After a month in northern Africa, we finished off our trip with a week in France. We spent most of an entire day flying from Marrakech, through Casablanca, and then on to Paris. It’s always great to fly into Charles de Gaulle airport in the daytime with a view of the iconic Eiffel Tower. (Full confession; we didn’t have our 20x zoom safari camera with us, so from our plane window the Eiffel Tower was a tiny speck. Thanks to Danielle Barnes on Unsplash for the shot above.) But upon landing in the late afternoon, we didn’t go into Paris but caught an Uber to the town of Senlis.
Senlis is a well preserved Roman and medieval town in the Oise department of northern France, just 50 kilometres north of Paris. On the edge of the Chantilly Forest, it boasts cobbled streets, half-timbered houses, and historic buildings from France’s royal and Roman past. We chose this charming village in order to stay in a traditional small French town and we were not disappointed!
We arrived too late in the day for dinner, so just found our AirBNB and tried to go out for a beer. By 9:00 pm on a weekday evening pretty much everything was closed, but one Tibetan restaurant brought us a couple of Asahi beers to enjoy as they closed up. We paid for our beers and were the only customers sitting at their outdoor tables. When the proprietor locked the door, he told us to just leave the beer mugs on the table and he’d collect them in the morning; we had definitely moved from Africa to small-town France! We’ll never know why a Tibetan guy was running a restaurant in rural France serving Japanese beer.
The following morning was decidedly a chilly spring day with the threat of rain, so we went to a couple of museums and the local Notre-Dame cathedral. Our walk along the cobblestoned streets reminded us again that we were in a traditional French village. No supermarkets, just the boulangeries, boucheries, fromageries, and pâtisseries; a store for every meal ingredient. We ducked into the tourist office for some info then strolled through the park of the royal castle past 3rd century Roman walls. Our first stop was at the Musée de la Vénerie (Museum of the Hunt) which was quirky, if not downright odd. Located on the grounds of the Château Royal de Senlis, in the eighteenth-century dwelling of the Priory of Saint-Maurice, the museum was four floors of hunting trophies, hunting paraphernalia, and hunting uniforms. Even the ceilings had antler trophies. Slightly strange, but oddly compelling.
When we left the Museum of the Hunt it was lunchtime, meaning a 2-hour break before we could go into the Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie (Museum of Art and Archaeology). A extremely well done museum in which the building itself is part of the history. Walls of an old Roman house and the base of one of the 30 towers that were once part of the medieval fortifications are now part of the foundations of the museum and the upper floors are an episcopal palace. Upon exiting, we spent a bit more time admiring the beautiful Gothic facades of the Notre-Dame Cathedral built over the course of 400 years beginning in the 12th century. And after that, it was just poking into little alleys, churchyards, and cute streets. It was easy to see why Senlis is a favourite set for period movies.
During our meanderings through Senlis we picked out a place for dinner and returned in the evening for galettes Bretonnes (buckwheat crepes, Brittany style). Got treated to a sample of Kir Breton too when we asked what the guys at the next table were drinking. It was apple cider with a shot of creme de cassis in it, NOT pink beer!
The following day was a trip to Chantilly, just a short bus ride away. We only knew of Chantilly as the home of Chantilly cream and Chantilly lace, but quickly found out that locally it is horses that are the town’s claim to fame. Sure enough, when we got off the bus and headed for the Château de Chantilly the first building that we came to was the Grandes Ecuries (Great Stables). We detoured inside to visit the horse museum (no stuffed horses on display, just history and riding gear) and enjoy a “spectacle” that was pretty tame. Maybe “spectacle” doesn’t translate directly to “spectacular”? Check out the video and see:
We did eventually get to the chateau, which is the creation (or re-creation) of a somewhat odd fellow, Henri d’Orléans, Duke of Aumale, son of the last King of France. While the stables are original (from the early 1700s), the Grand Chateau was completely rebuilt between 1875 and 1882; the original was destroyed during that French Revolution. After rebuilding, the Duke then proceeded to stuff the entire place with his trove of books, paintings, furniture, and pretty much anything else collectible. Dying without an heir, he gave the entire chateau and its collections to France. There were some strings attached though; the paintings in the collection were never to be lent and were never to be moved from their places on the walls that the Duke had chosen. So anyone who wishes to see the second largest collection of antique paintings in France (after the Louvre Museum), must travel to Chantilly to see the “Conde Museum”. We did, and the array of masterpieces is indeed impressive.
We walked from the chateau into the town (which has none of the charm of nearby Senlis), had a late lunch, and for desert we had a “nuage” (cloud) of Chantilly cream with toppings. It was pretty much as you’d imagine eating an entire bowl of whipped cream would be like! We skipped the lace museum, and caught the bus back to Senlis.
We finished the day with dinner at Le Gril des Barbares (“Grill of the Barbarians”) housed below street level in a 12th century Gothic vaulted room. We failed in our efforts to eat the a huge 1.2 kg prime rib (for two, not each) but thoroughly enjoyed the attempt, and the waiter’s wine suggestion. Of course, it’s pretty hard to get a bad wine in France.
We left Senlis for Paris the following morning, after a last stroll through the streets crammed chockablock with market vendors of every kind. Odd that market day was Friday rather than on the weekend, but we fit right in with all the other retirees attending.
Check out our pictures from Senlis and Chantilly. Thumbnails below, or see the images on Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/100countries/albums/72177720326873253
