The perfume

Following in the traces of the book "The Perfume" by Patrick Süskind.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Etampes

Yesterday we ended up walking around 30 km. We had called a B&B the day before to be sure it had vacancies.It's a quite nice feeling to take the backpack of, take a hot shower and get dry clothes on and then lie down on a bed. Our Paris based support team had called us earlier that day. They wanted to pay us a visit. They couldn't have timed it better. The place we stayed was quite remote from anything that looked like somewhere you could eat, even shutdown restaurants like the one we had seen earlier that day.So, after some misguiding from me, they managed to find Boinville, which was where we stayed, and drive us to Etampes where we had a nice meal together. Today we walked to the same town through the woods and through rain. When we asked the tourist office for a place to stay, they really had to struggle. It turns out that not only is there a go cart competition here, it is the european go cart championship. They (the tourist office) called everywhere for us and served us cakes while we were waiting. I think it was even the mayor of the city that personally showed us the way to the tourist office when we asked for the way. We still haven't found a place to stay though. When we asked if there was a camping site, they checked, but it turned out they did not allow tents... So it looks like we're definitely not doing things the way we're supposed to-at least if we want a place to sleep. We're going back to the tourist office now (lunch is over) to see if they can help us out.The city is nice so we would like to stay!