Amiens is a historic city, famous for its World Heritage 13th Century Cathedral, see. We did not have have a lot of time to admire its amazing carvings of saints or its engineeringly- troublesome flying buttresses, but here is an obligatory picture.
Hopefully travel blunders don’t always come in threes; but we did miss our train connection between Paris and Amiens, when we arrived in Amiens the Avis car hire office was closed (in contradiction of its ‘opening hours’), and when we got the car, the AirBnB directions in Googlemaps took us to a different village about 6 kms from our residence (each contained a ‘Grande Rue’, but Google maps does not list the ‘Grande Rue’ in our destination’s address). I suspect ‘Grande Rue’ must refer to a 17th Century real-estate agent’s promise; our is simply a 100 M strip between two other named roads with a few farm houses on it; including ours.
I want to proclaim that through the kindness of strangers we made it. The locals could not have been more helpful. Thank you to the rail clerk in Paris who reissued tickets, the French/Punjabi student and the desk clerk at the Mercure Hotel who sorted out Avis on their phones, the man who mimed us to follow his car when were completely lost (street names in villages are incomplete – only required by people who don’t live there) and the sweet lady who mimed we should try a different village. The Gwynne gene more than Lib’s language mastery helped a lot too, but she did well.
Several hours later we made it to Le Poulialler (the chicken coup).
And yes there are chickens in the back yard (and very free range) .. everytime we approach with food scraps about 40 of them come flying down the yard, wings frantically flapping before going head first into the pile of food. Strangely the three roosters who act the part, seem to have little capacity to score food in the rush and usually retire with ruffled feathers and a haughty attitude while the smart hens make a dash somewhere private with a choice bread crust.
Please don’t get me wrong, i love our little ‘chicken coup’, and our AirBnB hosts are nothing but delightful, warm and generous. But initially, i was a little overwhelmed about the extensive ‘chicken’ theme of the place, at first count i noted 14 items but this was a serious underestimate and i keep finding them, it’s at least double or perhaps triple this … calendars, bowls, trays, table cloth, coal scuttle, framed pictures, bowls, cups etc, i am starting to seriously love them, its sort of an art installation and has a sense of fun, indeed it requires extra effort and is the antithesis of Ikea …which most AirBnBs are decorated from, so here are just a few….
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