Camino Stage 1 - Day 6.2

 Day 6: Rest Day in Bourges

My accommodation is unusual, and charming. The owner's mother is an artist who has made her mark!

Le Cedre Bleu

After breakfast I walked to the intown bus terminus. I need some lightweight shoes for the evening, my feet are frozen in flip-flops. The French passion for edge of town Centres Commerciaux has had quite a hollowing-out effect on town centres, and Bourges is no exception. There are no end of nail bars, charity shops and Maisons de Vapotage ( so much more romantic than 'vape shops') but even chain shoe stores are gone. So to the Centre Commercial I went, by bus.

While getting my bus ticket I discovered that there will be no buses, or anything else tomorrow, it being Ascension Day. So my shopping list grew to include the wherewithal for a picnic lunch. Two hours later and I was on the bus back, having trekked hither and yon. Whatever are the benefits of Centres Commerciaux, they depend upon having a car. Pedestrian visitors are not catered for.

Back to the B&B, mine host had very kindly and promptly turned around some washing, and then to town again. This time to visit the Palais Jacques Coeur, and the Cathedral, including its crypt.

Jacques Coeur was the son of a small-time merchant, who diversified, went international, and made a fortune. His patron was Charles V, his epoch was a resurgent France towards the end of the 100 Years' War, and his most prestigious client was the King. He built himself a very modern, Italian influenced early Renaissance Palace, full to carvings the reminded everyone who he was and how he had made his money, and also who had worked him.

Huge cheminée - one of JC's galleys carved over a door - the elaborate staircase

In the French way all the interiors are post-Revolutionarily bare, but even the shell is impressive.

Then, after a tea break, to the Cathedral to see the crypt and the glass and to pray. In truth the crypt is not a crypt, but a lower church, needed because the vast design (Bourges is only just smaller than ND de Paris) breached the town walls at the top of the hill where the old cathedral was and needed an Eastward extension over the sloping ground. The lower church became the Mason's workshop, and now houses the remains of what was a vast and beautiful quire screen.

There are too many pictures to put them all here, but I will add a lot more to the Gallery