Rouen France

Paul flew back from Edmonton yesterday and met up with me in Strasbourg, where we caught a train to Rouen, a small city in the Normandy region of France.  Because of the change in travel plans, we had to take a late afternoon train and didn’t arrive till close to 9 pm.  By the time we found our hotel (the Ibis Rouen City Center, which isn’t really in city center, more like 1 km out!), most places were closed so we ate at the hotel and spent the rest of the evening getting settled and mapping out our sightseeing  for today, which was now the only day here before heading to the D-Day beaches tomorrow.

This morning we started at L’église sainte Jeanne d’Arc, a church built where Joan of Arc was burned in 1431.  Unlike most churches we’ve seen (and so far, we’ve seen a lot of churches!) this one is very modern looking because it was built in 1979.  We couldn’t find the entrance to go in, but apparently there is some very nice stained glass inside the church which was rescued from the Church of St. Vincent that was destroyed during WWII.

From there we headed to Rouen’s Cathedrale of Notre Dame, which seems smaller than the one in Strasbourg, but is in slightly better condition.  We tried to go inside the cathedral, but realized we were walking into a funeral procession that was about to happen and quickly turned around and left – if there’s one thing we don’t want to crash it’s a funeral! 

After grabbing some disappointing lunch near Place Saint Marc, a large open square where there were some fruit and vegetable vendors (and apparently there’s a great flea market here on weekends), we headed to Le Gros Horloge, a beautiful Renaissance clock tower in the middle of a busy shopping street called Rue du Gros Horloge.  This landmark of Rouen was built in the 1300s and has two huge faces which still tell the time, but have never had minute hands.  We went to see how much it was to climb up and for some unknown reason it was free at the moment (normal rate is 6 euro) so up we went!  There was a neat display about the history of the clock and you could see the mechanisms of the clock, but best of all there was a spectacular view of Rouen from the top balcony.  Even if we had to pay it would have been worth it to go inside, but because it was free it was really awesome