Toussaint Travels Part 1: Beaune, France

Toussaint Travels #1:

(NOTE: I have not had the chance to add pictures yet, but I will tonight. Praise the Lord that my computer is working!!!)

The first day of my vacation for Toussaint Sara and I took a day-trip to Beaune, a little town about two hours north of Lyon on the way to Dijon. Sara's parents used to stop in for day-trips often and suggested we go, so we decided to just grab a train ticket and go. Here's a map to situate us:

We left Lyon around 9 am from Part-Dieu and arrived around 11 in Beaune. As we walked into the city, we saw the city walls (which are leftover from the Middle Ages when French cities were protected by tall stone walls and fortresses) and lots of ivy. We wandered the outer streets slightly confused to find almost no one and nothing around except the cute old houses and shutters. Eventually, we made our way into the city and realized that everyone was just waking up!

Walking around in the morning

For Bridgét, your twin store :) 

So we decided to have a little petit-déj (the little abbreviated way to say petit-déjeuner which is breakfast in French; yes, the French shorten things just like us Californians do, in fact, they seem to do it much more often) at a café that reminded me of Les Deux Moulins in Amélie, minus the strange lighting and cigarette counter. I ordered le formule ("formula", a meal that has multiple parts, a tyically French breakfast consisting of a baguette, butter, jam, a croissant, orange juice, and a hot drink of choice) and Sara had an omelet. (I realize this piece of info is probably extremely riveting).

The French formule for breakfast

Afterwards, we wandered into what would be our main activity of the day: a tour of l'Hôtel Dieu which was basically a hospital started in the mid-1400s by a man named Nicolas Rolin and his wife Guigone (who was twenty or thirty years his junior, but whom he called his "seule étoile," his only star). Its premise was that it was a place where the "sick" could come and be treated for free and this included  everyone. It was operated as a hospital until the mid-1950s, which is crazy considering the fact that the room with the beds for the sick is this huge, almost cathedral-like chamber and the beds themselves look very old-timey. Nuns ran this hospital and took care of the sick. Some of the nuns even cared for patients of the plague and ended up losing their own lives to the illness. We even heard a story on our audio tour about how a French soldier was being treated in the hospital during the period of Nazi occupation and faked his own death (which was even falsely ordained by a priest) in order that he could avoid capture by the Nazis. We learned a lot on our 2-hour tour and it was super cool to hear so much history behind it and every aspect of it.

The smaller and warmer room that was used to house the sick into the 1960s 

The mural on the ceiling which depicts Jesus healing the man at the pool of Bethesda 

The room for the those who were close to death

A picture of a nun and their traditional attire

The oven in the kitchen (at the right is the spit that would cook the meat for the house)

Half of the courtyard

Famously "Flemish" roofs of Hotel-Dieu

Jars for herbs and medicine

Having too much fun with our cameras

Yay :) 

After we turned in our little audio tour headsets, we headed back to the main stretch to take a look around. We ended up having a small "goûter" (snack) at a pastry shop (pastries and coffee!) and we did some Christmas shopping for individuals that remain unnamed  ;)

Notre Dame de Beaune

Tapestries de la Vierge (Virgin Mary)

So you know where you are when you are walking the streets of Beaune.

Yummy….mille feuilles (chocolate pastry) and macarons à la framboise (raspberries and maracons)

Sara and I have a photo shoot. Hi!

Happy picture :) 

Our last stop was dinner at a restaurant in the main area which had a reasonably priced menu. This was a momentous meal for me because I ate my first escargot and boeuf bourgignon! Now I am really French, woooo! The escargot were cooked in a butter, garlic sauce and I have a funny compilation of all the stages of eating them, that I will post on here when I hook up my computer. The boeuf bourgignon was like pot roast!

Bourgogne (the region we were in) is also famous for wine.

The infamous escargot.

(P.S. I have my computer back, it mysteriously works now…..so I went two weeks without it for nothing)

Then, Sara and I headed back to train station and listened to disco music on the way home. The next day, I headed off to Bordeaux……..