Rameaux Palm Sunday)
Palm Sunday! Finally we rewarded ourselves with a day off and became tourists, on another beautiful sunny day. Because we had the rental car we chose places not easily accessed by barge. We first visited Avallon. We had to see our namesake town.
Avallon is very spacious, with streets wider than we are used to in France, a pleasant town with stately buildings.
Next we went on to Vezelay for Palm Sunday Mass in the Basilica of St Mary Magdelene. Vezelay is a Unesco World Heritage Site and the Basilica has been the departure point for pilgrims since the 11th Century. Christian and Chantal spend a month a year forwarding their journey to the final destination, Santiago de Compostela. From start to finish it would take about three months (about 1,800km).
We parked just outside the town and walked up to the Basilica past houses dating back to the 15th century. The Church itself is on the top of a steep hill; on the terrace behind are sweeping views of the plain below and the forests of the Morvan.
Palm Sunday Mass was beautifully sung by the Brothers and Sisters of the Order of Jerusalem. The beautiful Church was full of worshippers, something we have not often experienced in France. We rate this town very high on our list of beautiful French towns.
Returning to our car we found that we had (without noticing) parked in a pay parking area. An envelope on our windscreen offered us the chance to fix it up simply by buying the required ticket (3 euros for the day), putting it in the envelope, and depositing it in the box provided. They get the parking revenue without the fuss of chasing people up. If only other jurisdictions were equally unpunitive!
Next stop was Arcy sur Cure to visit a series of underground caves including the second oldest known painted cave with more than 60 paintings and 170 graphic representations dating back 28,000 years. For Penny it was interesting to see the red hand "negative" in one of the caves, so like those in the Red Hand Cave near West Head which she visited with the Avalon Bushwalkers at the end of March.
Here are photos from Avallon (2) then Vezelay (3).
Regards, Penny and Dave
