We are still trying to figure out how to pronounce the name of this town. It is Po? Poo? Pah? Puh? Is it like saying Paul but leaving out the “L”? With a French accent, that would be Puah, I think. Everyone says it just a little differently. The French accent is utterly unique! My mouth does not work that way.
Regardless of how the name is said, this little city is gorgeous! It sits at the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains. On our first day here we walked to the market and all the way I just kept saying to myself, this is such a pretty place! It is so pretty.
Pau is small so it is fairly easy to walk almost anywhere especially if you are walkers like Stan and I are. And there is so much to see! Picture a river valley like a basin with high cliffs to the north. The train station where we arrived from Bordeaux is in the river valley below the town. Lord, do we now know. When we left our train, there were no taxis and UBER does not operate here. Some very kind people working in a fancy restaurant nearby tried to help us by calling a taxi. The taxi company said, call back in 30 minutes; we have no cars. The restaurant folk said, “Your apartment is nearby. You can walk there in ten minutes.” We looked at our Movit App and agreed. So we took out. We both wore loaded backpacks and pulled two pieces of heavy luggage each. It probably would not have been so bad but the entire landscape around the train station is ripped to bits! Just a few months ago this area was industrial; in a few months, it will be a grand, green park with wide walks along the river, but not today. Sidewalks were broken or were just pebble paths. Ok, that’s enough whinning! It was a long hard walk in the heat, but we made it to our apartment. Opening its door was like entering heaven. It is new, immaculately clean, and AIR CONDITIONED.
This town is nothing like any other town we have seen yet in Portugal or France. As we walked around, I still found myself saying, “This place is so pretty!”
Per Wikipedia, “Pau is the capital of Pyrenees-Atlantiques, and Bearn.” In the middle of the city is a castle. The Chateau de Pau is just above our apartment. Like other structures founded in the Middle Ages and still standing now, this huge chateau has been built, rebuilt, and restored several times. It has been a fortress, a prison, a residential home to royalty, and is now a national museum. Henry IV of France was born in the chateau in 1553, and Napoleon used it as a holiday home during his period of power. We walked through the grounds already but will tour the place on Sunday.
Below, in the valley is a neighborhood called Hedes. The place was once slums clustered around a small stream. The stream was so polluted, that the city finally walled and filled it in. The neighborhood is now a very cool, colorful walk. On either side of the Hedes valley are tall stone buildings where people now live in nice apartments. Pau has beautiful squares, called a “place” here in France . . . as La Place Royale and La Place Espagne, with fountains and the requisite number of bordering restaurants and coffee shops. Like all the rest of France, restaurant kitchens open at 12:00 and close at 14:00.
We are now friends with the people at the Tourist Office. We’ve been there twice. They speak English and are a wealth of information. They showed us the best ways to make day trips to the Pyrenees and where buses are that will take us to our next stay in Santander, Spain.
We did the greater portion of the City Walking Tour today passing Place Royale, Place Espagne, La Place Clemenceau, Rue des Cordeliers, and Place de la Liberation. We meandered through the open air museum, Le tour des Geantes which features highlights of each year’s Tour de France event since 1903. Each winner is honored with an individual yellow “totem” that has photographs and information about the particular race. This race can be around 2200 miles over 23 days! Can you imagine??
After Le Tour de France Museo, we took the Funicular to the upper level of the city, and walked a pleasant walk through the Hedes valley to our Pau home.
I cannot say we know this place yet but I can say, it is clean, quiet, and beautiful . . . like a little town in a sweet, sleepy-time story.
