Conques

Travel

I have so many travel photos and I have over 25,000 photos on my iPhone so I can keep going for a while.

I saw this in a small village near Pamplona near the time of the running of the bulls. They had live bulls running too. I have to say that I felt sorry for the bulls as they seemed terrified rather than fierce.

Beautiful glass art by Chihuly in Seattle.

We ended our week at the ancient village of Conques. A few years ago Maurice and I were driving in this part of France and were really tired and decided to find a place for the night. We were the closest to Conques, which I had never heard of, and I was delighted with what we found. We had a really nice hotel there too. This time We stayed in a sort of dorm situation run by the church. I’m sure though the centuries the church took care of pilgrims in this very building. It wasn’t luxurious and most people stayed in group rooms. We had a room to ourselves with a bathroom even though we had twin beds and linoleum floors. It was sort of like being back in college.

This was the view from our room looking onto the back of the church and those are old coffins.

The church at night.

Pilgrims have to remove their boots when they enter the dorm. I assume no one’s boots ever get taken.

The sculptures on the front of the church over the entry showing souls going to heaven or hell. Sort of scary.

At night they lit up the sculptures. It was really lovely.

On the way back we crossed over this very modern Millau Bridge-very different from all we saw during the week.

We passed many villages with intersting churches that were stops on the Camino but we stayed in Conques. We weren’t on the freeway but a little curvy road that started out being charming but after a day of driving on it, I was really tired. Conques was the next village so we called and made a reservation at a hotel there, the Sainte Foy. We were lucky enough to get a really great view of the cathedral there. It’s a very small viallage with just one main street with a couple of others braching out from it and it is closed to cars, a little place forgotten in time but rediscovered by tourists and a stop for pilgrims on their trek.

The view of the cathedral from our room on the second floor.

The entrance to the cathedral below street level.

I loved the slate roofs there.

The terrace for breakfast in the hotel.

The hotel was full of antiques including two really old radiators with doors on them with shelves inside for keeping food warm or maybe dring out shoes and gloves? I’m not sure.