Thank you gentlemen for your kind comments/ Today I continue with this lovely little town and the now unused monastery.
One thing that particularly struck me was this door high up and leading out to nowhere. we actually found a spiral stone stairs that led up to the windows you can see, these looked out onto the main monastery floor towards the alter. One can only surmise that they had a balcony along here.
These spiral stairs also led up to the bell tower but as you will notice these had been gated off obviously for safety reasons.
The cloister garden of the monastery.
As I say it was a cute little town full of chucks, an old fire pump and maybe the original Swiss watch.
It was here that we left our cruise ship and started our journey by coach towards Paris.
Great stuff. I'm actually surprised those stairs are gated off. Although by no means would they be allowed in North America for the average Joe to climb, there were several in southern Germany of equivalent standard (or lack thereof) that I was able to access without a problem.
To be honest Andy they didn't look all that safe, not so much the steps but more the railings which of course for safety reason would have to be fenced in. EU rules and all that.
Continuing on with the holiday, the next morning we all piled aboard four coaches and headed away from the river on our way to Paris. On the way we were to call into the ancient town of Beaune, the capital of Burgundy. We found out that this was to be the swap over place where we who were leaving the cruise were joined by those who were just setting out on the return cruise, so the town was quite crowded.
One of the main attractions of the town is the "Hospices de Beaune" which was a former charitable almshouse. We were also told that the hospice also played a major role in helping and hiding downed WWII flyers, some of whom with help of the resistance made it back to the UK and fight on.
Follows is the first batch of pictures I took of this magnificent building.
Many thanks Glenn and yes it was an impressive looking roof. I also believe that there is only one other like it in Europe and that is the Cathedral roof in Vienna. But I could be wrong and would gladly stand corrected.