Friday morning we drove 4 hours west to the Abbey of Fontenay, a Cistercian monastery that was founded by a breakaway group of Cluniac monks, led by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who thought that the Cluniac order didn't follow the Rule of Benedict. Consequently, the monastery they built is austere and almost completely devoid of ornamentation. Here's the western facade of the church; notice how it lacks any of the decorative elements we're used to seeing on medieval churches. The interior of the church is similarly bare. (Fontenay bears the hallmarks of roman architecture: heavy, thick walls punctuated only briefly by small windows and an absence of flying butresses.) As the church was completely empty, save our small group, I sang a bit inside, and the acoustics were incredible. I must have echoed for nearly 30 seconds. It was pretty magical. Everything at Fontenay was laid out at right angles; the gardens and the buildings weren't supposed to distract the monks at all from their meditation and prayer. I'm a huge fan of more flamboyant design, but the effect of it all was pretty stunning.
From there we drove to Vézelay, stopping along the way for a yummy lunch at a restaurant where farmwives (sorry to be so un-politially correct) bring their homecooked goodness for weary, cold travelers. (We were weary. It was cold. It was raining. I have never been so glad to sit next to a fire in my life.) Expect recipes to be up soon. Vézelay is a pilgrimage church built at the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere; like Fontenay, it was built in the 12th century. However, although St. Bernard pretty much started the Second Crusade from Vézelay, it has ornamentation like whoa. The facade of the church isn't original, so I won't put up a picture of it, but here's a photo of the interior. Like most churches the held relics, Vézelay has an ambulatory and radiating chapels behind the choir to better direct pilgrim traffic. The nave is romanesque (see above description), but the east end is gothic, as you can see from the huge windows and rib vaulting. (See? I am learning stuff here!) 
I'm including a view from the window of my room in the B&B in Vézelay because it was absolutely breathtaking. It poured on Friday night, but Saturday was brilliantly clear, so the other photos here are of the landscape looking down from the church and of the church and town taken as we were driving away.
Our last stop was the Church of St. Lazarus in Autun. It was built to house the relics of - shockingly enough - Lazarus. The architecture was really interesting because it was a mishmash of different styles, as you can see from the photos (the first shows some normal gothicness, the second an explosion of 15th century flamboyant design). This is the cool part: rather than including an ambulatory in the elevation of the church, the architects built a mini church inside the choir itself, which housed the relics. Pilgrims descended into the crypt below the mini church to view them and then reascended on the other side - like Lazarus himself. The symbolism of it all is pretty overwhelming... Christians are so creative! It really is cool, but unfortunately we can't see any of that anymore (except the crypt) because the enlightened thinkers of the 18th century destroyed nearly all of the mini church because they found it to... unenlightened. Good work, enlightened thinkers.
It took 4.5 hours to drive back - we got stuck in traffic for nearly an hour outide Paris - but the sunset over the countryside made it nearly worthwhile.
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