Zumstegs on the Go

The weather forecast for today was promising (meaning: no rain, if also no sunshine) so we set off for a ramble to the medieval town of Provins, about an hour away. For once the forecast was accurate, and we had a fine day; well, we didn’t get rained on. First, we visited St. Loup-de-Naud, a tiny little town near Provins.

St. Loup-de-Naud

I wish I had some history of this tiny town. It has a grand total of 894 inhabitants, and an over-sized church. The church was built by Henri “the Liberal” who lived in the mid-1100s and was Count of Champagne. Somehow relics associated with St. Loup (I know nothing about him) had arrived in this town and Henri wanted a church to venerate them. So he funded this church.

Unfortunately the church was closed; a sign on the door from the City Hall dated two years ago said that it would be closed “until further notice;” no reason given.

But the town of St. Loup-de-Naud was beautiful, and a little mystifying. Every house in it was beautifully maintained; not one ringer. Most towns have a mixture of houses, from some big and beautiful and well-maintained to small and not-so-well-kept-up. We have no idea why this tiny place had residents with the money and inclination to keep every single house beautiful. Here are some pictures of St. Loup-de-Naud.

Provins

Provins is a medieval town that realized it had an attraction: being a medieval town. Older guidebooks describe it as “picturesque town that has retained its rural feel.” Well, maybe not so much. Since that was written 35 years ago, Provins has drawn on its charms and become a tourist destination. So it wasn’t quite the pristine medieval city we’d expected. But it is still interesting and worth seeing.

Now, the first surprise was that Provins was full of elementary school kids. This is the last week of school in France, and evidently it’s also school-trip week. There were thousands of kids here. Actually, it was kind of a kick to see them all.

As we always like to do, Laurie and I found a small path around the lower part of the town and walked it. We wondered where (and if) it was going to end. Finally we saw a couple stairs to a doorway in the back a series of houses that formed a wall. Up the stairways, through the doorway, and here is what we saw:

Provins has a most interesting church. The same Henri the Liberal mentioned in the St. Loup comments built St. Quiriace; well, he started it. A bit of church architecture will help explain this church.

Medieval churches were generally built in the shape of a cross. The top part of the cross is the Choir; here is – you guessed it – the choir, and also the altar. The Nave is the bottom part of the cross, below the cross-arm; it’s here that the congregation sat for masses. Then there are two Transepts, each one of which makes up one side of the horizontal arm of the cross. They all meet at the Crossing, which usually has a dome or steeple on it.

Now this church, St. Quiriace, got started right. Henri the Liberal built a big Choir:

Then something went awry and construction stopped, for four hundred years. Then the Nave was added, but it was only a pretend nave, maybe 40 feet long. The church should have had a Nave several hundred feet long, with maybe fifteen bays (arches along the side walls) but this one stopped at two bays.

Construction was again delayed, but this time for only three hundred years. Then the transepts were built, except they aren’t really Transepts, but stubs where Transepts were to be built someday.

It appears that no one has been in a great hurry to finish St. Quiriace, as today, 400 years after the last “temporary” part was built, the church remains uncompleted. I’m thinking it may not get done soon.

Provins has beautifully maintained fortifications. We walked in what was once the moat.

In all, a rewarding visit and a nice day. But we were glad to get back to Montigny and a glass or two of rosé!

No big activities the last couple days, so I’ll just post some pictures.

Moret-sur-Loing

We went back to Moret-sur-Loing again. We still like the place.

A Ramble Through the Countryside

Can’t stop taking pictures of poppies…

Some pictures in small towns…

Caution: Airplane geekiness follows!

The Paris Air Show is, and has been since the first one in 1909(!), THE airshow; nothing is as big or as good. Airplane manufacturers all show their latest and greatest, and Airbus and Boeing fly their latest at the Paris Air Show. I’ve wanted to see it since I first knew about it, and that would have been some forty years ago. Today, thanks to our friend Gilles, I was able to be there. For a plane-loving geek like me, it was great!

The day started badly, though: at about five in the morning, we were awakened by a horrendous, and I do mean horrendous lightning storm. For ninety minutes, we had brilliant flashes of lightning, followed immediately by deafening crashes of thunder, and deluges of rain. “Well,” thought I, “This is going to make the air show problematical.” But Gilles and I persevered, as the forecast was for the weather to clear some and become hot – mid-80s hot.

