A day in Beaune

May 19, 2022

Not riding yet. And it's a good thing for various reasons. I enjoyed our morning in the town, liesurely visiting places of interest and taking pictures. We were lucky with the weather, too. Hot weather was predicted, but a light rain at night and an overcast sky until noon made walking about very pleasant.

The highlight of the day was meeting expat and CycleBlazer Keith Klein and his wife Susan. The seven of us had a lovely lunch together in a restaurant that Keith had chosen for us, Les Caveaux des Arches. We found we had many topics in common and the time passed quickly.

First a picture from our lunch, then a batch from our morning sightseeing.

Now back to the morning. We started our amble about town with the Hotel-Dieu.

The Hospices de Beaune or Hôtel-Dieu de Beaune is a former charitable almshouse, founded in 1443, as a hospital for the poor. The original hospital building, the Hôtel-Dieu, is one of the finest examples of fifteenth-century Burgundian architecture.

We also visited the Basilique Notre Dame and its cloisters

This collegiate Basilica belongs to the last great Romanesque style churches of Burgundy. Its construction started in the middle of the 12th century on the Cluny Abbey’s pattern and it was completed at the beginning of the following century keeping an outstanding unity of style to it.

I got these pictures completely out of order, so instead of deleting and starting all over again I'll just add the captions. A bit chaotic, sorry.

Image not found :( — Enjoyed our visit to Notre Dame and now off to wander the streets of Beaune some more.

View to the streets from the front portal, looking bow legged. But that's the camera's fault.

Notre Dame is known for its tapestries from the 15th Century. Unfortunately they weren't accessible today so I just poked the lens of my camera through the bars of the gate.

Unfortunately I knocked over a post with chains meant to keep visitors out. It made a loud clanging noise which echoed throughout the church. I beat a quick retreat and was relieved that no alarm went off.

After limiting our bicycle tours mainly to Germany for a couple of years, it is such a treat to be able to take in the small details of the streets of a foreign country, so different from what we see every day. Sometimes it's just doors and windows and mail boxes and walls and chimneys that catch my eye, not the works of art.

The afternoon was hot so we just chilled in our room and I tried to sort my pictures. Finished the day with a nice meal with Susan, Rachael and Scott while Janos stayed behind, organizing things for tomorrow, our first day on the road!

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