Tuesday in Beaune France

Tuesday, April 14, 2009
At 5:00 AM this morning Martha and I both woke up, after sleeping for seven hours in our couchette train car, traveling from Rome to Dijon France, with a need to climb down from our lower bunks (our two young female room mates both had the upper bunks) and
make use of the WC…… sorry to say that in getting down and unlocking the door we woke both of our room mates. They went back to sleep but, we both stayed awake in our bunks until the car porter came (at 6:30 AM) to wake us and return our passports (he had kept them all night as we had to have a border check when we passed from Italy into France). This was a new experience for me to do an overnight train where we shared the room with strangers….. glad to say that our luggage all fit under the seats so we did not have to lift them to the racks which were very high up. Both girls seemed very nice and they were concerned that we keep the door to the compartment locked so we felt secure in going to sleep. Spending yesterday afternoon sitting around the hostel waiting until our 6:40 PM train made for a long and tiring afternoon………. The morning spent at St. Peters was wonderful but I have already written about that in yesterday’s blog. I was happy that our new friend Kristen wanted to walk with us to the train station (she wanted Martha to explain the train system to her as she was using it the next day) it was so great that she carried my extra stuff bag (it had my train items and food for our trip).

By 8 AM the car rental place had open and shortly we had the keys to a small Ford 2 door KA… just about the same size that we rented in Provence. Down the highway we rolled on our way to the city of Beaune and the Formule1 that we have rented for 3 nights. We will again have the bathroom down the hall but have our own double bed, sink and TV but can not find anything in English on the TV so it is staying off. Our big concern is that we do not have internet access in the hotel…. So…. As we are having major withdrawal symptoms, we tried signing on the French Orange Internet System as this hotel is a Hot Spot for it. You need to give your mobile phone number and a credit card to access the system. Problem was… they called our phones and spoke French to give us the access codes….. we do not speak French but we knew that they had also emailed our gmail accounts with these same codes… off we went in the car back to town to the Tourist Information Center and paid to use their computer to check our email for the passwords….then back to the hotel….. yes, it works but we have only paid for one hour each so will have to limit our time.

I was so excited about getting online that I got ahead of myself….. right after we had checked into the hotel we went into Beaune and visited the Hospices De Beaune, Musee de I’Hotel Dieu. This medieval charity hospital is now a museum and contains many historic medical items and pieces of art. In 1443 Nicholas Rolin, chancellor of Burgundy wanted to do something for his people, especially the old and poor so he built this hospital, maybe because he was getting old and wanted to end his life on a philanthropic note but also the plague called the Black Death had just devastated Beaune leaving three-quarters of its population destitute.

So now I will close out this blog and attempt to get back online so that I can post before the evening ends. We may not have regular internet service for the next five days so hope that everyone will be patient and know that yes, we are typing but may have problems getting online on a regular basis.