Ceil Entry #2: Bourges

The kids and I spent a lot of time in the cathedral in Bourges. Our first few days in Bourges it was easy for me to guide the kids to the cathedral on our walks. But they soon began to recognize landmarks and knew I was taking them out of the way of our intended destination just so we could spend a little more time in the cathedral. It is a beautiful cathedral not as large as Notre Dame but similar in design and vivid stained glass windows and the best thing about it is that we were sometimes the only people there. Ok maybe we were not the only people in the cathedral, but rarely was there more than 20 people, compared to the thousands that were part of our Notre Dame experience. I felt this was like my own personal cathedral.

We also went on “Le Petit Train” that Andy dissed in an earlier post. We enjoyed the city driving tour with our English headset for translation of the history of the town and buildings. We chose to do this on Monday afternoon the day after we arrived in France and the jet lag got to us a little and we all started to fall asleep during the end of the tour.

Other memories of Bourges include buying a soccer ball and playing soccer in the park. Our first trip to the park, we were the only ones there. Looking back I now realize that it was 1:00pm and everyone else was home eating lunch but in our American way we had eaten lunch in 20 minutes and had walked to the park to play. Miles and Lee had fun playing with each other that day. On our second trip to the park to play soccer we went later in the afternoon and there were a group of boys playing soccer. They saw Miles (and his new soccer ball) and invited him to play. There wasn’t too much of a language barrier once they started playing.

I just asked Lee what she remembered about Bourges and she said, “We always walked everywhere.” Her next memory was of her favorite restaurant La Scala and luckily there is also one in Chateauroux. We went often when we first arrived in Chateauroux, so much so that they started to not charge for her meal of plain pasta. Now we have expanded our favorite restaurants and also go home or pack a lunch as often as possible.