The Ultimate Asterix Vacation – 5 Amazing Places You Have to Visit
Plot the Ultimate Asterix Vacation
You’re an Asterix super fan.
You’re heading to Europe for a once-in-a-lifetime visit. You want to see as much Asterix stuff as possible. You want the full Asterix Vacation.
Where do you go?
I can think of five places I’d definitely visit. I’m not going to tell you the best order to visit them in, or the best way to get from place to place. There’s probably a train somehow, but that’s left as an exercise to the reader.
1. Parc Asterix
This is the most obvious. About as far outside Paris as DisneyWorld Paris (formerly known as “EuroDisney”) sits Parc Asterix, an entire theme park done up in Asterix style.
It opened up 33 years ago and is still going strong. It must be popular because Disney isn’t that far away, and Parc Asterix still draws a crowd. It’s a little like our situation here in Florida, where Universal Studios isn’t too far away from DisneyWorld and both still flourish. (My family’s last pre-COVID vacation was to both places. Honestly, we enjoyed Universal more.)
Parc Asterix includes everything you’d expect in this kind of park. You get lots of roller coaster rides, food and drink, character meet and greets, and proper theming during the holidays.
The website for Parc Asterix is available in English, too, so it’ll be easy to plan your visit and buy your tickets while you’re at it. Kids under 12 are free, which is ridiculously generous.
Just looking at the map, it looks like you’ll only need to spend one day there.
If you’re a theme park completist, there’s also a Parc Spirou theme park in France. Problem is, that’s a seven or eight hour drive away on the other side of the country. And it’s not that impressive looking. If you time it right, though, you could be there during their comics festival in May, when they bring out a number of creators who work on the magazine.
2. Alesia
The final battle of the Gaul resistance to Julius Caesar happened at Alesia. (Read more about it in “Asterix and the Chieftain’s Shield.“) There stands a museum now in the land where that battle took place.
We think.
I mean, they’re pretty sure it’s the right place. It was lost for nearly 2000 years, and there are still some differences of opinions about where it really was.
But just go with it. You can still learn about the battle, the Romans, and the heroic Gauls who held out for as long as they could in the face of overwhelming legions of Roman troops. They just didn’t last as long as Asterix and his Village.
3. A Parisian Comic Book Shop
No Asterix vacation can be complete without the proper reading material as you travel across the country!
When you’re in Paris, buy an Asterix book from a comic shop there.
France has so many impressive bookstores that specialize in albums, comics, and bandes dessinees that it would be a shame not to visit one. Or three. Or a dozen.
I haven’t been to Paris so I can’t recommend a specific one, but I know of a few that I’d like to visit. Here are some ideas to start:
Album: There are two stores in Paris with this name. “Album Comics” specializes in American comics and pop culture. “Album BD” is focused more on the Franco-Belgian books. The former is literally the next store down from another comic shop called “Aaapoum Bapoum” which also has two locations in Paris. This location specializes in older and rare books. It’s the other one that has more recent books, plus manga, comics, and all the rest.
I think it would be fun to hit “Album Comics” and the “Aaapoum Bapoum” next door to get a feel of some of the history and collectability in France. Yet, I’d more want to visit “Album BD” because I have plenty of AMerican comics over here that I’m not interested in already. I don’t need to visit Paris for that…
Le Petit Roi: I just like the pictures of the inside of this store that I’ve seen. Looks like a real old-school book shop with wooden built-in shelves and everything. It’s located in what I can only think of calling an open air mall alley with a glass ceiling. I don’t know what you call this, but it looks quaint and fun. (It’s down the hal in this picturel, on the left, just past that group of tourists hanging out.)
To be fair, I have no idea if this shop even exists anymore. The Google Maps image is from 2017, and their URL is available for purchase. They don’t strike me as the kind of book store to have a website, but still…
On the opposite end of the spectrum from that is the next store:
BD Net: Not only is it the real-world location of a pretty epic comic book webstore, but they also have perfected “Book Face.”
There are two locations for BD Net stores. (I see a pattern here.) You can even visit the inside of the two stores via Google Maps. (BD Net Bastille and BD Net Nation ) It’s set up so you can walk through the aisles and see all the magnificent books on display. Wait ’til you see how good the American reprints look as objects on a shelf in France as compared to what we get in America.
4. The Rene Goscinny Obelisk, The Albert Uderzo Menhir
In Angouleme, home of the annual Festival international de la bande dessinée (FIBD), two monuments honor the proud papas of Asterix.
The first came to Angouleme in 2017. Unveiled during the festival, it’s an obelisk in honor of Rene Goscinny, featuring word balloons from various Goscinny-penned comics. Asterix word balloons share space with quotes from “Lucky Luke”, “Le Petit Nicolas”, “Iznogoud”, and “Les Dingodossiers”.
