Chapter 6 -Amiens

After a bit of a late night (lovely baked fish with thyme, bay, tomatoes, onions cooked in white wine and wide-ranging topics of conversation with Laurence) we set out after a late breakfast to Amiens with Laurence as our driver. She was our tour guide for the afternoon.
When we left the car we walked through the old part of the city that had been refurbished in the last 20 years and has transformed from a run-down area to a busy, bustling cafe and residential zone.
We walked to the Notre Dame Cathedral of Amiens. Outside the Cathedral there is quite a long, shallow water feature, about 2m wide. There was a bloque (that's french for bloke) playing with his dog (and probably annoying everyone else) by throwing a toy into the water

and the dog retrieved it. It certainly amused us for a while.
Notre Dame Cathedral can fit two of the Paris Notre Dames inside! It is huge (70m wide and 145m long)! Currently undergoing painstaking restoration, particularly of the stained glass windows, it is an amazing site, with a great deal of history as it took about 50 years to build ( started in 1220!) and suffered a lot of damage due to inadequate engineering and the two World Wars. It will take years to finish the restoration work and some of the damage will probably be left as a reminder of the past.
Then the rain came down and we retreated to a shop showcasing food specialties of the region. We bought umbrellas there as the constant drizzle seemed to have settled in.
We continued our walking tour through the city, with Laurence talking about places of interest.
Ultimately we ended up at the Hortillonnages, which are a series of

interconnected water ways, which have been around since Roman times. The locals protected them from damage in the 1970s when a road bypass was planned for the area. Thank goodness for that because it truly is spectacular. We went on a boat trip in the area that lasted 3 quarters of an hour. Many of the islands are still used for vegetable production.