Avallon, Burgandy

The gorgeous hilltop town of Avallon was our stopping point between tiny towns as we make our way through this region of France. It might be telling that in my view as a traveller, Avallon's best attribute was the free internet at our hotel ... Oh, and I suppose they have pretty medieval ramparts too.

Here's the Church of Ste. Lazare, in the heart of the old city:

(I guess there were a lot of tiny pieces of Lazarus floating around this region in the middle ages, thus the amount of pilgrimage churchs dedicated to his cult)

Here's the great thing about this little church, the front door, and the rest of the church, are at completely different angles to one another because they decided to move the front door 20 meters in a new direction about 600 years ago ... this makes for a very disconcerting experience inside.

On this floor plan of the church, you can see the funky door on the far right:

Okay, so I've been holding out on you ... the best part of Avallon was the amazingly strange "costume museum" that seemed so bizzare, even from the outside, that Bridget and I knew that we had to visit.

Me, at the creepy door you have to ring to get into the Costume "Museum":

It just got better on the inside ... an extremely sweet woman, who must have been about 137 years old, and who was wearing a formidable amount of a very potent perfume, met us at the door, and proceeded to take us through the museum (which turned out to comprise several floors).

Here's a sample of the exhibition style (aieee!!):

This is what all of the rooms we saw looked like; just costumes from a whole bunch of different periods jumbled together in room after room on scary scary mannequins. It also turned out that this collection was formed by this woman and her daughter just as a hobby for the past 50 years. That's one heck of a hobby. I'm sure you are all relieved that we emerged alive from this experience.