snobism helped turn Vichy into the place that was the place to be all through the last part of the [00:40:00] 18th century and all through the 19th century.
Annie: It’s funny, it has this path, the walking path that, so it’s all covered. So it’s like a long oval and you can promenade yourself. I think it’s called The Promenade.
It’s like… Oh, I bet it’s like Bath in England then. That’s really very similar. It’s the same time period as well. I bet. Ah, yeah, there you go. And then at one end you have the place where several of these springs come out, and you see them. I mean, they’ve built a… They’ve put a building over it, and that was open, thankfully. And you see where the spring waters bubble from, and you can taste the waters. So bring a cup.
I didn’t bring a cup.
Elyse: Yes. They say that that’s one of the things that’s the best thing to do in these thermal waters, is to actually drink some, although I’m doubt if it tastes very good. Yeah.
Annie: No, they taste good.
Elyse: Did taste good? It didn’t taste sulfury?
Annie: No, not at all. Not at all. It tastes like Vichy…
Elyse: Ah![00:41:00]
Annie: If you buy bottled Vichy water.
Elyse: Yeah, well, there you have Vichy water.
Annie: Yeah, that’s what it tastes like the bottled Vichy Célestins?
Elyse: That’s what it is?!
Annie: Yes, and there’s several of these springs, so I can’t remember many of the names, but there were probably a dozen of them that were owned by different families and bottled by different families.
The one that is still very famous is Célestins.
Elyse: Célestins. Yeah. Yeah.
Annie: But there are several. I mean, in France you can buy this bottle.
Elyse: Yeah, the Saint Yorre is still a Vichy.
Annie: Yes. Yeah. So there you go.
Elyse: There you go. (Mid-roll ad spot) So, basically, starting in the 1700s, thanks to the children of Louis XV, Louis XVI, he built what is called the Galerie Jansen, which apparently still exists, the Jansen Gallery.
Annie: I might have seen it, but I don’t…I’m telling you, all of these places, I had the map and I was like, “I don’t have no idea where I am.”
Elyse: But basically what we’re talking about is that it was really, from this point [00:42:00] on, it was the royals and all of these people who started going to Vichy.
Napoleons Build Modern Vichy
Elyse: Napoleon’s mother, 1812, went for a cure.
Annie: Nice.
Elyse: Wrote back, “Dear son, I know you’re busy making war all over Europe, but it would be really nice if we could have more buildings and bring more people here, because this is a really nice place to take the waters.”
Starting from that point on in the 19th century, followed by his nephew, Napoleon III, they built endless numbers of villas, and they built hotels, and that’s when the opera was created, and all of this building started in Vichy. It was, the 19th century was the glory time of the city of Vichy.
Annie: Yeah, and you can tell. Like, when you walk around, it really looks like it has a glorious past. That’s not Middle Ages or Renaissance. It’s like, you know, it’s 1800s, 1900s, so forth.
Elyse: And thanks to them, actually thanks to [00:43:00] the Napoleon and Napoleon III, with a little bit of the Charles X in between, but they did things that are absolutely amazing. They put in a train system that went to Paris. Now we’re talking about the second half of the 19th century. They put inthe first, at the very end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century, the very first and most modern telephone system in France.
Annie: Mm-hmm.
Elyse: Just to make sure that all these people, including foreigners, because one of the other things that happened, and this is really fascinating, I was thinking of the history of your family.
Of course, they were not aristocrats, but it turns out that in the 19th century with the French Empire and all these people going as colonialists for places like Africa, Vichy became the place they went to when they came back to France to have a cure.
Annie: Uh-huh. Yeah.
Elyse: So it became so important that there was a time when it was almost [00:44:00] 50,000 people in Vichy.
Annie: So you could rub shoulders with rich people from all the French Empire.
Elyse: The whole French Empire, it was the place for them to go.
Probably because it was easier to get to than some places further north. I have no idea, but little by little, word got out that this was the place to go, and so it was populated by all of these people, even coming from the empire.
World War One Hospitals
Elyse: And then something really fascinating, World War I.
In World War I, because it had the train system and because it had the beginning of what was the first really modern communication system, they decided to use Vichy as a base for military hospitals, and because of the waters there.
So in World War I, they had taken over most of the hotels, most of the pavilions, and all of the places that they could, and turned them into military hospitals. And they estimate that over [00:45:00] 150,000 soldiers were treated and taken care of in Vichy during World War I.
