Orlean, Nice, Sorrento
Ups, downs and round and round. I cant believe it’s been a week since I last did a blog. Did I mention the cute town with the river balconies , I will have to go backwards and check. Currently we are four and we are in Italy on the beautiful Amalfi coast. It has been a treasure find after a series disappointing or non existent accomodation.
At first I think I will write about that and get it all out the way then I can focus once more on the tribulations of travel rather than the trials. Discovery is of course not always destined to be great and some discoveries are not welcome or at the very least irritating.
I will go backwards to just over a week ago when we went to Orlean. Our final stop in our road trip. The car was to be returned and we were to spend two nights in a four star hotel in a room with a balcony overlooking the river Seine. The dropping back of the rental car proved problematic with the navlady trying to take us into places we simply could not go and then we discovered the office is literally inside the mall by the railway station and there is no place to return it just the keys. Some difficult translation phone conversations later we arrive in a parking lot where we are able to put the car and walk the keys inside and drop them in a box at the railway station.
We hop in a cab and give them the name of the hotel and as we are driving I spot a Mercure on top of a service station on a busy corner of the motorway and think please don’t let that be it, but of course it is. You can’t see our room from this photo as its not the front but needless to say the balcony is not worth sitting on and they know it as they do not provide a chair to sit on it with. “Never mind” was a favourite saying of my dad’s and this was the start f my using it a lot. It was of course prior to custard which did go beyond the “never mind” saying.
We wander the streets of Orlean and try to get our bearings then head back to our hotel and have quite a nice meal in a windowless restaurant in the hotel. The next morning we venture out and the streets are being transformed with the restoration of the half timber houses in their traditional colours.
Orlean is very focused on Joan of Arc. We follow her story through the town. There is the house where she stayed when she petitioned to have the French King reinstated. There are statues and more houses where she stayed and places she rested and places where she went to church. It’s a fascinating story immortalised all around the city and celebrated annually with parades and events. it’s of course about bravery and heroism but the thoughts of a time where on hearing the voice of go, a young farmer girl is destined to lead a battalion into war (and win) thus freeing Orlean from English rule. She then wins a few more battles until some men decide she is a heretic and burn her at the stake. She is 19.
We wander more and catch a tram because we have sore feet. We wander some more and sit in the square with a drink and watch the world go by. We wander some more and decide to wander back to the hotel for a rest.
We see there is a light show on at the cathedral but it doesn’t start until 11pm and we can’t imagine that we will be still awake. We wait a couple of hours and then we head back to town and after trying about 6 different restaurants where each time we were asked if we had a reservation which of course we do not and I am about to give up when we find one on a garden rooftop of a carpark. Its lovely and we while away the hours and wander back to the cathedral for the light show. Its worth it.
