Provins

Headed south in the morning, towards Provins, a picturesque town about an hour south-east of Paris. It's a WHS for its role in medieval trade fairs, where traders from all over Europe and as far as the Middle East would come to do business. These fairs would happen on set days at particular times of the year, and were quite common across several towns in the region.

Provins is still quite well preserved, so we arrived around lunchtime and had a look around. It was fairly busy since today is May Day, the French Labour Day holiday and lots of people were around. But we wandered up the hill into the old town and had a look around.

There were still a few warehouses and what not left over from the 12th century when the fairs were happening - these would've been used to hold textiles, furs, spices and other trade goods. Mostly stone buildings, but a good collection of half-timber houses as well which are always picturesque!

About a kilometre of the town's walls are preserved too, along with a couple of the gates, which we enjoyed looking at. There was also a tall watch tower, but dogs weren't permitted and neither of us felt particularly inclined to pay 5 euros each anyway, so we skipped on that.

By mid afternoon we were done so we drove another hour south-west to our Airbnb just outside of Fontainebleau. We're staying in another farmhouse granny flat, and this one doesn't have a kitchen at all which is a little annoying. So we celebrated the day of workers and labour unions by heading to McDonalds for dinner.Read more