Annie: Mm, interesting. So I saw this whole thing about les donneuses d’eau. So these were kind of nurses. They were dressed like nurses, but they would bring you different waters to cure different ailments. But of course, I… So, like, there’s a plaque on the ground outside, in this grand area that’s is kind of central, and it just shows you the chemical, the chemistry of all these different waters.
So it looks like chemical…
Elyse: Formulas?
Annie: Formulas, yeah. I’m not sure they are that different. I mean, it’s just a… they’re just different waters with slightly different bits of minerals and different composition. But they would bring you different waters, les donneuses d’eau is, it was an interesting…
And they were dressed like British nurses, with the little hats, you know, and [00:46:00] stuff.
Elyse: Well, they said that it became a place… it’s very interesting, it’s kind of touching.
They made 14 military hospitals in Vichy during World War I, and it was when they built, and apparently there still is a military cemetery there.
Annie: Sure. Yeah.
Elyse: It was requisitioned basically, but it became a place that was for soothing the wounds of all of these, you know, soldiers who of…
I mean, World War I was just absolutely devastating in terms of all of that. And Vichy, interestingly enough, and it’s sort of the same thing that’s happened again since World War II, although on a smaller scale, as soon as World War I was over, it went back to being a wonderful place to go to just take the waters, to just have a cure.
So the 1920s and ’30s were thriving and it was very prosperous, but it stayed just a thermal center. I mean, it was nothing more ever than a thermal center.
There were trains to Nîmes, to Clermont, to Paris, [00:47:00] to Lyon. They built a really goodnetwork of roads as cars started being developed.
So it’s interesting to know, because this leads us, of course, up to world- what happened in World War II. It was a modern small city. It had the road system, it had the train system, it had the telephone system, which many other parts of France did not yet have in the 1930s.
Why Vichy In World War Two
Elyse: And so then we get to World War II.
And interestingly enough, and this was one of the things that I found fascinating, Vichy was the last choice for this new, whatever you want to call it, government, okay?
The provisional government, the Petain government, which is basically what people in France like to call it. So Germany enters and occupies France in 1940, starting in Paris, and they sign an armistice just very soon afterwards with this group of people, including Maréchal [00:48:00] Pétain, who thinks that this is a way of keeping France from being demolished a second time after World War I.
But because the Germans are occupying the northern half of France, the Petain government, which at this time is really what it’s called, needs to find a place to set up their capital.
Annie: Right.
Elyse: And they are not available. I mean, Paris is occupied by the Germans. So their first choice was Bordeaux.
Annie: Mm-hmm.
Elyse: Bordeaux was too close to the fighting in terms of the coastal fighting, and they didn’t, they were worried because the Germans were slowly coming down and taking over Bordeaux.
Then they tried Lyon. They’d thought about Lyon. Lyon was a hotbed of resistance from the very beginning.
Annie: Hmm.
Elyse: Then they thought of Marseille. Too many immigrants, foreigners, workers. They were worried about revolts against their government. Then they tried thinking about Toulouse, which was the [00:49:00] same as Marseille, foreigners, nasty foreigners, resistance, l- gauchistes, people from the left, all these communists.
And basically, they went through the list of every major city that they could find in the unoccupied zone, and then finally somebody said, “Why not try Vichy?” Vichy is close to the lines between the occupied and unoccupied zone. It’s not that far from Lyon. It’s on a train line. It’s got good roads. It’s got good communications, and that is the reason they chose to go to Vichy.
Annie: Interesting.
Elyse: And so we have the government that’s come to be known as the Vichy government because that is where they set up, and within the space of a few weeks, they had, I have a number here that’s actually amazing, 670 deputies and senators went to live in Vichy to create this new National Assembly, and then of [00:50:00] course, they abolished the Republic of France and created the constitutional regime of Vichy.
That was officially its name.
Annie: Mm-hmm.
Elyse: And for four years, this government stayed in Vichy. The first two years were simply the French who were collaborating and occupied with doing what the Germans wanted, and that is exactly pretty much what they did. And then starting in November of ’44, the Germans decided that this was not working, and they had to occupy all of France.
And so they came and took over Vichy, and it was really from that point on that things got to be as horrific as you can possibly imagine because the Gestapo made its headquarters in Vichy, and the German occupying Wehrmacht made their headquarters in Vichy, besides, of course, having Paris. And they exfiltrated Pétain into Germany.
They actually evacuated him out, and then they put in [00:51:00] place a man named Laval, who eventually was convicted of being a traitor at the end of World War II.
Annie: So was Pétain.