We took the train to the le Bourget stop (the airshow is at the le Bourget airfield, where Lindberg landed after his solo transatlantic flight in 1927), and, as we got off the train, the skies opened up again. Fortunately we had umbrellas so we forged ahead to the shuttle bus and headed for the field. Then, just as we stepped off the bus at the entrance to the airfield, the sky lit up with a flash of lightning, and the clouds opened with a downpour. We found shelter and waited it out, but there were hundreds of people in lines to get in, many in business suits, who were standing in the open and getting soaked to the skin.

Anyway, we finally got through the lines, received our entrance badges and made our way in. After wanting to do this for so long, I was at the Paris Air Show:

We first went into one of the exhibit halls, just to see the extent of this place. There simply is NO way to describe how big it is, but here are pictures I took from one spot, forming a panaorama. This shows maybe a hundredth of one of the smaller of the exhibition halls.

I suppose I could find somewhere how many aviation-related companies were present, but it has to be in the thousands, anywhere from Airbus and Boeing to companies making tiny airplane parts. (Ok, I just looked it up: 2,244 exhibitors. There were 126 airplanes on display.) Amazing.

Many companies display their aircraft on the flight line. I apologize for the quality of these pictures; it was a very bright day by now, with lots of glare, and my poor old point-and-shoot camera had a hard time dealing with it. Heck, I had a hard time dealing with it! Anyway, here are some flight-line pictures:

One highlight of the flying demonstrations was by a French fighter, the Dassault Rafale; the things that pilot did were amazing. But the real highlight was the British Airways Airbus A380, doing steep climbs, turns and dives right over the airfield, all under a thousand feet or so; this flying demo was just amazing.

An hour later, the Boeing 787 took off, with this pretty spectacular climb from the runway (note the landing gear still coming up):

After that start, the Dreamliner flew a more sedate show than the A380 – don’t know why. Still, it was pretty amazing to see, and there were several 787s on the flight line, so we were able to see it close up. We also stood right under the tail of the British Airways A380; geeze, that airplane is BIG!

Le Bourget has a museum of flight, so there are some older airplanes there. In the midst of all these sleek modern aircraft was this Lockheed Super Constellation, designed in the early 1940s (the co-pilot on the first flight of the prototype was Eddie Allen, later President of Boeing) and flown until jet aircraft pushed it into obsolescence in the early 1960s. Maybe it’s just me and my love of old airliners, but I think the Connie still looks beautiful, even when (maybe especially when) it’s surrounded by modern airplanes.

After the Dreamliner demo flight, Gilles and I were pretty tired. This place is definitely sensory overload for us airplane geeks! So we headed for the train station and home. As a fitting end, the train went through what may be the worst storm squall I’ve ever seen: rain so hard you couldn’t see two hundred yards, so dark all the lights were on (though it was five hours before sunset), lightning and thunder all around us. When we got to the train station at Bois le Roi, where Mary picked us up, she said she had never seen rain so hard as that storm brought.

Many, many thanks to Gilles for getting the Air Show tickets (it’s by invitation only until Friday, so he had to do quite a lot to get them) and for taking me there, guiding me through the train stations – always an adventure – and around the air show. It meant a great deal to me to be able to attend the Paris Air Show, after wanting to do this for so many years. Merci beaucoup, Gilles.

Sorry, bubbly-lovers, this is not a post about a quaint village we visited to taste some of that French nectar of the gods. Champagne-sur-Seine is a small town not too far from us, with an interesting (well, to us; you may find this quite boring) 20th century.

Those of you who suffered through my last Berlin blog will recall that Craig and I spent a day tracking down historic industrial buildings in Berlin, because the first real “factory that looks like a factory” was built there in 1910, designed by Peter Behrens. So when, a couple days ago Laurie and I drove through Champange-sur-Seine, which friends had told us was kind of gritty and not interesting, we perked up when we drove past some beautiful factory buildings. They were obviously pre-Behrens, because, as big as they were, they weren’t really industrial-looking. Today, we returned to take a closer look.

In 1903, the Schneider Company, which manufactured electrical equipment, chose Champagne-sur-Seine for a new factory. The company built a huge factory and warehouse, and other companies followed. By 1923, Schneider employed 1,500 people in its factories, and the town had grown from 600 inhabitants to over 3,200. After the Russian revolution, the company brought workers from Russia; Champagne-sur-Seine still has a Russian Orthodox Church. Schneider also built a large number of apartments for its workers.

