We’d planned to do a brief stop in Amiens to see the cathedral there and then to push on to the English Channel, but Amiens didn’t let us go. By midmorning we’d already given up the idea — there was too much of interest, and the day wasn’t long enough.

Lunch was at a crepes place called Le Dos D’Âne, literally the back of a donkey, but figuratively, we were told, a speed bump. Then up the cathedral towers — narrow, steep, worth it for the view across the city and the rooftops you can’t see from the ground. From there we went out on the hortillonnages tour, the floating-gardens canal cruise that makes Amiens what it is. There’s something quietly spectacular about a town stitched together with water like that.


We walked to the Jules Verne house but were too late and there was little to see from the outside. Dinner was at L’Improviste, a small place that served simple and tasty fare, and then the drive back to Coye in the dark.

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