Elyse: And so was Pétain. But Pétain was considered to be an old, senile man, and they didn’t…
Annie: Right. They condemned him to death, but they didn’t carry it out because he was too old, which… I’m against killing people for political reasons, so yeah…
Liberation Without Destruction
Elyse: So in August of 1944, when the Allies basically were coming up from the north, you know, North Africa, and coming across, and the Germans were retreating, and they retreated from Vichy. They were in process of retreating from Vichy. This is fascinating. I had no idea.
There was a Swiss diplomat who, I don’t know why he took on this task. His name was Walter Stucki, and he was in touch with all of the major resistance groups which were surrounding Vichy at [00:52:00] this point, because by August of 1944, we have the rest of 1944 when that’s when you have all of the…
There is still fighting everywhere because, of course, the armistice was not signed until ’45, and the resistance groups were being armed by the Allies and were more and more powerful, and of course, there were major ones in the forests in the center of France and of course, in Lyon.
And they were about to attack the city of Vichy as the Germans were leaving. And he negotiated, I’m not sure why, I have no idea what his motivation was personally, he went to both the Germans who were occupying Vichy, who were in the process of evacuating everything, their troops, their everything, and he went to the heads of the different resistant groups, and he said, “Can we work this so that the city of Vichy is not destroyed?”
That is, you’re about to take over Vichy, meaning the resistance.
Said, “If you go in now, there will be fighting everywhere. People will be killed everywhere, and [00:53:00] the city will be partially destroyed. If you allow the Germans to evacuate north and come in tomorrow morning, we will save what will probably be a massacre.”
And they accepted.
Annie: Okay.
Elyse: So the Germans fled.
Annie: They just left.
Elyse: They just left. I mean, they destroyed, I’m sure, as much as they could in terms of paperwork and all the rest of it, but they left. I mean, they went up north to see if they could do the last-ditch fighting against the Allies, and the resistant groups came in and took over Vichy the next day, and that kept Vichy from being destroyed.
Annie: Yeah. You don’t see a lot of World War II in Vichy at all. It’s just nothing is left. I mean, I’m sure the archives have to… The departmental archives have to be interesting, but to have access to that, you have to be a researcher, so that’s…
Elyse: It’s amazing. So it turns out that as soon as the resistance came in, and even before the armistice was signed, there were people [00:54:00] probably, just people living in Vichy, whatever they did or did not do during World War II, but there was little handwritten signs posted everywhere in Vichy, and one of them said, “Vichy is not the seat of a government that is traitor to the country, but is the queen of thermal cities. Vichy had its share of prisoners, deported people, heroes, and martyrs. Let’s leave Vichy alone.”
Annie: Well, that’s probably best because what are you going to do? We’re not God, we can’t read into people’s hearts. You know, we don’t know how they felt about this whole situation, so just let bygones be bygones.
Postwar Identity And Industry
Elyse: So it took a little bit of time, but really by 1950 it went back to being just a small sleepy town with thermal baths, which of course you are the absolute witness of, you know, today. It kept most of these buildings that are from the 1800s, very beautiful.
Annie: Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Elyse: [00:55:00] And so there are things to see.
Interestingly enough, the industries that keep Vichy going are not the baths because the baths have not, you know, they’re now part of what we call the health system of France, but it’s not as big a fashionable thing to do as it was, of course, in the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, you know.
Annie: Right.
Elyse: But you have the waters that are actually, the mineral waters, and the Vichy pastille, which I actually love.
Annie: Me too. Oh!
Elyse: And it turns out that I didn’t realize that they’re actually made with the thermal waters.
Annie: They are! They are! So Pastille de Vichy, a passion of mine.
Elyse: They’re hard to find.
No, you find them at any grocery store!
Oh, I’m going to go look again.
Annie: Yes, but in Vichy you can buy different brands.
The rest of France, it’s just the one big distributor.
But they also, I mean, I asked them, “What’s the gastronomy here?” And they said, “C’est la confiserie.” So in Vichy they just make candy.
Candy. So they make gomme de Vichy, [00:56:00] they make the little hard pastille de Vichy. I’m sure there’s other.
Oh, they also makedes pâtes du fruit are big in that area. So just candy, sweetness. Sweetness.
Elyse: Mineral waters, candies. And it turns out, surprise, surprise, the headquarters for research for L’Oreal is in Vichy.
Annie: Aha, L’Oréal, mmh.
Elyse: And L’Oréal, which is one of the biggest companies on the planet in terms of cosmetics and whatever, shampooing thing, I mean, everything like that. They have brands underneath the big brand of L’Oréal.
So their research labs, I think that was a more recent thing starting in the 1980s, but they’ve actually been set up in and around Vichy, which of course brings a certain dynamism to the city.
