The weather during this entire trip has been wonderful. For the past few days, it has been somewhat hot, but not unbearable. Today, the temperature is cooler with bright sun and wispy clouds. Our tour this morning was to the ruins of the Benedictine Abbey at Cluny. What we saw was not what I expected. The Benedictine Order had become such a force within the church and within France that it had amassed thousands of acres of land. With such wealth it had built an enormous abbey at Cluny that was the largest church in the world until St. Peter's in Rome was built.
However, the leadership of the order became entwined with the secular leadership of France, so at the French Revolution the abbey suffered the fate of many other institutions: the buildings were defaced, much of the stonework was appropriated for building houses, barns, etc. by the peasants. Only one tower remains intact, spared because to demolish it might have destroyed a nearby convent, now turned into a school. But from what is left of the abbey and the models created to show its true size and greatness we were able to appreciate what once was.
Around the abbey is the town of Cluny and on this Saturday, had a full-scale outdoor market in business. It was also fun to wander through the stalls to view the crafts and smell the spices and foods present.
After lunch was the final tour -- of the wine-growing region of Burgundy and a wine-tasting in the village of Beaune. Just as the fields of much of the United States are covered with crops of corn, acres on acres of France are covered with grapevines -- neatly in rows, pruned regularly to keep the plants easy to reach when time for gathering the grapes. Our guide explained how the condition of the various soils and the exposure of the fields to sun and different angles produced subtle differences in the final result, making some more valuable than others.
At the wine-tasting we sampled four varieties -- two whites and two reds plus a creme de cassis -- and of course we were offered the opportunity to purchase the varieties we had tasted. Some did, making it worthwhile for the merchants who provided the tasting.
Postscript:
This chapter was not posted because of the poor Internet service where the ship docked in Chalon-sur-Saone. On Sunday morning we were transported to the Lyon airport for a flight to Paris. The flight was delayed and we had to dash through the Paris airport, making our flight by minutes. Our luggage didn't make it. But we arrived home -- safe, a little tired, and still thrilled at the whole trip. Next year -- the Baltic Sea region on the Viking Star!
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