8 lieux insolites EN FRANCE | Français COURANT + sous-titres et transcription PDF.

Hello and welcome to the podcast Fluidité, episode 127. Today I'm going to show you 8 unusual places in France that no one tells you about, but which are still incredible. And for that, stay tuned! Before starting, I invite you to join our VIP club. It's my Patreon page where you have material to study my content and become better in French. For example, for each content I make, you have bonuses like the vocabulary list, bilingual transcriptions, the audio version and you receive the content a few hours before the public. The VIP club is also a large community with more than 350 French learners and we discuss together every day on a private telegram group. We do different activities in French twice a week, on video call. So you can also practice your French, find or share resources with other learners from all over the world. And it's very important for you, so you don't feel alone in your learning and to always stay motivated. To sign up for my VIP club, I leave you the link in the description on podcast platforms and on YouTube to sign up for Patreon and join us. You can stay as long as you want and come with pleasure. In the description of the episode too, you have the YouTube video version, if you listen to me in audio, with French subtitles or in other languages to improve your oral comprehension. And you also have the link to the free transcription. The Eiffel Tower, Paris, the Côte d'Azur, Mont Saint-Michel, Corsica. Everyone knows or almost knows these cities or these points of interest, not to be missed in France. But there are also many places less known to the general public and more unusual, which are worth visiting. Some of them are completely un-peasant, which means that when you see them, you can believe you are in another country or at another time. So I take you to discover these 8 unusual and incredible places in France that I have chosen for you. First, I would like to talk to you about the Ideal Palace of the Facteur Cheval. So the name is a bit long, so I will explain it to you. So a palace is a place of residence, generally majestic, where princes, kings, emperors, etc. live. The palace is also the upper part of the mouth. And the two words are written the same way, P-A-L-I-S. Then a facteur is a postman who distributes the mail. In France, the facteur passes every day or almost to distribute the mail to the French, because the administrative system still uses postal mail a lot. And in general, they often go by bike. And Cheval is the family name of this facteur, exactly like the animal, the horse. By the way, do you know what the plural of cheval is? It's horses, exactly. So the Ideal Palace is an extraordinary monument that Mr. Cheval built. It is absolutely incredible and extravagant for several reasons. First, when you see it, it looks like a Cambodian temple, since Mr. Cheval was inspired by Hindu mythology to build it, but also the Bible, so there is a mixture of architectural styles. Then, you should know that he built it all by himself. And it's a monument that is not small at all, since it is 12 meters high and 26 meters long. It took 33 years, or 93,000 hours, to build his palace, until the age of 76. But what's so amazing about this palace? In fact, he built it with stones and other materials that he picked up from the ground during his tour of facteurs. And he wanted to build a monument with all these little debris, and it's absolutely incredible. So it's not a palace to live inside, but there are representations of all kinds, fountains, caves, the white house in miniature, a Hindu temple, etc. It is located in the Drôme, not far from the city of Valence. So go there if you pass by, one of these four, and do not hesitate to look at photos of this unreal palace on the Internet. We continue with the second attraction I would like to talk to you about. And for that, we completely cross France to go to the northwest, in Brittany, next to the city of Vannes. There, there is a rather special museum called the universe of the ferrer poet. Here too, I will explain the name to you. Well, a poet is an author who writes poetry, like Victor Hugo, among the most famous. And a ferrer is a professional who deals with metals, so iron, and it is often the one who recovers the ferrail. The ferrail is the waste of metals that you want to get rid of. For example, when you destroy a house. The universe of the ferrer poet is an open-air museum, like a kind of miniature village, created from objects of recovery, mostly of the ferrail. It is a poetic, magical and crazy world, composed of animated sculptures, machines, automatons of all kinds, musical fountains, etc. A bit like in Tim Burton's films, for those who know this universe. The place is made for small and large curious people, who will want to have fun for a moment. Now, we go back to the southeast of the country, more precisely in Provence, to talk about a place that will not make you think of France at all, but of another country, the United States. This third place I'm talking about is