A chicken on the way to Burgundy

After leaving our “gypsy caravan” in Versailles behind, we made our way onto the highway, heading west towards Fontainebleau then south towards Lyon. Though our day-trip to Chartres and back technically saw our little Peugeot challenge the highway, it was really when we merged onto the A6 that this really began to feel like a European road trip.

I’m shifting gears and weaving through highway traffic while Tara is browsing our Burgundy and Rhone Valley travel book, trying to get a sense of what we can do on the drive. The book mentions a town called Sens, describing it as a picturesque medieval town with a nice Gothic cathedral. Tara knows I have a weakness for cathedrals, so we figure out what exit we have to take and head to downtown Sens.

We arrive near the town center and park next to the tourism office. It’s Sunday, about 11:30, so that’s closed and we know there’s a chance the cathedral is in mass. However, Tara tells me there’s a Les Halles in the town and it’s near the cathedral, so we chance it and start walking up to the town square.

The almost-deserted town square.

The 20 feet high wooden doors to the cathedral are shut tightly. A few restaurant owners are setting up outdoor seating in the square in front of the cathedral, with maybe 5 older men sitting by themselves wearing fisherman hats sipping espressos or beers, seemingly waiting for their families to emerge from the mass. Tara has an anxious determination to get out of the square before we figure out what to do next, but I’m just looking up in wide-eyed wonder. No building in my line of sight can be less than 200 years old; most of them look like pieces are nearly medieval. Even the pharmacy, the neon green cross, is in a building made of stone and wood that might easily be found in a medieval recreation.

We make our way through the square, past some buildings, where we find the Les Halles, the indoor food market, which too is shut. It’s only open Tuesday through Saturday. Making our way back to the square, we sit inside one of the restaurants – inside, because after hitting a high of 85 degrees during our first week in Paris, it has steadily dropped to the low 60s of that day and all Tara packed was a light sweater.

Tara and I order espressos – Lavazza, an Italian brand I hadn’t seen advertised yet. As we sit, sipping our coffee, the church bells begin to chime – it’s now noon. The doors to the church swing open and throngs – actual throngs – of people emerge. We settle our bill and head over to the door where maybe three hundred people come out of the cathedral to the sound of the triumphant organ – the miracles of mass are complete.

After most of the attendants leave, we entered through the large doorframe, the organist still vigorously playing her tune. Slowly walking down one side of the arcade, it occurred to me I might not have encountered a real mass since college. The air was somehow more charged than I remember. The bishop – I recognized the white frock with red accents – said his good-byes to many attendees he clearly knew, or at least recognized. We saw several families come in to the cathedral with babies and children dressed in elaborate white dresses – the bishop might be christening this afternoon too.

Before I could ask Tara if we could watch, she leads me back to the square. On our earlier walk, before the coffee, we had passed a butcher with an especially inviting selection of rotisserie chickens. Before we entered the church, we had already decided to return to the butcher to buy a chicken and eat it at the next rest stop. We returned to the butcher to now find a line eight deep, many just emerged from the service. Two of the rotisserie racks were missing – they were behind the counter, next to the awards and certifications the butcher had been awarded. The line is slow – the elderly woman at the front is ordering small cuts of many kinds of meats. But one by one, each person places his or her order, the butcher patiently fulfills it before acknowledging the next customer.

One woman requests a small game hen – all the whole poultry we’ve seen so far looks as if it had just been plucked – so he takes the hen, lights a Bunsen burner behind him on a counter, and sears the last of the feather ends off the bird. Another person orders a rotisserie chicken “with juice”. He takes a jar, walks over to the rotisserie, and ladles the juice and fat at the bottom of the machine into the jar.

The chickens on the rack are AOC chickens - Appellation d'origine contrôlée – which is to say they’re a particular chicken with a regional certification (think Champagne) such that only chickens raised in a particular way and from a particular place can truly be called Bresse.

We finally get to order a chicken – 15.70 euros for the whole thing – that he packs into a double-thick wax paper rotisserie chicken bag. We quickly make our way back to the car, hop onto the highway, and stop at the first exit we can find. We sit at a picnic table with a knife, half a baguette, and an open wax paper bag devouring the parts while the wind whips around us, trying to blow everything away. Amazing!