Moulins, France

Two famous women sojourned at the seat of the Ducs de Bourbon.

While the duke’s castle has been reduced to one drab tower, used as a jail, the world still remembers Joan of Arc, who supposedly stayed in the house captured in the featured image. There is a plaque that says to the effect of “According to local tradition, Joan of Arc stayed in this house in November, 1429.” Who can say? Why was she there? Whose cat is in the window?

Yesterday morning I woke up to sunshine in my hotel room in Moulins, and found that downstairs they had a whole big breakfast spread out with a big coffee machine for me to play with, all included in the room price. I went nuts, then got dressed for Easter lunch.

Moulins is an agricultural town, with family-oriented people and restaurants that are closed on Easter. Maybe it’s the bible belt of France, if they have one. So I’d made a reservation at the one restaurant I found that was open, and good that I did. It filled up quickly. The Grand Café is a nice Belle Époque remnant that claims to be the place where Coco Chanel, when she was still living in a convent here as an orphan, tried to break into music as a cabaret singer. They say it was a good thing the nuns taught her to sew, because her voice wasn’t much. She did, however have a forceful personality, and charmed enough army officers that one of them took her to Paris, another financed her first hat shop, and she went from there. Her life story is amazing, truly, but I thought some zealous Wikipedia editor had done a bit of a hatchet job on her. Ok, she liked the Germans in WWII. Nobody’s perfect. Winston Churchill himself saved her from being prosecuted, however, and she revived her postwar career to even greater heights. She seemed to have an amazing ability to make and keep friends.

I passed the farmer’s market on the way, and there wasn’t much local produce yet, but these are asparagus the way the French like them. I have never figured out how to cook them, but I think the trick is, you have to peel them first. In the Loire Valley these are the only kind they eat, tedious preparation notwithstanding.

After a very mediocre lunch (with wonderful champagne), I went for a walk in the old quarter. It has charm, and caters to tourists when it isn’t a family holiday, but most everything was closed. I looked into the cathedral just as mass was breaking up, and saw the little girls in their sparkly Easter dresses. After wandering about and seeing that the famous painted tryptich I came to see was closed and nobody was available to open it, I left and ambled down some little streets. It seems that this was another aspiring tourist town that was doing all right, when that cruel pandemic operation came along and destroyed all of the small businesses. More empty storefronts, and some deferred maintenance says it will be a long recovery, quite like some small towns at home. I ended up in a scruffy little park that had a sign saying this year they are celebrating the 80th anniversary of the town’s liberation from the Germans. Moulins is just above the line that went between Occupied France and Vichy France. I guess since I arrived in Vichy tonight, I won’t be seeing any more celebratory installations.