Salutations
Last weekend we headed away for a few days to Le Mans which is about 250 kms south east of Cherbourg. No car race (that’s in June) but still plenty to see.
We stayed right near the Old Town which dates back to the middle ages. It’s been beautifully preserved with cobble stoned alleyways, stone and half timbered buildings and mostly only pedestrian traffic. Needless to say, every time we turned around we were reaching for the phones to take more photos. Like these…..
One of the highlights was the Cathedral of St Julian, built between the 11th and 15th centuries. The stonework and stained glass windows were amazing and hard to imagine how they were able to build something so majestic in the days before technology is what we have today.
And of course there is the car race. Apparently they get about 260,000 spectators along, not to mention the racing crews, media and everybody else involved in the whole shebang. It’s not a huge place so it must be bulging at the seams during race time. There is a public road that becomes part of the track and we were able to drive along that – not surprisingly there were no pot holes to speak of.
Best part was the car museum which has many of the winning cars from back in the day, as well as many other old cars. Everything came with interesting stories and technical information in both French and English and lives up to the good wrap it gets on tripadvisor.
We also made a visit to the Royal Epau Abbey. This was built in 1229 by the widow of Richard the Lionheart who came off second best when he met with a crossbow through his eye during battle. His widow wanted somewhere decent to be buried but she left it a bit late because she died well before the building was completed. It has a long history of various people fighting over it but it is now listed as a ‘historic monument’ and has recently been faithfully restored for a small sum of 60 million francs.
Au revoir jusqu’a la prochaine fois
L&M
thefrenchfeed 