The Heritage of Bourges

I am truly in a town to make any history lover's cup runeth over. And I don't just means with happiness- there is actually too much history here for any given cup to feasibly contain. I bring this up because this weekend is, in celebration of the region's patrimonie (or heritage), a weekend of free entry to all the city's historical sites. So today with my host family I finally climbed to the top of the Cathedrale de Saint Etienne, to see the magnificent view...

I have actually visited the cathedral several times before. I can't even begin to express what it feels like to live in a town with these sort of things available everyday. For instance, after school on Tueday, I decided to take an hour to for myself after school, and instead of taking the first bus straight home, I walked through downtown to the cathedral. On the way, I bought my first macaron (au chocolat, and absolutly delicious) and ate it in this garden...

(a study in espalier trees, just for you, Dad)

After my "culinarly cultural expirience" (which is how I now refer to delicious indulgences), I entered to the Cathedral, just to sit and admire until it was time to catch my bus.
Inside the cathedral:

But back to today...
On the long walk up to the tower, I was impressed by the graffiti on the walls. Now I am general not in favor of defacing world heritage sites, but as I puffed by way up on the heels on my host sister, I started to notice the dates carved next to the names. This one, if you look closely, was carved in 1647:

As I looked at these dates, I was reminded how people share history, even as they live through it. There were tourists who came to admire this cathedrale even during the Renaissance, on the brink of WWI, and during the reconstruction of Europe after WWII; the dates streched right up to today.

After leaving the cathedrale we took a tour of the centre-ville, or downtown, on the little motorized train which can always be seen einding its ways through the streets, filled with tourists. This was actually fascinating, because I learned than many of the building I see everyday on the way to school were built long before George Washington was born, and have fascinating enough stories behind their walls to make me want to visit all of them in detail.

One of these sight which we did visit today was the Palais Jacques Coeur, or Jacques Coeur's palace. Jacques Coeur was a prominent renaissance merchant, politician, and town figure. Important enough, in fact, was he was able to build a mansion/palace in the middle of downtown. The tour was impressive not ony in its information and presentation of such a magnificent building, but also in that I had walked by this palace a number of times and hardly even noticed it was there, simply because sights like a stone palace replete with towers is a normal part of the landscape.

The tomb of M. Coeur on display (or at least I assume that's who it was, it wasn't labeled):

And just to contrast with the dignity of such a shrine, there was also this inexplicable piece on display, totally unlabeled:

I'll let you puzzle that one out for yourselves, because right now of have nothing to say other than- Good Night!