Lewes

 I'm happy to report that I'm finally not completely horrified by the produce here right now.  True, most things still come shrink-wrapped in the grocery store, but the strawberries and asparagus has come bursting out of the ground flavorful and abundant.  It's been all I've cared to eat lately.  It's fantastic.  Finally, good food is here, good weather as well.  A slightly sunnier outlook on life is had.  Actually, if I could die and come back as myself, I would.

I found the most amazing little town.  It's well-known to most, as it's not particularity tiny or hard to get to.  Although, the trip there required a stop in Brighton, which is always a pleasure based on the gorgeous Victorian train station.

The iron work, the cheerful paint, the wooden train platforms.  I don't mind changing trains here at all.

We were off to Lewes (pronounced like Lewis), a town tucked into the green hills of the East Sussex South Downs.  It's perhaps an hour from London, and sometimes you can even get a direct train.

Speaking of which, the trains here are confounding.  The lines are privatized, so it's hard to get around and know which tickets to buy and which train line to take.  Taking a trip to the countryside usually means instead of getting one ticket for your journey, the ticket machine will spit out a whole stack of tickets that you will need.  What makes things more confusing is there are also "hobby lines", old steam train routes that the National Rail has discontinued, but a few devoted trainspotters keep alive with their own funds, and they usually only run once or twice a day on the weekends, and you have to really fish around to get a train schedule, and you can't buy those tickets on the National Rail website.  All and all, rail journeys here have the potential to be very confusing and elaborate, and it makes us pause and reminisce about just how great the French run their rail systems.

We found that this particular day, the trains were ultra-expensive direct (£50!), but for an additional 10 minutes added to your travel time, the price was just a fraction (£10!).  Sometimes you have to be a little creative in your journey.

The lovely little medieval town of Lewes was previously home to prehistoric and Roman and Anglo Saxon settlements, and a battle between Henry III and his angry, revolting Barons.  The layers upon layers of history here was astounding.  Also, on the 5th of November, they burn crosses during the Lewes Bonfire.  I am not kidding.  It is to commemorate the Protestants martyrs that were burned at stake here, but it's just alarming to see loads of burning crosses on the tourist brochures here.

It was early on a Sunday morning when we arrived, and we spent a good hour wandering the streets.  All the shops were closed and very few people were out, but I wanted badly to linger.

There's a thousand year old Norman castle at the top of the hill with lovely views.

Even the castle wasn't open yet, but you can walk up the hill and around it.  There's the ruins of an abbey and some adorable cottages and really nice views of the hills.

A very friendly kitty sat upon a stone wall, begging for attention and scratches.

I'm not a cat person at all, but lately I've encountered a few super friendly ones that have warmed me up a bit.  Plus, they are just so photogenic.

Anne of Cleeves had a house here, and kind of touchingly, Virginia Woolf:

Apparently, she never actually lived here, but she owned it for a while.  It was adorable and I could see how an impulse purchase might come about.

The town itself had a large amount of well-preserved ancient buildings, painted cheery colors and squeezed up against the barely-there sidewalk.

Most of the houses had plaques with the dates and their original purpose as a building, and any famous people who might have darkened the doorways at some point, including Thomas Paine.  I resisted the urge to start chanting "USA!  USA!  USA!" outside the house.

It was closed, but the half-timbered house was called "The 15th-Century Bookshop" and it looked suitably adorable and my noseprints marred the windows as I did a full-face press to check out what they had going on inside.  A weakness for tiny cramped bookshops and the lack of bookshops with character in this country has left me feeling a bit sad.  Lewes does a good trade in tourism, but it also seemed like people actually lived and worked here, and they didn't take the ye olde thing too far.  

After some debate about our location, we headed due west to pick up the Southdowns Trail for an amazing day of hiking.  I'll have more about that later, but I have decided to undertake the entire 100 mile trail, but perhaps not in linear order.  The good news is that eventually, I'll be back in Lewes to finish up the hike!  I can't wait, I feel like there are some really fantastic pubs that weren't open early on a Sunday that needed to be warmed up.

