[narrative] ambition took me speed of light to god's exclusion zone
The trip to England - and then onto France - was a good idea, Martel knows. Having spent the past year devoting himself to establishment, he's missed all the things about traveling that gave him the wanderlust he had as a younger man in the first place. It's good to get away from 48 hour work days for a while, to be a little out of reach, to be so good as to wear the clothes that Candice likes so damn much every day for a while as they travel together for the first time.
Selfishness aside, there's practicality to it as well; if he's supposed to be passed off as some 'Professor Lefevre', an English and French mix, then he probably ought to know something about the countries allegedly responsible for him. It's not tourism so much as learning by immersion, and after leaving Savannah shortly after Candice's parents did (they liked him, and he'd feel worse about having fallen back on old methods of manipulation if it hadn't worked so well - perhaps he could've won them over without that, they'll never know) it's what most of the past month has been devoted to.
This world is so exhausting and he's tired of it. The languages he picks up easily enough, but everything else - the culture, the tools, nothing is familiar. He wears the clothes well, but never quite cares for them; he is driven to distraction by this modern insistence on disarming. (Until he figures out how to hide knives from metal detectors and the like by means of glamour; an imperfect solution, but sufficient.) It's fascinating and he is fascinated, but he feels out of place and out of sorts.
He's thinking about taking photographs of Valdis when he first sees Amiens and forgets to think entirely.
Amiens is a thirteenth century high gothic cathedral, and for a moment Martel is somewhere else entirely so clearly that it hurts. He takes his sunglasses off (stupid things) and follows Candice up the steps to go inside, quiet just this once. When he slips away from her exploring to claim a seat in a back pew, he prays to a god who won't be listening in a world he knows is too far away to be heard.
He dislikes France a little less and a little more, all at once.