It was only when I looked through the photos that I realised how much we packed into some days. Day 3 of our family holiday, Monday, was busy busy busy. You already had the early morning session yesterday, lol, this post is about the late morning session in the beautiful city of Autun and our visit to the magnificent 12th Century Saint-Lazare Cathedral.
There are some beautiful old buildings and inviting looking cafes surrounding the cathedral -
This amazing fountain is located in front of the cathedral -
Details on the outside of the cathedral -
The inside leaves you just breathless, so I let the photos do the talking -
Some renovation work meant these beautiful statues were on wooden plinths-
Some of the many private side chapels were fairly plain, some had remnants of amazing wall paintings, others were incredibly opulent-
There are beautifully carved details everywhere-
I would have loved to take more photos of the carvings higher up, but without stilts or a ladder that was impossible :-(. I love visiting the cathedral.
Oldest and youngest son in front of the impressive cathedral doors-
And just for a bit of fun -
now you see him-
now you don't -
just another one of the many weird and wonderful oddities in the old walls.
Toodlepip xxx
PS - I also took photos of the really beautiful paintings of the 14 stations. Didn't want to make this post any longer than it already is though, so if anybody is interested in seeing them, email me and I'll send them to you. xx
You know the one big drawback of modern digital cameras? It is way way way too easy to take about a million photos, lol. In the old days, when you had a real film in the camera, you had to chose quite carefully what you wanted to take photos of, because films, developing and printing were quite expensive.
So here I am with said million of photographs, lol, trying to seriously cut down and decide which ones to keep and which ones to delete. And that is a very difficult task today, because Monday was a day jam packed with all kinds of activities. And even with the most severe culling, I can't pack it all into one blog post, so I have to split the day into two posts.
Monday morning we decided to drive to Autun, a cathedral town about 3/4 hour drive from us with an amazing history dating back to Roman times. To get there, we drive through another town called Etang sur Arroux and wouldn't you know it, we got stuck there, lol, because there was a horse show/competition! We just had to stop and let the girls see the beautiful horses. They are such magnificent creatures, I don't need to add any comments to the pics -
After admiring these beautiful creatures for a while, we went on to Autun, where we split up, as Stefan and family wanted to womble past the boutiques and shops in the old town, and Chris, Nick and I wanted to go to the cathredal. I'll just take you on the walk to the cathredal, the photos of the cathredal itself will be in the next post.
Aren't these gates magnificent? -
I adore tree lined roads/paths -
I love the weathered grey finish -
On the way to the cathredal, I snuck into a small church, which I hadn't been into on previous visits. It was quite beautiful -
Little details, like these small marble water fonts are so fascinating -
The streets leading up to the cathedral are lined with very old houses, and the cellar windows have wonderful wooden shutters -
I love ancient doors! -
This gorgeous door knob was on a fairly modern door -
but I saw a very similar door knob just a few steps further on a very ancient door -
Isn't this just the weirdest construction? -
In a gallery window, rings made with vintage buttons -
And finally, we arrived at the cathedral -
It really is quite magnificent and I'll show you some ( well, quite a lot ) photos of it in the next blog post.
Toodlepip xxx
