3: Rainy Day Option

Another lovely breakfast, this time with a loaf of pain au chocolat (yeast bread with chocolate chips!) and a ficelle as the bread items, the rest being the same as the previous day.

It was cool and threatening to rain so we took off in car instead of on bikes. Since Werner had been longing to visit Bourges and it was way out of bicycle range, we chose that as our final destination. First, however, we stopped at Pont de Canal in Briare for a few more photos and then traveled on to Sancerre where we walked through town and then admired the lovely countryside from the promenade at the end of town.

[map style="width: 300px; height:300px; float:left; margin:10px 20px 0px 0px; border: 1px thin #777777;" gpx="http://saras-bike-travels.de/wp-content/uploads/gpxFiles/20130825_day2_reduced.gpx"] The route to Bourges was via long straight road which was a complete treat for Werner – here in Germany one doesn’t find such long, straight stretches of road. (Has to do with how the government acquired the land-building road from the farmers, I guess.) The scenery was one rolling field after another – bucolic at its best.

In Bourges the cathedral overwhelms the town - fantastic. I visited the cathedral in 1989 but I had forgotten how big and impressive and beautiful it was. We explored it from end to end and then wandered through the gardens.

I was starting to feel peckish so Werner got me to the next available restaurant before I had a crabbiness attack. My salvation was a lovely hamburger topped with potatoes dauphin. Wow, that was good!

After lunch we toured the mansion of Jacques Coeur. He was a fantastically wealthy and powerful medieval merchant and advisor to King Charles VII whose house is one of the few remaining secular medieval structures that did not belong to a member of the nobility.

In the drizzly late afternoon weather we headed back to Gien via the autoroute.

We picnicked again in the evening and made it to bed by 11:30.