Today is the day our relatives leave but it is in the evening so we decide to have one more adventure. We propose a few options and they choose Perouges which is about half hour away from our AirBnB. It is also considered one of the “Les Plus Beaux Villages de France”, one of the most beautiful villages of France. But first we have to find parking and given that it is far from the entrance and our relatives cannot walk a lot we leave them in front of the village center while we park further away.
This is one of the more popular villages in the Lyon countryside that we visited and it has maps and more turist trappings than usual. And of course the medieval village sits on top of a hill which is not really welcomed by our relatives. Still they make it up to the village which is great and we can start the visit.
Right at the first gate lies the impressive and welcome church. Welcome because, if open, it will allow us to recover a bit from the heat.
And it is open and in we go into the forbidding looking church. No frilly church here, this is a fortified church that can resist a siege if necessary.
Inside we explore the interesting architecture, it seems to be less gaudy as other Catholic churches we have seen but it is interesting in its own way.
It also seems less used as a church with only minimal religious decorations and even those being highly stylized.
From the church we proceed through the main fortified gate , really impressive into the medieval village proper which is really beautiful.
First we get our bearings and are surprised that the church looks much more church like from the inside versus from outside where it seemed like a castle. But the entrance is even more foreboding looking from here, wonder if it ever protected the city from invaders.
The houses here look like from a fairy tale. All of them are stone built and we enjoy walking through and exploring them.
We wander around exploring the narrow side streets and try to find center square, there has to be a center square, right?
On the way we want to try some Galettes de Pérouges, a famous sweet and thin sugar tart that is a specialty of Pérouges. It is a registered local specialty however only two stores seem to sell it so we decide to buy from the first one we find open. It takes a bit as the servers do their best to ignore us but finally we are able to order and eat the famous sweets.
The streets are quite ancient looking, they seem to be straight from medieval times, paved with rocks and a channel running in the middle.
And then we find a covered passage which leads directly to the central square which seems to be the hub of the village even though it took a bit to find it. Here there are popular restaurants and most of the tourists and it seems like every visitors gets here in the end to sit and relax.
The most impressive house is the hostellerie which seems like the house where the mayor or the ruler would live. And next to it is another smaller impressive house, the Clock House, which in our imagination is the house of the servants for the much larger house next door.
From here we walk on another side street towards some ruins that we assume is a former ruined palace as the house seems to have been quite impressive. Not so much anymore though.
The streets here are quite green and we enjoy the ivy growing on the walls. In fact we find out that Perouges has its own rose variety, the perouges rose created in medieval times but we do not find any during our walk.
And then we continue exploring the village with the many special houses and shutters, we are happy that our relatives are enjoying it too and can walk the more level streets here.
But they are getting tired so it is time to descend passing a few pigeons to the area that can be accessed via car. And then we go and bring the car, pick our relatives and return to the AirBnB so they can finish packing before leaving in the evening.
