After spending Friday night in Lyon, eating at one of the best restaurants in France, Melanie and I boarded a train headed to the town of Meximieux, which was right next to our ultimate destination: the medieval village of Pérouges.
We were hoping to catch a taxi in Meximieux, and we saw one as we stepped off the train, but we stood outside the terminal in the hot sun for almost 20 minutes and barely saw any cars go by, let alone another taxi. Our French isn't good enough to call a cab, so we were feeling a little stuck, but after consulting Google Maps on my iPhone I realized that Pérouges was only about a 25 minute walk away, so we decided to give it a shot.
Melanie has a bum knee, it was pretty hot, and the village is on a hill... so after about five minutes we were already starting to regret our decision. We had turned off the main street and were walking down a small deserted alley when, believe it or not, an empty cab came driving by. We flagged it down and ten minutes later we were at the Pérouges gate.
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| I swear I could see axe and battering ram marks in what was left of the massive wooden door. |
I had assumed that our room would be in some sort of hotel, but the guest quarters were in various buildings scattered around town. Here are some pictures of where we stayed:
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| The woman from the hotel told us that our building was constructed in the 1400's. |
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| Our room was lovely, and packed with antique chairs, chests, and tables. |
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| The courtyard beneath the window in our room. |
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| Even the key to our building felt authentic! How cool is that? |
It was a warm day and our room was a little stuffy, so we threw open the windows to let in a breeze. We sat there for about half an hour, planning out our day, when suddenly and mysteriously one set of windows closed. There didn't seem to be a breeze, and the other set of windows on the same wall didn't move a millimeter -- but it was like an invisible hand just reached up and slowly but firmly pushed them both closed.
I was looking forward to some ghostly hi-jinks later that night, but sadly that was the only strange thing that happened.
Pérouges is an incredibly beautiful little village and Melanie and I nearly filled our cameras up taking picture after picture.
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| The flower-filled streets were lined with vendors, restaurants, museums, and more. |
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| The town's first well was dug in the 12th century. The mechanical parts were added sometime in the 1800's. |
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| At certain times of the year old-fashioned minstrels stroll through the streets playing music! |
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| We stayed in a different building, but this was our hotel: Hostellerie du Vieux Pérouges |
After walking around the city for awhile we got pretty thirsty, so we stopped at Le Veneur Noir ("The Black Huntsman") to drink some cold beer and have a bite to eat.
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| Nothing tastes better on a warm day than an ice cold beer with your best friend. And you can't beat this setting! |
That night we had a terrific dinner at the hotel. We were still pretty full from Friday's extravagance but the food was so good we didn't mind loading up again.
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| The dining room at the hotel was absolutely charming. |
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| I ordered scallops and they were nice and light... and delicious! |
After the never-ending cacophony of noise outside our apartment in Paris, the silence of our hotel room, even with the windows wide open, was almost deafening. We slept like babies.
The next morning I got up early and looked outside. There was a mist hanging over the town in the distance so I held my iPad out the window and snapped a picture to show Melanie. I had absolutely no idea what I was taking a picture of, or even if the iPad was level, so I was kind of shocked when I saw the picture:
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| I took this picture completely blind, but it came out kind of nice, don't you think? |
We had planned to catch another taxi back to Meximieux but the owner of the hotel told us that it can be hard to find one. So he pulled his car around and drove us himself! Outstanding service. (We tried to give him a little money for his trouble but he refused to take it.)
Unfortunately, we got to the city a little earlier than expected and had about an hour wait for our train back to Lyon. Melanie and I were sitting on some covered benches next to the track, reminiscing about our adventure, when out of NOWHERE a high speed TGV train suddenly came screaming by us.
HOLY CRAP!!!
Melanie's eyes got as big as saucers and I just stood there with my mouth open, mid-sentence. Seven seconds later it was gone but I think it was several more minutes before our hearts started beating again.
That thing scared me more than any roller coaster I've ever been on. I'm not sure why it had such an effect but I guess because it was just ON us, with barely any warning. One minute we're listening to birds tweeting and talking quietly about our recent adventures, the next minute this giant metal beast is SCREAMING past us, ten feet away, at almost 300 KM per hour. If that thing had jumped the tracks there would have been nothing left of us to even identify.
Ten minutes later it happened again, and it was almost as scary as the first time. Melanie said, in all seriousness, "If that thing comes by again I'm going to have a heart attack." I was hoping to capture the excitement on my camera, but I sat there in a ready position for nearly an hour and no more trains came by.
Despite being nearly scared to death on the final day, we had a phenomenal weekend. I know I've said this many times before but we feel so blessed to have this opportunity. So thanks to Corentin and Bastion and the other folks at Pretty Simple who made our adventure possible. We're so very grateful.
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