Sorry it's been awhile since our last post. We've been out sightseeing a lot, and when we've been home I've been working on my website. It's been nice to have enough time to do that!
Today is our last day in our little cottage and we've had a really good, relaxing time here. The cats are even more friendly now: one of them comes in all the time and we have to keep him from jumping up on counters and running upstairs. We've also fed bread to our local sheep (at the encouragement of our landlord), who get so crazed they look like they're going to tear the fence down. The lambs didn't seem interested; evidently milk is still their thing.
Unfortunately the weather has generally been pretty awful here, which has put a cramp in our photography hopes. We've had a lot of rain and a lot of ugly gray days. And a few nights ago we had a huge lightening storm. For a long time at the beginning there were regular flashes of light but no thunder, and I started to think maybe the UFOs were landing. But then there was finally thunder, big thunder! The storm lasted for several hours and brought a lot of rain with it.
And while I'm telling stories I don't have pictures for, the other night we were invited over to our landlord's house to have apertifs with him, his wife and their friends. We sat at a large outdoor table under a big umbrella and had cassis mixed with white wine. It was very sweet and I liked it more than I expected. To go with it we had wedges of a meat pie I've seen in stores, made of a summer sausage-like loaf of meat surrounded by buttery pastry. That also was better than I thought it would be, quite delicious actually. And there were cherry tomatoes with crab pieces on toothpicks.
Their friends didn't arrive for awhile, and in the meantime I attempted to make conversation in French, which involved a lot of effort and frustration on my part! But they were very patient and encouraging and we did manage to communicate a little, about simple things like how long they've lived here and the festival going on in town this weekend. And David did great with charades. Finally their friends showed up, a 40s-ish couple with a 10ish-year-old boy. And the woman is an English teacher, hooray! So she did a lot of translating and my overworked brain could relax. She's also a marathon runner. One of the races she does is the 100K!! Her son (who wore a "Harry Potter Quidditch" T-shirt) was very cute and outgoing and excited to practice his English with us. When they first arrived, he shook our hands and said, "Good afternoon." I loved it.
Vézelay
OK, on to the pictures. The very best church we visited this week was the Basilica of Vézelay, which is perched up on a hill overlooking gorgeous countryside. It was an important abbey church back in the day - it claimed to have the relics of St. Mary Magdalene and therefore attracted many pilgrims. It was also a starting point for the long pilgrimage to Santiago in Spain. St. Thomas Becket preached there once, and two Crusades were launched from there.
The exterior of the church isn't super spectacular, but inside it is absolutely beautiful, very large and illuminated with much more natural light than most Romanesque churches. And the choir is Gothic, so there is even more light by the altar.
But the best part is the fantastic collection of Romanesque sculptures, which are absolutely everywhere. First, there are three carved reliefs over the doors in the extra-large porch.
Normally the central one depicts the Last Judgment, but this one is unique. It shows Christ sending the apostles out into the world to spread his message. He sits in the center and bolts of light go out from his hands and hit the apostles in the heads.
Below and around are the "peoples of the world" that would receive this message, which of course medieval Europeans would have only had limited contact with. So some of them are based on travelers' legends, like the people with giant ears!
On the very outer arch are zodiac signs and the medieval labors of the months, symbolizing the timelessness of the apostles' mission. As always, these give interesting insight into what the local peasants got up to throughout the year.
Then, in the main part of the church, nearly every capital is carved with a narrative scene from the Bible, medieval life, or legends. I love a good carved capital, and I've never seen so many in one place before! And the subjects are more complex and skillfully carved than most. The only downside was that they weren't lit, so the pictures came out pretty gray.
There's a large photo gallery of Vezelay available at Sacred Destinations.
Saulieu Church
Another great place for capitals was Saulieu. The town is pleasant but not nearly as quaint as Vezelay. We did buy some fantastic croissants and baguettes at a bakery there, though!
The church probably wouldn't be worth a special stop if it weren't for its capitals, which are at least as impressive as Vezelay. And you can light them up by plugging a euro coin in a machine at the back of the church! But there are far less here, only about 10 compared with Vezelay's 60+.
