C L U N Y
The morning after the catfight (it really did happen I don’t care what anybody else in the group says), we headed to the Roman ruins and amphitheater on the outskirts of Autun. While this was a fascinating site, seeing as how the Roman influence reached so far in such a short time, as mentioned before, Kyle, Jeremy, and I had just spent three days conducting an action-packed cram-session of Roman history, in Rome. This would be the reason I did not take pictures of the ruins, but this is not to say they weren’t interesting.
After this, it was on the road again toward Cluny. We kept hearing about this Cluny Abbey, that was, when it stood, the largest Christian church in the world, until the new Vatican was built. I guess the reason this church is not standing has to do not with war, but with one of the heads of the Cluniac order. An Abbot saw that while the church had all this power and money, the surrounding village suffered. As a result, he ordered that pieces of the church be removed and used to help build houses around the town.
I liked Cluny, for many different reasons. Things were within walking distance, it was scenic, people were as friendly as Europeans seeing a large group of American tourists could be, and of course, we discovered the most delicious beer any of us had ever had – 1664. A white beer, it was clean and crisp, yet packed a pretty powerful punch, though this is debatable as we had so much of it, who wouldn’t have gotten a little drunk? We loved the restaurant we had it at so much that we went back again (the waitress loved us… not so much).
We stayed in Cluny for three days and two nights, and one of those days, we went to a farmers market. This was different however than the farmers market you might see on the streets of Ellensburg on a Thursday morning. They sold everything, from fruit, to llamas and clothes (yes that’s right llamas). Daniele and Dr. Folkestad also bought food for a pick-nick for lunch. It was a bunch of different types of meats and cheeses; stuff I had never had before but was delicious nonetheless. It was nice to sit in a park outside of a 1000 year old church and just enjoy the air, good food, and good company.
The Hotel in Cluny (Hotel Saint Odilion) was nice enough as well. Thinking back on it now, I find it interesting how some of these hotels, if they were in America, would probably have a low “Star” rating, not so much because they weren’t nice, but because of the lack of luxuries. But I also remember that it didn’t matter. It made me think about how useless a lot of those said luxuries really were. This hotel had a sort of charm to it, and everything in the town was within walking distance so that was very nice. And of course it had a free breakfast.
I remember walking back from the Abbey, and it looked like it was going to rain hard. This actually afforded me the opportunity to take a really neat picture outside of the abbey courtyard (one of my favorite pictures actually) before we had to run inside for shelter. It was raining hard enough that I had a water bottle that I filled up rather quickly.