After Albert Uderzo’s death in 2020, a second monument landed in time for FIBD in 2022. This one is a nearly 5-ton piece of stone carved into the shape of a menhir. The pedestal it sits on is engraved with Uderzo’s instantly recognizable signature and images of his best-known characters. (I can’t find a Creative Commons image of it, so you’ll have to click on the link a couple of sentences back to see it.)
If you’re smart, take this vacation in January and time things out so you can go to FIBD while visiting the monuments.
If you need more Goscinny homages, you can visit all the places in France and Poland where there are Goscinny monuments and busts.
If you’re extremely adventurous, you can tour all the streets named after Rene Goscinny in France. There are seven. They’re all over the place. Most are not very picturesque, either. But imagine the selfie collection in front of all those street signs!
5. The Menhirs of Locmariaquer
The Brittany region of France juts out of the northwest corner of the country. That is where Uderzo and Goscinny pictured Asterix’s village to be.
It’s also the home of a large number of menhirs. Thousands of menhirs.
There’s no more impressive and informative site to visit, specifically, than Locmariaquer. There once stood the largest known menhir in Europe. It dates back 7000 years and is thought to have collapsed in an earthquake just a couple of hundred years ago. Studies have shown this was the center of a larger map of strategically-placed menhirs that might have helped track the phases and locations of the moon.
If that’s not enough for you, the good news is that five of the sites home to the largest and best menhirs and dolmens have banded together. You can get your “Pass Des Megaliths” at the first site to get a reduced price at the rest of them.
Remember: these menhirs have been standing for thousands of years, which means Obelix, himself, might have seen them — or even contributed some replacement stones along the way.
Plan B
Or, forget all of the above and go for the pure French cultural experience. Skip the commercial centers and theme parks and monuments. Instead, tour the countryside!
You can relive the adventures of “Asterix and the Banquet.” Take a lap around the entire country. (Bonus: Do it on a bicycle for the full Tour de France-like experience the book is meant to invoke.) Visit the towns and eat all the suggested food from the comic. That might take a while, but it would make for an excellent blog. The Foodies would flock to you.
Just don’t sink any ships, please.
If You Do Any of This —
— please send me pictures. I want to live vicariously through your Asterix vacation.
Also, if I’m missing any obvious spots, the coments are open below. Let me know where else we need to go!
Finally: Not directly related to Asterix, but I found this Medium article funny: “Is Mont Saint Michel Worth It?” That’s the picturesque castle that sits out in the water in the northern part of France, much closer to where Asterix’s village would have stood than anywhere else mentioned in this article.
So when are you coming ?
Don’t tell me you’re not racking up the big bucks as the prominent English-language authority on BD (Paul Gravett eat your heart out).
Anyway, forget Alésia, I’ll take you to Gergovie, close to where I was born in the central mountains of France. Better celebrate a victory than a defeat.
And come to think of it, forget inflation-ridden Paris, rather come to still-affordable Bruxelles. After cruising around Paris bookstores for years, my first trip to Belgium had me wonder if I had fallen through a crack into Scrooge’s vault, full of rare books and first editions everywhere I could lay eyes upon. That you have to see before you die. Where non-french speakers are more than welcome.
I’m considering converting my apartment into a shelf-covered B&B. Just sayin’.
In my dream world, there’s no way I’d visit France without also fitting Belgium into the same itinerary. It would be awful to go that far and not make it to both places. And, of course, I’ll have an empty piece of luggage with me to carry everything back home in. =)
There are still no solid plans to actually make it there yet, though. I was hoping Disneyland Paris would fly me over for the opening of Avengers Campus, but I haven’t gotten that email yet. =( But if they did, I’d certainly be limited in my travels, anyway. Maybe it’s for the best.
(I did have the chance once to fly out to a superhero movie set to cover it for a website, but I didn’t have the vacation time to take to make that happen. Sigh.)
When you list your place on AirBNB, let me know!
Did you know that Jean-Jacques Sempe. The co-creator of the Rene Goscinny created children’s book series “Little Nicholas” died two days ago on August 11th, 2022, at the ripe old age of 90 years old at all?
And on October 12th, of this year, an animated “Little Nicholas” movie is coming out in theaters in France and Belgium. According to the film’s trailer, it’s about Rene Goscinny’s life, how “Little Nicholas” was created, and how Rene Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempe created “Little Nicholas”. I hope it gets an English dub by Viz Media or Mediatoon in late 2022 or 2023.
Thanks. I knew there was a movie coming, but I didn’t know it was that meta…
You are welcome, and what do you mean by meta?
Yes, I did see that on ActuaBD.com this morning. I don’t have any news roundup posts planned at the moment, otherwise I’d include it in there.