Hitching France Pt. 7 – A Reunion in Boulogne-sur-mer

Before long, Guillaume pulled over in front of the entrance to the train station, I threw my bag in the back seat and we were on our way to the countryside.

The landscape of the countryside in northern France is spectacular in my opinion with open green stretches of farmland and rolling hills as far as the eye can see. On a beautiful day with the sun shining I could drive around the region for as long as the car has gas. It truly is that wonderful. Guillaume and I spent the ride catching up and on the way we stopped at a large shopping center to get a few groceries for dinner that night. After a pleasant ride through the countryside we arrived at the home of the host family I stayed with two years before. I was as thrilled to see them as were they to see me! After I settled in to the guest room we had some snacks and a few drinks before dinner was ready. This was my first La Raclette experience and it may be my favorite French meal of all time. It’s sort of like fondue in a way that you melt cheese in a table centered device but it’s done on an individual trough sort of utensil by each guest as they so please. It’s spread over cooked potatoes and usually there is a variety of meats and pates with a few other cheeses to put in the mix. It is delicious! They’re truly great company with plenty of laughs to go around and when they found I was feeling a bit off they loaded me up with some OTC medication which helped me out a lot over that weekend. Guillaume is an avid gamer so we finished the evening with some Mario kart before calling it a night.

The next day I woke up to a great breakfast and the hint of some “surprise” that was happening that day. Guillaume and I were to go to another town called, Nord-pas-de-Calais, and explore for a bit before a dinner party with their neighbors that evening. We hung around for the morning and chatted a bit before heading out just before noon. Once we hit the road I got a sense of what the surprise would be. Along the way we stopped to pick up two twin girls who had been involved in the school’s exchange program at the same time as Guillaume and as it would turn out, the surprise was an excellent lunch in town that turned out to be a huge reunion with many of the students from the French school who were involved with the program while I was visiting some two years before. Even the professor came along which made for a great surprise indeed! It turned out to even be a reunion for the French students and their professor as well as many of them had not seen each other for some time. It was bizarrely cool in some way that my pass through of the town had also brought old friends together. It was great to hear about what everyone was up to and they all had a good laugh when they found out I had been hitchhiking.

After the lunch Guillaume and I took the twins back and then made our way to Nord-pas-de-Calais. We walked around for a bit and saw the local government building with it’s majestic clock tower. Truly a sight to see! It also was a special day in the region which left many museums open for free. We stumbled on an old World War II museum in the back of a nice park. After a brief walk through, we made our way back home for the dinner party. When we got back we met, Bastien, his wife and their three year old daughter, Lou. As we sat down for some aperatifs paired with some light snacks, the conversations began immediately and we all had a splendid time. Bastien explained to me that one has two aperatifs minimum because you have two legs. This wasn’t much of a problem as Anne kept on making excellent drinks the whole evening. Lou proved to be a rambunctious toddler and made way for many laughs as she attended to her pressing affairs. It had been raining outside so it became the men’s job to poke pockets where the awning was accumulating water with brooms while tending to the delicacies being prepared on the grill. They all are great people and I can only wish another dinner party will come to be again one day, but until then I will forever have these memories. We enjoyed an excellent couscous dish with the meat from the grill and cooked vegetables which carried our party well into the night. It was nearly two in the morning before Bastien and his wife made the short walk home and we all tucked in to bed.

On Sunday, the last full day I would spend with my host family, we went out not long after breakfast to see seals lounging on the coast. I’d never seen seals in the “wild” so it was a really cool experience and turned out to be quite the attraction as many other people were out watching the seals out on their small sand island. After a half hour of walking around and seal gazing we got back in the car and began the drive to Touquet. Touquet is sometimes referred to as “the beach of Paris” as it is a luxurious and chic town. It even boasts having Emmanuel Macron’s home (I guess when he isn’t in Paris). Anyway, there was a small antique car show that we walked around briefly. My favorite was the tricked out Volkswagen Van, basically my dream escape vehicle, that appeared to be well equipped for a long trip. After admiring the various moving antiques, we took a long stroll around the town; passing by President Macron’s empty home, with security guarding it still, and two beautiful churches. We ended the visit with a walk down to the beach front plaza. There was a small carnival set up which we walked through and we enjoyed some delicious homemade ice cream brought in by a family owned food truck. It was quite a day topped off with a drink in a bar that looked like it would be quite the scene on a Friday late at night though it appeared much calmer late Sunday afternoon. Afterward, we made the hour or so drive back to their home, well tired and after a small meal we called it a night.