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To get to Brittany from the Hauts de France region where we’ve made our last couple stops, we needed to pass through Normandy. We’ve traveled through Normandy in the past, so we made just a couple one-night stops in order to break up the trip. We never like to drive more than 2 or 3 hours a day. These were our only one-night stops of this trip. Both were very pleasant, but we’re glad not to have any more one-nighters.

First was the lovely harbor town of Honfleur, complete with loads of pretty shops, great restaurants, and a very comfortable hotel. And if Amiens offered up the largest medieval building in France, Honfleur tried to compete with the largest wooden church in the country. The Eglise Ste-Catherine was built around the turn of the 16th century after its stone predecessor was destroyed in the Hundred Years War. To save money to strengthen the town walls, local shipwrights built a “temporary” church out of wood. And there is stands today 500 years later.

Then we traveled a couple more hours to see Mont Saint Michel, one of the most iconic sites in all of France. I was actually there 42 years ago, on a high school French trip, at the tender age of 16. At the time I was blown away by the place — a soaring abbey rising from a rock outcrop surrounded by either sand or sea, depending on the rapidly moving tides. Indeed the bay here offers the most dramatic tidal variation in all of Europe. Water is said to move in and out of this bay at the speed of a galloping horse.

Mont Saint Michel made our agenda because Jim had never been here. So it felt almost obligatory. I can’t even say I was particularly enthused about coming back. But as we were approaching the area, still 5 or 6 miles away, the outline of the island suddenly and dramatically appeared on the horizon, across the fields, under a blanket of cloud and gloom. And we were both pretty stunned by how dramatic it was!

So we spent a night in the adjacent town, La Caserne; this is a mild sacrifice because, despite (or because of?) the huge tourist population here, the town is woefully absent of a decent restaurant. We trekked 35 minutes to the island, climbed the steep, busy streets packed with tourists, gift shops, pubs, and crepe restaurants. We toured the magnificent abbey at the top. And it was actually pretty amazing all over again. I probably won’t get back again for another 42 years, so we made the most of this visit to this magical place.

Looming above everything in Amiens is the world’s largest medieval structure, the stunning Cathedral of Notre-Dame d’Amiens. Built between 1220 and 1270 (a relatively short time span for a work of its ambition), the cathedral is an exceptionally unified version of High Gothic style. Aiming to maximize light, its builders reached far to the heavens. Its exceptional height combines with other dimensions to create a total interior volume of 260,000 cubic yards, twice that of Notre Dame in Paris.

Amiens is the historic capital of Picardy in Northern France, and sits on the lovely Somme river. Since medieval times, a huge network of canals and waterways has extended the reach of the Somme to support market gardens growing food and flowers, as well as thousands of private gardens. We thoroughly enjoyed renting bikes, riding along the river out of town, and seeing the little waterways snaking out in every direction, surrounded by lush gardens.

It is also worth noting that Amiens is the birthplace of President Emmanuel Macron, and was the home of the writer Jules Verne for the final 34 years of his life. It’s also home to 30,000 students from the University of Picardy, giving its street and squares a youthful and lively air. And it all takes place underneath the ever present towers of the cathedral.

From here we will pick up a car and head west, making a couple brief stops in Normandy. Then we’ll reach Brittany, which we will explore for 2 weeks.

OK, so after a quick visit to Paris this is the real start of our French trip, the first of 22 stops that are new to us. As Mark mentioned we’re going to be moving fast, so this was a two-day stop. The quick summary is that Lille (pronounced “leel”) is a lovely, lively town worthy of a two-night stop, but not more than that to be honest.

First was a fast and fabulous hour-long train ride north from Paris. The TGV, France’s high-speed rail, really moves. I don’t know what the average speed was, but it takes two-and-a-half hours to drive between Lille & Paris but little over an hour on the train. Heck, I barely had time to take a nap and *snap* we were pulling into Lille.

On arrival you notice a couple things quickly. First, you’ve gone a long way north; suddenly it feels almost Nordic. Now, Paris itself is surprisingly far north, north of Duluth, Minnesota, and that’s up there. But Lille is another 120 miles north of that, further north than anything in the U.S. except of course Alaska. So here we are, arriving on the 4th of July, and the temperature is in the 50s in the morning and almost never reaching 70 degrees. After late June in New York this is pretty nice!

Second you quickly notice that the train station is only minutes from the center of the Old City. A lot of Lille was badly damaged during World War II but the center was largely spared leaving this cute, historic district with some beautiful buildings. It’s worth nothing, of course, that it’s a pretty small district; after an hour or two of wandering around you’ve pretty much seen it all.

What else is there to see in Lille? There are two major sites, the cathedral and an art museum, and they were both kind of busts. Mark went to the cathedral (I was doing laundry) and quickly texted me not to waste my time when I was free. It was built to replace Lille’s major church, destroyed during the French Revolution, but took some 150 years – from 1854 to 1999 – to complete. And while much of the church is classic Gothic, the façade is a truly ugly modern structure. He hated it and since I’d already walked past it and seen that weird front I didn’t go to see it.

And then the art museum, the Palais des Beaux Arts, has the second largest collection in France, behind only the Louvre. Apparently the gap between numbers one and two is pretty large; there just wasn’t much there to impress. A kind of second-rate El Greco, a few Reubens and that was about it. They had an exhibit linking Monet to Joan Mitchell, one of the giants of abstract expressionism. So they had three of her late-in-life works and six of his. Interesting but … modest.

With that said, there were still some highlights. As I said the Old City – especially the central square, the Grand Place – was nice. The food was nothing short of great; every meal was a treat. There is a wonderful park maybe half a mile west of the city center, perfect for walking, running, and reading … and I did all three there. A really nice gym that sold day passes for just €10. And then one thing we love about traveling in France: laundromats everywhere!

That’s it, then. A quick, rewarding stop in Lille. Next up, Amiens.