A Cross-Country Journey

After travelling north for the past couple of weeks, we turned west and began the long journey to Paris to pick up our friends. On day one we drove all the way to Alba in Italy. It was a long drive but we had fabulous accommodation waiting for us. We had an apartment in a really old farmhouse. The floor tiles were really worn in places and old books lined the shelves. We had a gorgeous claw-foot bath and a stunning four-poster bed. It was all very atmospheric. Unfortunately, the bloody village church bells rang all night and even earplugs couldn't help! 

We were recommended a place to eat so we went there for dinner. The drive there was along a narrow, windy road which tested my driving skills out but the views were stupendous! This is wine growing area and it was so pretty. The view from the restaurant was beautiful.

We had a really fantastic meal and John found a wine he adored. It was a great night!

We had arranged to leave Bruce the bike at our accommodation until our return in a month, so we tucked him safely away the next morning and headed off again. We drove through some wonderful country. It's weird how modern highways can go past such ancient places sometimes.

The highways certainly weren't freeways though. We paid about $100 worth of tolls this day! Towards the end of the day, we pulled up at one toll booth and the lady asked for over 44 euros. Fed up with forking out money I asked what it was for. She told us that it was some sort of tunnel. Reluctantly we handed over the money and drove on. It turned out that we were driving into the Mont Blanc Tunnel. This tunnel is 11.6 kms long and goes underneath Mont Blanc. We drove into the tunnel in Italy and came out in France!

I've shown you SatNav shots of windy roads before. Here's what a very long, very straight tunnel looks like on the Sat Nav!

In France, we had some wonderful views of mountains.

We finally pulled into Burgundy late in the afternoon. We stayed in a really great town called Beaune. It was very old. It had beautiful medieval buildings and cobble-stone streets.

We ate at a small restaurant that John had booked months before. Again, John really enjoyed the wine!

John was knackered after driving all day, so he went back to the room while I continued on to see the light shows the town has. They were just like White Night at home. They were great! 

This building had lots of different light shows on it. My favourite was where a cat appeared to chase a light all over the building then finally jumped through a window. It was really well done but the photos are a bit dark to show here. The photos below show a series of different light effects on the same building.

The light displays on this building were all about garden scenes.

The next day we went to see the famous hospital here. It was built in 1443 by a wealthy couple as a place where the poor could get treated. It was an incredible building. Why the poor needed so much money spent on a lavish building when it could have been spent on treatments is beyond me. Anyway, I'm sure that many lives were saved.

One interesting thing we learned was that this site was chosen for the hospital because it was over a river. The waste from the bedpans could be conveniently disposed of in the river! You wouldn't want to live downstream.......

The special feature of the building is the unusual tiled roofs. They're stunning!

Inside the massive main hall, which had no heating, hospital beds were lined up along the walls. Nuns used to treat the sick here right up until the 1960's when the needs of the hospital finally outgrew the site.

Au revoir!

Heather and John