San Gimignano

The little hilltop town of San Gimignano was one of the most fantastically lovely places in a land of lovely that we spent time in.

While it was stunning to gaze at from the backyard of our little agritourismo, it was fun to explore a pied as well. Although, coming into the tiny city, it reminded me a bit of Carscassone, that lovely village in the south of France that is packed with junk vendors of all things medieval. It wasn't quite so bad, there was a lot of fun exploring to do.

So, what the story is that it was here that the local Hatfields and McCoys of the town started a medieval pissing contest and started building towers to keep an eye on each other. Not just happy with two or three a piece, there was at one point SEVENTY TWO of these towers crowding on the hilltop, creating what must have looked like a mini-Manhattan before there was even a Manhattan. Seriously. Today, 14 of the towers survive within the city walls. It's just...unique.

Plus, we found a great little wine bar where you could sit upon the city wall and drink the delicious local white Vernaccia di San Gimignano and watch the sun sink, and the magic tuscan glow hit the earth.

There's a fantastic main plaza with really good gelato, and that's really all I can ask for out of life.

While there were quite a lot of tourist in the main square, once the sun went down, it was empty.

Staying outside the city walls was the move as it was something really nice to gaze out upon.

The Abbey

The lovely old Abbey at the top of the Mont.

We ended up going through the abbey later in the afternoon and had most of it to ourselves.

One of the things I wish we would have done was the walk across the quicksands to get to the island. The combination of fast tides and, er, the quicksand means you should probably go with a group (there are a list of guided tours on the MSM website for you to pursue). You could see them working their way across the plain of sand.

The chapel at the tippy-top:

The rest of the site was a series of large halls and vaulted cellars where the monks would eat and pray and entertain visiting pilgrams. An impressive pile of architecture, but denuded of any furniture or art work to help you put the pieces together.

Just based on the train and bus schedules, we had decided to spend the night at a hotel just off the island so we wouldn't have to rush and hustle. The hotels on the island were very tiny and quite expensive, so we opted to be on the other side of the causeway, where they were bigger but shabby and cheaply furnished. There's really no difference in the end as everything here closes at 5 except for the hotel restaurants.

There wasn't even a local bar to cozy up at. We decided in the end that 12 hours here was more than enough time to see everything. Aside from the Abbey and the views, there was nothing but gift shops and places selling crepes and overpriced omelets and mediocre kouign-amann. A pastry that is mostly butter and caramel should never ever be mediocre.

Everywhere you looked, shops were selling gorgeous pictures of the iconic Mont, with long shadows and sunshine and snow and pretty much in every condition except of the one you are most likely to see it in, which is overcast or being pelted with sideways rain.

We did find a fantastic place to eat though. I was getting suspicious of all the places with traditional Bretange dancing and music that lined the area, so we walked past the gate of the pedestrian area and there was a cute renovated farmhouse called La Ferme St Michel. I had a lovely bit of pre-sale lamb, which is the local specialty of salt-marsh fed lamb, and they had really good woodfire cooked omelets for much cheaper than the fancy place on the island. You can get sick of crepes while traveling in this region pretty quickly, so it was nice to sit down and have a glass of wine and eat something that was not wrapped in a pancake.

But I guess the best thing about staying the night was being able to see the landmark splendidly lit up.

The next day was dreary with rain and enough fog to obscure the view, but we took a walk around the city walls while waiting for the bus to take us back to Rennes. The main street was packed with umbrella-toting tourist trying desperately stay dry. True to the place, devoted pilgrams/tourist do not let a little rain stop them.

Like I said before, 12 hours is plenty of time. 24 hours and you'll be a bit bored (especially in the rain) and you might actually start to drift inside the plentiful gift shops just to have something to do.