Way late and in Burgundy
Okay, many days later, and no posts. I'm going to cheat and put up photos and sentences.
1. Lyon is great. We want to go back. Many things to do, beautiful city.
2. Burgundy is great too. Very pretty countryside and phenomenal Romanesque churches, many with frescos.
3. Cluny is neat, only the transept is left of a church 187 meters long. Cute town too. Excellent guided tour of Musee.
4. Paray Le Monial is a terrific abbey. The town looked dull as we drove in, turned out to be tres jolie.
5. Azey le Duc has a beautiful church and charming town.
6. Ditto for Semur-en-Brionais
7. Amazingly small number of people visiting these sites. We're almost alone at all of these places.
8. Tournus is a great town, with a neat Hospice and (wait for it) another great abbey
9. Burgundy is filled with cool stuff.
10. Food is excellent.
Cluny.
Medieval house, Cluny.
Branciac, near hotel
Branciac
Tournus Hotel de Ville
Abbey
Abbey
Cormatin chateau...nice to be rich
17th c painting on wall...cool
Decoration...
Chapaize church near hotel
Just finished great dinner...gazpacho, duck, etc. gotta take picture of Chapaize church
Everyone should come to Burgundy...
Lyon Day Two
First to the tourist office (like all in France remarkably well run, we bought a two day Lyon card...best deal ever..all museums, metro, guided tours, boat rides. Amazing). First stop, the Musee des Tissus and Arts Decoratifs...the textile and decorative arts museum. Pretty cool. Lyon was quite wealthy in the Renaissance because of the textile and silk industry. With that money they bought nice stuff, which you see here. No photos allowed, but a fun couple of hours.
After lunch, we took the (free!) guided tour of Vieux Lyon. We'd walked around the day before, but this was excellent. Nicholas explained the various renaissance styles we saw, and pointed out that Lyon has one of the largest collections of extant renaissance houses.
Cool house.
England to Lyon
Friday was quiet. Since R&H live near Hastings, where William the Conqueror conquered Harold many place nearby refer to the events. For instance the nearest town is Battle...get it? Obviously that meant we ate lunch in the 1066 pub, next door to Battle Abbey. Good lunch though. Nice drive about and then an early night, since we needed to get up at 4:00 am to catch a train to meet the Eurostar to Lyon. Great trip, I think. I slept most of the way, but leaving Dover at 8:00 am we where in Lyon by 2:00 (with a one hour time change). Lyon is quite pretty, stuck between two rivers. We grabbed a quick lunch and then wandered around Vieux Lyon, the old part of town.
Beef road, dinner beckons.
Rich Renaissance merchants put cool staircases on their houses is Lyon.
After wandering about the lower part of town, Kathy and I had the bright idea of walking up to the Fourviere part of town, via the pretty rose gardens. Gasping for breath, we reached the cathedral and had a great view
Wedding cake style cathedral. Mass was going on so we couldn't see the interior. Nice mosaics in the crypt though.
Plenty of appetite for dinner at Archange, which was terrific. I had roast chicken with morels, and excellent terrine to start. Kathy began with a very good salmon followed by duck. Bloated we headed back to the Celestins to sleep.
England
An uneventful flight to Heathrow. Schlepping from train to tube to train was slightly more than we wanted, but by 2:00 pm we were in Battle, being picked up by Robert. We wandered around Bexhill a bit, stopped by the De La Warr pavilion, Art Deco crazed building on the beach, saw Pevensey castle and back for dinner.
Thursday we drove to Warum Castle. Built by Henry VIII as a fortification on the coast, it has become a country house. The state gives it to someone who does something big, which is why the Duke of Wellington died there. Winston Churchill also got to use it. Fortresses converted into country homes have nice gardens:
We then drove to Wincelsea, which was a Cinque Port until its harbor silted up. It's church was meant to be much larger, but storm damage and lack of money made it smaller. A British comedian, Spike Milligan, is buried there. His epitaph is in Gaelic, since the church wouldn't let him have it in English. It says "I told you I was sick"
Wincelsea church.
Labels: Warum Castle garden
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