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Montargis - Venice of the Gâtinais

Summer vacation time. We haven't been to Italy in ages, because of this covid disaster. The border with Italy is open again. So we head to Italy? Natch. Other than the Latin charm of the towns and countryside, Italian food just doesn't taste the same outside of that kicking foot jutting into the Mediterranean. Even a simple tagliatelle in a pesto sauce in a modest Tuscany wayside tavern beats a Michelin-starred pasta joint anywhere else. 

But where in Italy? Blandine and I have one of our marital dust-ups. Blandine wants to revisit Venice. Yet again. I want to drive around the little villages in Tuscany.  Yet again. We arrive at one of our usual compromises. We decide to head to the North of France instead. Equal distribution of discontentment.

So here we are, heading to the Bay of Somme. Site of WW-I battles and the Hundred Years War battles and all sorts of other battles down history. Appropriate. When halfway across the face of France from Lyon to the coast of Normandy we hit this signboard:

Montargis la Venise du Gâtinais

Gatinais, by the way is a former region of France, somewhere below Paris. So a Venice in the middle of France. Will this make up for our Italian disappointment? We check it out.

Montargis is a bit like Venice. Sort of. It has canals flowing through the old city. And not-unpretty houses on both sides. And big red barges in those canals instead of gondolas. Oh well. It sort of makes up for not making it to Italy due to our mutual pig-headedness. In the evening, we have a pair of industrial pizzas from one of those buy-1-get-2 places.

Next post: Chartres.

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