Finally, a major highlight of Saulieu was the churchwarden, who manned a kiosk of pamphlets and postcards in the south aisle. He was so kind and helpful, which isn't always the case with church staff. He cheerfully provided me with change for the light box, and when I was taking a photo of a capital near his desk he encouraged me to come as far back behind his desk as I needed to for the photo.
Finally, when I had bought an information pamphlet and was about to leave, he asked in French if I'd seen the choir stalls. I didn't expect him to say anything so I wasn't concentrating enough to understand, but after seeing my confused face he led me over to them and enthusiastically pointed out the carved panels. I had been so focused on the capitals that I would have missed them otherwise and that would have been a major bummer. They are from the late 1300s and have a variety of interesting carvings:
There's a full photo gallery of Saulieu available here on Sacred Destinations.
Fontenay Abbey
The Abbey of Fontenay is pretty close to our temporary home, only about a half-hour's drive north. It is one of the earliest Cistercian abbeys, founded in 1118. We'd been saving our visit for the sunniest day, but that never came so we went yesterday. It was far more enjoyable than either of us expected. It has been fully restored and landscaped, so in pictures it looked a little artificial and overdone, but in person it was lovely and there were so many interesting things to see.
West end of the abbey church.
Side aisle of the church.
Cloister courtyard, with the monk's dormitory on the top floor straight ahead.
An unexpected sight at the abbey was a water-powered forge, a reconstruction based on what was devised by the monks in the Middle Ages. A plaque informed us that it was originally built in 1220 and was the first metallurgical factory and the place of invention of the hydraulic hammer, which became "the basis of industrial manufacturing in Europe." I knew the Cistercians were good with water engineering, but I didn't know they were this impressive!
Some Chateaux
On one particularly cloudy day, David went out to explore some castles. Given the bad weather and the busy day we'd had before, I decided to stay home, relax and work on my website. I missed out, though - he came home with pictures of beautiful castles.
This one is called Chateau de Bussy-Rabutin and dates from the 16th and 17th centuries.
There are lots of them in this area (and in fact all over France), and most of them are still privately owned and occupied. Many of them are more like mansions, built by noble families to show off and live the good life, rather than strong fortifications. The grounds are usually open every day, but the castle buildings only open in July and August, or by appointment.
The Frog Castle
The best part of David's castle tales was that one of them has a pond filled with mating frogs! I love frogs. He showed me lots of pictures and described the huge racket they all made, and I just had to see it. So we went back together yesterday morning, and we even had some sunlight this time! The castle is called Chateau de Bourbilly, but we've been calling it the Frog Castle.
While we were standing by the pond, the owner of the castle came out to chat with us. She was an elegant lady of maybe 70 years and spoke perfect English. She said every year at the end of May, the frogs have this "love moment," which lasts a fortnight. She explained that's why they don't clean the pond; if they do, this doesn't happen. I saw that there was a fence around the pond and I suspect some of the frogs might end up on the dinner table! I didn't get around to asking, unfortunately.
On this visit David brought along the Camcorder, which we bought when we lived in Germany but hardly ever remember to use. He used a tripod and everything, and got some great footage of the Kermits, which you can view below! This is very exciting, as it's the first proper video David has made and edited. The best part is that it captures all the crazy noise they were making.
Let me know if this works well or not! I'm sure we'll get better at this as we make more videos.
Chateau de Epoisses
After all that excitement, we visited another castle in the nearby village of Epoisses. We had driven by it a few times on our way to other sights, and this time we parked and went in. This one is more heavily fortified, with a two concentric walls and two moats.
The highlight of this one is probably the dovecote or pigeonnier, a round stone building that has hundreds of little cubicles for pigeons to live in. We'd seen a few old dovecotes in Britain but never got to go in one before. It was really something. I can only imagine the amounts of noise and poop there were when it was fully occupied!
Our next base is a town called Mâcon, which is about an hour and a half south of here. We'll be there for 9 days, staying in a hotel this time. Sadly the weather forecast is full of rain, but we'll just have to hope for the best.