Annie: The city looks grand. I mean, it looks very nice. It was dead, but it was very nice. I’m sure that when there’s actual people there, it’s lovely.
Vichyssoise Not Vichyste
Annie: And so, just one last thing because I find this curious [00:57:00] but also very amusing. One of the first things I read was if you meet anybody from the city of Vichy, you call them a Vichyssois, which is of course the name for a wonderful leek and potato soup.
Right. So the ladies are with Vichyssoise?
Elyse: Because they do not want to be called Vichystes.
Vichyste, because that is referring to the people who were there during World War II.
Annie: Ah, okay. So they would rather go buy soup.
Elyse: So would rather go buy soup. So if it’s a man, it’s a vichyssois, and if it’s a woman, it’s a vichyssoise.
Annie: All right. I approve. Excellent. That was really interesting, Elyse. Thank you so much. We’ve been talking a long time. Got to stop.
Elyse: Well, it’s fascinating, huh?
Annie: Fabulous. Merci beaucoup, Elyse.
Elyse: De rien.
Annie: Au revoir.
Elyse: Au revoir.
Patron Thanks and Perks
Annie: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons [00:58:00] get several exclusive rewards for doing so. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus. And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/elysart.
Free Patreon News Post
Annie: This week I published a kind of a summary of the news that has been all over France radio and TV this week, the terrible story of a little girl who was abducted and what this means for our judicial system in France.
And this particular post I have made free for everyone, so if you want to check it out, just go to patreon.com/joinus and it’ll be out there for you to peruse.
Notre Dame Window Controversy
Annie: Let’s talk about the modern stained glass at Notre Dame de Paris. So this is a quick update for those of you following the restoration.
Of course, it’s a massive undertaking, and it’s continuing. You may have heard that there’s been a controversy over six new [00:59:00] contemporary stained glass windows planned for the cathedral.
The artist chosen is Claire Tabouret. And the windows are being made by the Simon Marc Master Glassmakers workshop in Reims.
They are scheduled to go in between June and October, so soon. The problem, according to heritage groups, is that the six windows being replaced date from 1862 and were part of Viollet Le Duc’s original restoration, and crucially, they were not damaged by the 2019 fire.
So the question a lot of people are asking is, why replace something that didn’t need replacing?
Court Ruling and Petition
Annie: Two heritage associations took it to court to block the work, and they lost. The judge ruled a few weeks ago that the work is not irreversible, so there were no grounds for an emergency suspension.
About 340,000 people had signed a petition against the [01:00:00] project. The associations say the fight isn’t over and that there will be a full hearing on the merits. Their argument is that since Notre Dame is a fully listed historic monument, those Viollet-le-Duc windows are protected, and if the diocese wants contemporary art in the cathedral, there are plenty of windows that are currently plain glass and could accommodate that.
So to be continued.
Modern Stained Glass Favorites
Annie: I must say that the stained glass in the Rodez Cathedral are stunning. The ones at the Metz Cathedrals are even better. There are four by Marc Chagall in Metz, and I have to say that among all the modern stained glass at the Metz Cathedral, it’s mostly what they have,
I immediately recognized the ones by Chagall and could identify some of the people he portrayed because I had seen very similar images at the Chagall Museum in Nice.
Elyse is rubbing off on me, [01:01:00] dear listeners, and that is good news.
Spring Cleaning Update
Annie: And another piece of good news, my husband and I decided to do some spring cleaning. It’s still spring for a few more days, so that’s got to be why. We’re like everybody else, we accumulate, and we don’t have a very big house. In particular, our offices had more stuff than we knew what to do with, but to fix my office, I decided I had to first reclaim room that our DVD collections was taking up, then sort out the books, catalog all of this, order some new office furniture.
Some of the stuff we had was very old and not practical. At any rate, it took all of my energy all week, but I’m getting close, and that’s a happy thing. God help me, I’m going to have to tackle the garage next.
Newsletter and Credits
Annie: If you want a short recap of what came out this week in France, whether it’s news, new episodes, or my personal updates, what I’m paying attention to, [01:02:00] sign up for my free weekly newsletter at JoinUsinFrance.com/newsletter.
My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan, who produced the transcripts.
Next Episode and Farewell
Annie: Next week on the podcast, a trip report with Cas McIntyre from Australia. You’re going to love her. She was wonderful.
Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together.
Au revoir.
Copyright
Annie Sargent: The join us in France Travel Podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and copyright 2026 by Addicted to France. It is released under a Creative Comments, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.[01:03:00] [01:04:00]
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Episode PageCategories: French Departments, Off the Beaten Track in France