Sun 17th Aug
Our Troyes hotel: here
Leaving the Paris apartment, collecting our car from near Charles de Gaulle airport and the drive down to Troyes all went fairly smoothly and we arrived at the La Licorne Hotel & Spa just before our 3 pm check in. This was a lovely and rather grand establishment with history dating back to 1445 when it had previously been a grammar school, a convent, a barracks but was now part of the MGallery hotel group. Our room was nice, and included a small terrace, and we looked forward to 3 nights of relative luxury.
The Troyes tourist office was open until 6 pm so we decided to set out and investigate possible audio guides for a walking tour of the area. We ventured out from our hotel, around a corner and were then treated to the most beautiful display of amazing architecture. The half timber structures here are very impressive and quite spectacular. Apparently Troyes has the most extensive collection of well preserved medieval half timber structures in all of Europe and most can be dated back to just after a 1524 fire that ravaged the area. It’s rather strange to think that these were once the homes of the everyday workers as the wealthy built their homes of stone. These half timber homes today though would be very expensive.
The other significant point of note is that Troyes is located at the bottom edge of the Champagne region of France so, apart from celebrating the half timber architecture of the area, there is a strong focus on celebrating the famous beverage.
Our first stop, when we got to the main town square, was to the Tourist Information Office and we were helped by a nice girl who made suggestion for Champagne houses to visit and helped us reserve our walking tour audio guide for Tuesday. We decided to skip taking this tour tomorrow as many venues are closed on a Monday. She also suggested we try to visit Chez Philippe, as they offer tastings from different champagne houses, so that’s where we headed next. We enjoyed an hour of champagne flight tastings and people watching which was most entertaining and filled in a good part of our time until our 7.15 pm dinner reservation at Chez Daniels.
Our meal was only ok and our waitress was rather abrupt so Chez Daniels is not a place I’d recommend. As well, I had noticed as we arrived, that the restaurant had those awful fake candles on the table so my guide of using this as a metric of evaluating dining venues still seems to be valid!
Mon 18th Aug
It was a glorious morning so we decided to go for an early walk and explore their area a bit more. Monday’s are tricky in Europe as many venues are closed and many others are closed for the August summer holidays generally. It was for this reason that we chose to do the audio guide walking tour of Troye tomorrow rather than today. Our initial plan was to go on a drive to explore another local area, Auxerre, about an hour away, but we both didn’t really have the energy for that so we just decided to stay local for the morning.
There was one museum that was open today and this caught Marks interest so off we went to see a showcase of hand made tools from the 17th-19th century at the The Maison de l’Outil et de la Pensée Ouvrière. The exhibits caught my attention for the first 30 minutes or so but I lost enthusiasm shortly after.
The rest of the day went more slowly for me than Mark as he fitted in a haircut and a bike ride. We did both make a quick visit to 12th Century Troyes Cathedral, which is highly regarded for the large amount of intact 13th Century stained glass windows, apparently over 1,500 m2, and it was indeed most impressive.
Dinner tonight was at L’Illustre and I’d chosen this at it was the only restaurant in the area that had vegetables as sides on the menu. It was more of a tourist restaurant but our meal was delicious and far better than the much higher rated Chez Daniel’s from last night. Mark said his meal was one of the best of this trip and, guess what, no fake candles. They had proper oil burners that were being lit as we dined.
Tues 19th Aug
It was slightly cooler this morning but that was a good thing as it meant more favorable conditions for our audio guided walking tour around Troyes. This was a great way to spend the day as the guide navigated us around the city giving us a potted history of the many key points of interest; there were 39 stops on this walking tour. Don’t be fooled though, the Tourist Information Office staff suggested it would take 3 hours however it took us 5 hours but, luckily, they let you have the audio guide for the whole day. By the end of the walk we had covered over 8 km so it was a good workout as well although, fortunately, Troyes is very flat which makes exploring much easier.
The main feature of today’s exploration and the walking tour was visiting many of the churches and seeing their magnificent stained glass windows. Troyes dominated the school of stained glass during the 15 – 16 centuries and the city is world renowned for its vast display of medieval stained glass. We stopped off at the Museum of Stained Glass but this was not nearly as impressive of the windows in situ in the Churches. In particular, the 13th Century St Madeleine is one of the oldest churches in Troyes with the oldest displays of stained glass windows and was extraordinarily beautiful.
It was 3.30 pm by the time we finished our tour and got back to our hotel and this allowed us to rest up a bit before our 5 pm visit to the champagne house of Cellier St Pierre. This was an interesting hour tasting champagne in their 12th century stone house. There were tunnels in their cellar that originally connected to the Cathedral.
It was sprinkling rain by the time we left St Pierre so, feeling quite weary, we decided just to head back to the hotel and stay there for the night.
We had greatly enjoyed our time in Troyes as it was a journey of visual splendour and it is a place I’d highly recommend you visit. The magnificent array of half timber houses and stained glass windows are just mesmerizingly beautiful. It is a very easy area to explore as it is so compact and flat but, if you do get a bit exhausted at the end of the day, you can sit back, relax and enjoy some of their beautiful champagne. Troyes, really, is a most magical place to visit and I’d urge you to allocate 3 nights thereby giving you two full days to explore.
Our hotel, MGallery La Licorne, was in a great location for exploring the city and very comfortable for our stay. We had room 004 but room 006, in the same category with a terrace, was a much nicer, brighter and bigger room so request that if you choose this hotel. It was a little odd though; they claim to be 5* but the bathroom didn’t have a hand towel, wash cloth or any amenities apart from soap and body lotion which didn’t seem to tick the 5* box in my opinion. These were not deal breakers though, just rather weird items to omit.
We depart Troyes tomorrow morning and head to Beaune for 3 nights.