A Summer in France: Our First Bucket List Continues (Poitiers)

In my first post of A Summer in France, I mentioned that we arrived in Paris early to spend a few days relaxing before we picked up our lease car. It was a lot cheaper for us to lease a car, rather than rent for our trip. See this post for details about this special program if you need a car longer than 3 weeks and want to save money. I’ll post details about our experiences with the Car-2-Europe program at the end of our trip. For now let’s continue our Summer in France by heading to Poitiers.

Here’s our 2023 Peugeot 208 we leased for the next 45 days. Fresh off the assembly line, it had 5 kilometers on the dial when we picked it up. Fingers crossed I won’t be posting yet a third article about Danny and rental car wrecks!

Now we leave Paris to visit our friends Valerie, Laurent and their daughter Maxine for a few days in the small village of Droue-sur-Drouette, France.

After a delicious home cooked meal, Maxine wanted to go bowling. So off we headed into town. I’ll bet it’s been 25 years since we’ve bowled. It was a lot of fun, but don’t even ask what the scores were. Yikes, we need practice.

Tommy at a ball game?

Everyone knows that I do not like sports—of any kind. For years Danny has tried to get me to attend baseball, basketball, and football games, but honestly I’d rather just do something else…anything else! So when Laurent invited us to a local handball match, I didn’t know anything about this game. I was surprised to learn it’s also an Olympic sport. Another pleasant surprise (for me) was that it’s a short game of only two 30 minute periods and it moves very fast. It reminds me of a cross between soccer and basketball. I must admit it wasn’t boring and it moved quickly. Check out the short video I created if you’d like to see the action. The local team Épernon won the game.

We’ve spent 4 fun days with friends and we’re now headed to Poitiers tomorrow. However, before we leave I want to share a few photos of our drive to the small country village of 1,400 people where they live.

A quick walk and you’ll find the town hall, church, bakery and a bridge over a stream. That’s all there is as there’s no traffic light, grocery store, or other site to see. As we climb the hill, you’ll see the village peeking through the trees.

Poitiers

We arrived in Poitiers and checked into our apartment. We were very surprised by how large and beautiful it was—better than the photos. Poitiers is situated high above the river and is the capital of its region. It is a university town. The University of Poitiers was opened in 1431 and there are approximately 30,000 students who live here, more students per inhabitant than any other large town or city in France. In fact, half of its population is under 30. Below is a great view looking out over Poitiers. Yes, we had to climb 217 steps to get to the top! Perhaps that carafe of wine and a three course lunch before climbing the stairs wasn’t the best idea. But we’d hate to miss a meal.

Top sites to see in Poitiers

Baptistère Saint-Jean is the oldest Christian church in France built in the 4th century.

Saint-Pierre’s Cathedral began construction in the 1150’s and took about 100 years for completion. The beautiful stained glass windows of the Crucifixion were realized between 1163-1173.

We loved walking around this medieval city with its beautiful town hall, half timbered buildings from the 15th century, and narrow cobbled streets. Remains of a palace tower from 1104 were incredible to see.

In Place de la Liberté there is a replica Statue of Liberty that was erected in 1903, so we wanted to visit this one since we’ve already visited three replicas in Paris.

An exploding mule and more sites

Place de la Liberté is also the site of an additional story dating back to 1775. According to a legend I’ll quote from here, there’s a story about an exploding mule.

“A mule driver who was transporting sacks of gunpowder had stopped for a drink in L’Auberge du Pilori. The animal, waiting outside, had grown impatient and started pounding its feet on the cobbles. Unfortunately, a spark from one of its hooves ignited the gunpowder, sending the poor beast sky-high. All the reports agree that, almost miraculously, the mule was the only casualty of the disaster.

They also record that one of the animal’s legs went through a window and landed in the bedroom of the Provost Marshal – a police superintendent in today’s terms. It presumably made a good story down at the nick (station). ‘There I was, lying in bed minding my own business when …’

A horseshoe was embedded into the wall of the house as a memorial to the incident and it is still there to this day.“ Here’s a photo of the house and another with a closer shot of the horseshoe near the top right window. I almost missed it at first glance.

Now I do recall seeing The Godfather that had a scene with a horse head in bed, but a mule leg and shoe is new to me.

Today, throughout France, was the 11th national strike day with scheduled protests. We ran into a demonstration near the town hall. We didn’t hang around too long, but the protest was orderly and peaceful with lots of police presence. Their main fight is to reduce the maximum retirement age to 60, rather than the recently passed law which raised the retirement age from 62 to 64.

I hope you enjoyed this post, Summer in France – Poitiers as much as we enjoyed visiting this city. Third stop on our Summer in France bucket list trip is a week in Bordeaux. Wow, I see more wine in our very near future!