Last stop on our French vacation: exploring Laon

 On the last Monday of August we were leaving Epernay to drive home.  Unlike other drives where we wanted to move onwards as soon as possible, we were now reluctant to move on.  Postponing the end was more fun.  

We remembered our engagement weekend in the region and the fact that we visited a city back then on our way back with ramparts.  We had no clue where.  thankx to our online picture archive, we found pictures of the city...one of them with an area sign . More googling of cities in that region and the cathedral image confirmed: we had visited Laôn!  Let's go back, it's hardly a detour. 

So we drove 1 hour from the capital of Champagne to the fortified medieval city of Laôn that was towering above the region.  We parked along the city walls and recognized the entry gates from 14 years ago. 

We walked up to the cathedral and explored its beauty and the funny cows as gargoyles. 

We noticed a tourist train outside that looked very attractive to the children but we needed to have a minimum amount of people on board to leave on a visit and that looked like quite a challenge on this quiet Monday morning.  But finally another family showed up and joined so we could leave on a relax & lazy visit of the city. 

Back at the starting point it had become sunny and we had a lunch in the sun before we headed back to the car (with an extra stop first at the playground) and then we headed back to Leuven and our 3 weeks in France were over , as well as almost our month of parental leave.