called the Ocres of Rustrel, and it is nicknamed the Colorado Provençal. It is an old industrial site for the exploitation of ocher. It is an ocher-colored rock, used as a natural pigment, among other uses. Nowadays, the open-air site is no longer exploited, but there are still large ocher-colored chimneys, reminiscent of the Great American Desert, having the same shape and almost the same color. A magnificent place where you can walk for a total de-peasement. For the fourth unusual place, we go to Burgundy, a region known for its gastronomy, such as its wine, its bourguignon beef, its snails, Dijon mustard, etc. There, you can find a somewhat special castle. There are castles everywhere in France, but this is a strong castle that was built from scratch, with the same methods and the same tools that our ancestors used in the 13th century, so in the Middle Ages. That is, there is a team of passionate professionals and craftsmen who do not use any modern technique, no motor or electrical machine, to build this magnificent work, and this since 1997, so for 26 years. Their goal is not to build this castle as quickly as possible, but it is to understand the methods used at the time and to live an extraordinary human adventure. The castle is magnificent, you can visit it to see the workers at work, there are more than 70. There are workshops with stone cutters or even bakers from the time. In short, the Guedelon Castle, that's what it's called, is a time machine. We will stay in Burgundy for the 5th incredible place, we will talk about the Temple of the Thousand Buddhas. Its name is easy to understand, and it speaks for itself, because in fact, in this region, is one of the most important Buddhist study and meditation centers in France, inaugurated in 1987. It is the first Himalayan temple in Europe. There are Buddha statues of different sizes, or even paintings, and all with an architecture inspired by the first Tibetan temple. In short, everything to catch the eye of all visitors. So here you will understand, we would believe in Tibet or Bhutan, but not at all in France. We move on with the Picassiette house, for the 6th unusual place. A Picassette is someone who is often invited to people's houses for free, so someone who stings the plates, in a way. Because the verb stinging is a synonym for stealing. This house is that of Raymond, a simple worker who collected pieces of glass, dishes, faience or broken porcelain, that he found on the ground during his walks, a bit like the horse factor. And after building his house, he decided to decorate it from the ground to the ceiling, with the debris that he had collected, as if to make mosaics everywhere. He spent more than 20 years covering it every day, thousands of very small pieces. So the Picassette house is a splendid work of art, entirely decorated with mosaics, in the smallest nooks and crannies. For each piece, there is a different theme that Raymond wanted to express, so it's as if we were going through his diary. It's a giant, breathtaking work of art. It is located in Chartres, a city in the southwest of Paris, known for its cathedral. In 7th position, we are going to look at an incredible place in a very famous city, the catacombs of Paris. There are a lot of monuments and attractions to see in the capital, but this one is a little less known to tourists. The catacombs promise us an extraordinary experience, because it is indeed a large underground gallery where thousands of human skeletons are stacked. They were stored until the middle of the 19th century, following a problem of salinity in the cemeteries whose corpses were transferred under the city of Paris in this underground gallery. Imagine walking in the middle of hundreds of thousands of human bodies over 1,500 meters long and 20 meters underground. It's a place that gives goosebumps, that gives shivers. For the last place on my list, I would like to tell you about an attraction that I would have liked to see, but that I could not because it was closed when we went to Nantes with my wife. These are the machines of Lille. You may have already heard about it, but these are sculptures or wooden or steel constructions inspired by a mixture of the worlds of Jules Verne and the machines of Léonard de Vinci. For example, there is an ambulant giant elephant that can carry 50 people. There is also a magnificent carousel-type cage, a gallery of machines in which you can sit down to manipulate them, etc. It is a magical and fairytale world in the heart of the city of Nantes that detours it for children, but also for adults fans of Jules Verne or De Vinci. That's all for this list of 8 incredible and unusual places in France. Tell me in the comments if you knew them and do not hesitate to give me your suggestions for content. Thank you everyone for watching or listening to this episode. I hope you have learned a lot of French and listen again several times to assimilate and improve your understanding. And if you have stayed until now, the episode has interested you, so put a little like and subscribe to my podcast and my channel. See you soon!