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First of all, I am sorry about the overload of castle photos. I just remembered that last time we travel blogged I did a lot more one-off photo essays where I collected all of those kinds of pictures and you could skip the entry if you wanted to. I'll start doing that from here on out!
Today we crossed part of the Massif Central... on the train. Yep, after yesterday's crazy ride we realized we didn't have enough juice to do the whole 60 plus mile trip on our bikes, so we took the easy way out.
The train ride was gorgeous, between mountain ridges, still with a little bit of snow.
And at times along an energetic river, which we continued to ride along after we left the train and started riding again.
Passed through just a couple of towns...
Don't know why but suddenly we are craving McDonalds...
And at the end of the valley we popped out into a huge wide area with old volcanic cones in the distance.
It was Sunday, so we encountered a lot of fellow cyclists.
But it wasn't until we were ushered over to a snack station and directed through intersections by official guys in pinnies that we realized we had accidentally joined a City-to-City amateur bike race! The course ended in Issoire, so I suggested to Eric that we cross the finish line and try to collect a participation award, but he demurred.
Issoire is... dead. Don't know if it's the curse of Sunday afternoon, or if the city is just sleepy. I guess we will find out tomorrow morning.
The main sight, the Abbatiale Saint Austremoine, looked to be a bust from the outside.
But inside... Wow! This is an amazing Romanesque Cathedral that, unlike so many others, the interior of which has been almost completely restored. They have repainted what we assume are true to history paintings and decorations all over the inside of the cathedral.
All of the columns are intricately painted - here ears of corn.
And here designs that looked to us like bicycles.
The capitals of the columns have extremely detailed and brightly colored biblical scenes on them. Here are a few we fancied.
The other facade is not in restauro.
A baguette vending machine!!
We were finally ready to have some more French food, but all the proper restaurants are closed on Sunday, so beers, bar snacks and kebabs it is.
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