July 28, 2020. In less than an hour from Compiègne by train, we arrive in Amiens, an affluent mid-size city north of Paris. Upon arriving at the train station, we wasted no time and immediately walked to Musée de Picardie, which was quite a distance from the terminal. We passed through the pedestrian promenades in the center of the city along the way. At that hour, which was around 4 in the afternoon, the sun was still scorching hot so there were few people walking the streets. Many were under the shades of trees in the parks or in the shaded terraces of cafes.
The Musée de Picardie is housed in a 19th-century building that used to be the Napoleon Museum until it was repurposed as a city and regional museum to exhibit archeological and artistic collections. The museum hosts diverse exhibits of collections: from prehistoric relics, Egyptian, Roman, and Greek antiques, to pieces of fine art made by classical and contemporary painters and sculptors. In short, it had a whole bunch of everything a Louvre-like museum usually would have.
That being said, the palatial museum can take one a few hours or even an entire day to fully absorb and appreciate, especially with such a diverse collection. We didn’t have that much time so our tour of the museum was a quick run-through of all the exhibits.
We made a visit to the enormous Notre Dame d’Amiens after our tour of the museum. As with most cities and towns in France, Amiens hosts an old Catholic church at the centre-ville, near the traditional city hall square.
Since we were at the city hall square, which was transformed into a pleasant pedestrian promenade lined with shops, restaurants and cafes, we decided to spend the rest of the sun-lit summer evening with cold beer near the hôtel de ville (city hall).
We took the train back to Paris at around half-past eight in the evening, when the sun is just about to set. It took just a little longer than an hour until our train arrived at Gare du Nord. It was a good trip!
