A medieval town in the Burgundy region of France. Wow – went for a lovely walk this morning after a breakfast of coffee and baguettes. I found out on my walk that Autun 
has probably the longest and best preserved walls in the Roman West still in existence and was begun at the end of the 1st century BC. Plaques are placed in significant historical areas of the town in both French and English languages and give some great details. As you walk through the city, there are many pieces of Roman walls and structures that have been preserved and built around.
I continued to wander up the narrow winding streets is the magnificent Cathedral de St. Lazare built in the middle ages. Medieval buildings line the cobbled roads and baskets of
flowers hang from the windows. it’s really very beautiful. We had our first rehearsal in this grand space for our performance this evening.
Speaking of this evening, all of the invited choirs will first perform on the steps of City Hall and sing 2 pieces 
together to open this 30 year old festival. We all met this morning and went over the songs together. Rehearsal was conducted in French, but our conductor spoke slowly enough that we could pretty much figure out what was being said. After we sing on the steps there will be a procession to the Cathedral with 3 stops on the way where each of the choirs will sing 1-2 National selections. Rose will perform our 2 from City Hall and then we will go directly to the Cathedral to get ready for our concert tonight. Unlike Italy, we are the only group presenting tonight’s show. 
We have a nice Sacred program planned – about 40 minutes in length, and if we’re lucky, things should get underway at about 9:30pm as planned.
Walking back from lunch we saw a great poster with Jordan Framek as director (had to take a photo of this with Jordan) and I saw a car that had been papered with an announcement for tonight’s show – I really hope we draw a large crowd on 
the Festival opening.
Internet is not readily available where I am staying, so today I purchased a wi-fi card so I can upload my blogs as I am able.
Thank you for reading and staying in touch! As always, I appreciated your comments and look forward to your emails.
Lisa
Framek…that must be French for Sramek, eh?
Interesting that Autun is much older than Paris. I’d give anything to be standing there touching walls built by Roman soldiers in the First Century B.C. Rome was a very young empire then and Autun was probably a Roman frontier outpost.
The cathedral looks lovely. 12th Century?