Monet's Cathedral

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Our second stop on our "tour de France" was Rouen, way up in the north. Really I just wanted to go here to see cathedrale notre dame...the cathedral that Monet painted. It is my favorite series of Monet's. After a day on the train from Nice to Rouen, we arrived around 9 pm, took a taxi to the hotel and pretty much went to sleep. The next morning we woke up and headed out. It was raining...the weather never really cooperated with us the entire vacation. We quickly found the Cathedral and took many many pictures of the outside. I loved it a lot. We went inside when it started raining harder. During WWII, lots of northern French towns were destroyed by bombs. The citizens of Rouen took out the glass from the church's stained glass windows. After the war, when things were reconstructed, the glass was put back in the windows. Not all of the glass could be saved though. Those pieces that couldn't be saved were never replaced by colored glass...only clear glass. Inside the church when you look up at the windows, there is one window with colored glass and right below it, there's a plain window. It's eerie. After viewing the main cathedral, we went to two more churches. One of them was Eglise St. Maclou. We didn't go in this one. And the last one was St. Ouen. This one is part of a reconstruction of landmarks in Normandy. We went inside which was really plain and definitely in need of repair. It was sad, it felt as if it was abandoned. After this, we made our way back to the old town area, which by the way is really neat. For those of you who have seen the movie, A Knight's Tale, it was just like that. There is a jousting competition in Rouen. All of the buildings still look like they are from the Middle Ages, it was really cool. I felt like I was in the movie. In the old town area is the Eglise St. Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc). This was built on the square where she was burned on May 30, 1431. There was a little garden on the spot where she was burned. I thought the church was built to look like a stake with flames leaping towards it...but maybe that was just me. After lunch and a bit of shopping, we escaped the rain back in our hotel room. A few hours later, the sun came out, so we went back and took pictures of the cathedral with the sun shining. It was much better that way. We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant and went to bed early because the train to our next destination was leaving early early early.

Despite the rain, I really enjoyed my time in Rouen. The Cathedral was amazing, I am still so excited to have seen that and the spot where Monet painted from. I also had a lot of fun imagining myself in A Knight's Tale, of course I was a princess. More updates coming soon!

Freya

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