April 26 St Prère et Vasélay

We visit lots of places and take a few pictures of everything. But the weather has us stuck in this spot and we decided to study the town in depth with our camera. The pictures on this section of the blog are all from the same town. The town started out at a salt water spring down the valley that started six thousands years ago during the neolithic period. The town moved up on to a nearby hill as it's fourtunes improved. The move was in response to people trying to rob the town of it's improving fortune. The hill provided a defensable position. The next chapter in the towns history revolves around the remains of Mary Magdalen. Her remains are contained in the church. The atraction of her remains to the faithfull proved lucrative for the abbey and for 3 centuries the abbey prospered. 

Les deux Ponts, the two  old bridges in Pierre-Perthuis

We visited an archeologique site at 2 km from St Père, The Salted Fountains a salt resource found by the people who inhabit the area before the romans came along, about 6,000 yeasrs ago. Salt was very rare in this region so it was also a precious resource. 

That was our next destination, St Père

We visited the wooden shoe factory "le sabotier" 

How to make a wooden shoe

Pretty flowers at the entrance of the Museum of Archeology. All the artifacts found in the Salted Fountains archeological site.

If you are a snail in Burgundy, you need to hide or you might end up in the menu. Hiding behind a leaf helps.

A small church in St Père styled as a cathedral.

This, now part of a farm, used to be the inside of a church.

The entrance of St Père.

The colours of the flora are amaizing.

The Cure river

Homes by the Cure

We found a walking path that connects Saint Père to Vézelay, another cool town.

Made it to Vézelay town just in time for mass, a very special mass.

The man on the floor is being ordained as a priest in the Catholic church at the same time as we were all working on getting popes John XXIII and John Paul II canonized as saints. In the end the bishop ordained the priest and the pope in rome canonized the new saints. All in all a successfull trip to the church. 

The façade of Vézelay Abbey

The othe tside of the Abbey

This is a hotel with 15 rooms, a restaurant and conference room. It's for sale, but we didn't buy it because there are allready too many hotels here.

The pretty flowers on this tree blosom right from the tree trunk.

We found the begining of yet another camino de santiago.

The day was a mixed bag of clouds and rain with rare sunny breaks. The intensity of the colors really changes with the light.

The town of St Père where we stayed.