Schneider ceased operations in this plant in the 1990s. The buildings now have some industrial occupants, but employment has never come close to its peak with Schneider.

First, the Schneider buildings:

As we walked around the area, once jammed with other electric-industry-related companies, Laurie said, “This is a ghost town,” and indeed it is. Many warehouses and factories remain, but few are occupied.

One interesting thing: the companies that have occupied these hundred-year old buildings are almost all high-tech companies, serving the electronic sector that was birthed by the electric industry. So what Schneider started in 1903 continues in a way.

As we walked around the town we came across a sports complex, now quite rundown, as the city and country just doesn’t have the money to keep up a facility built when the town boomed. There are still tennis courts (in good shape and well-used, as tennis is popular here), a rugby field, soccer pitch, and play areas for kids. In the middle of this complex, for my bike-riding readers (that’s you, yakibiker) a velodrome, not in good shape at all:

Champagne-sur-Seine has some beauty and style, too:

All in all, an interesting town that has fallen on bad times. One part of what we were told is true: it’s kind of gritty. But it also has an interesting past and some fine ghosts. We liked it a lot.

We’re glad it was “just another day,” as it felt like we’re getting back in the routine after our little adventure in the French healthcare system.

Today started with a visit from a nurse, to change the dressing on my thumb. Really, a home visit! She showed up about 11 o’clock – young, energetic, wearing regular street clothes, and, Laurie says I should include, quite beautiful. In ten minutes she had me fixed up with new dressing, in a much better fashion than the hand clinic had done. She, or one of her colleagues, will be here every other day to change the dressing; we understand it will cost less than $10 per visit!

When she took the old dressing off, I got a look at what I’d done to myself for the first time. Ugh. It is ugly. Really ugly. Pictures on request.

Then Laurie and I went to our local market, Carrefour, for groceries and a coffee-maker, to replace the one I broke. It felt good to get back to doing something normal.

Afterwards, we took a walk along our favorite route, the Canal Loing. We parked in the public parking at La Genevraye (population: 650) and saw this view of the Church here:

The first record of this Church is in the 13th century. It’s unusual in that it sits on a hill outside of the town; most churches are surrounded by their towns. I learned today this church, l’Egise de la Genevraye will be open and have a display of its history on France’s Day of Patrimony, September 12. We will definitely visit that day.

Then we walked along Canal Loing. Walking the section we walked today fills in a gap; we have now walked the canal from its entry into the Seine river upstream to Nemours, about seven miles in all.

Someday I’ll post more about the canals. We’ve thought about why we enjoy them so much, and enjoy watching boats – particularly working canal barges – go through the locks. We think it’s because the canals and the boats are a part of an older France, a France that is disappearing. Fifty years ago, a lock on this canal would have seen fifty boats a day; today, maybe ten, of which two or three would be real “working” boats and the rest private pleasure craft or “float the canals of France” tourist boats. Progress, I guess, but I’m sorry to see this aspect of France disappear.

Here’s a working canal boat, the “Thailand,” in the lock at Episy.

You can see that these canal boats were built for the size of the locks. There is no more than a foot of clearance on each side, and maybe two or three feet of clearance on the length. The skill of the people operating them amazes us: they never touch the sides, they never have to go forward or backward to get positioned, they just gently ease into the lock and gently ease out when they’ve locked through.

Here’s the Thailand, moving up the canal. That it’s empty is apparent from how high it is out of the water. They go slowly; Laurie and I walked faster than the boat moved.

Laurie spotted these poppies growing in what is essentially a heap of junk.

All in all, a nice day, a day of getting back into the groove. As a bonus, the weather cleared late in the day and we had a glass or two of rosé sitting outside on the terrace. Sunset here is about an hour later than in Seattle (9:55 tonight), so if the weather is nice (a rarity so far), we can sit out pretty late.

We’ve done most of our traveling in September, but some years ago we came to France in May and one strong memory we have of that trip was seeing the poppies in the fields. Last week, the poppies burst forth, and we love them as much now as then. Today, I have just poppie pictures, plus one other.

One last, non-poppie picture. The road by which I took those pictures goes from the small town of La Genevraye to the even smaller town of Cugny. We’ve driven this road a couple times and were surprised to find it barricaded the day we went to see the poppies. A sign on the barricade said that the road was closed for a school outing and while we were there, sure enough, here came the school. Evidently they closed the road so the kids could have an outing of walking from La Genevray to Cugny and back. Is that cool or what?