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Published: July 17th 2012
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Day #8 - Rouen, France and Mantry, France (Middle of nowhere) - Revenge of Weird Beard
We woke up this morning nice and early so we could get a good start in Rouen, France. Rouen is an interesting town with a lot of history. Most recently it was one of the most devastated French cities during WWII. Nearly 50% of the city was bombed and the city was completely on fire in 1940 for a period of 48 hours because the German army would not allow fire crews to put out the fires. You can see much of the effects of this fire and the bombings still today, many buildings are black with soot and fire damage.
The most impressive building in town is the Rouen Cathedral. It was built in the 15th century with many additions in the years afterwards. It is an impressive church with beautiful stain glass and murals. The nave is long and impressive leading to the pulpit. This church was hit with 8 bombs during WWII some of them from allied planes, after German occupation. They are still reconstructing from that damage, although the church looks pretty good compared to
1940. It is impressive that the building is still standing.
There are some shopping streets and other interesting sights is Rouen. We spent a bit of the morning geocaching and wandering the streets of Rouen. I am happy to say we found our 2nd geocache. We are having all sorts of problems finding them. Of three we only found the one today. One of them we were 30 feet from and the area where we think it is was fenced off for construction, and another one we were where it was supposed to be but could not find it. Oh well 2 for about 12 on the trip so far.
The afternoon was spend in the car driving about 400km to Mantry, France. Mantry is not even really a town but it is a close stop off to a destination we are going to be hitting tomorrow. We have a book at home called 501 must see natural destinations, and this is one of them. Much of the trip is planned from this book and we hope to hit quite a few places. The book has not disappointed yet as our trip to Etretat yesterday was inspired from
that book. I will tell you more about our day tomorrow.
The car trip was a lot of fun, with the exception of the toll booths. France has toll roads everywhere. We must have went through about 7 tools today on our 400KM drive, paying about $50 Euros, or about 70 bucks. I think the border guards should just kick me in the privates, take my wallet when I enter the country and we can call it even, but it is all worth it. The drive was through much of the Seine River Valley which is very beautiful. We are in some pretty good wine country and I plan on sampling some of the wine tonight in out hotel restaurant. The hotel is nice with another very high end restaurant. We cant eat for another hour (7PM), but we looked at the menu and it looks good. There is foie gras on the menu, I am sure I will hate it but I have always wanted to try it. Maybe tonight is the night.
During the car ride we scanned French music stations and were shocked to find out that some of the songs we hear on the
radio back home are not the real versions of the songs. We seem to get the cleansed version on the radio in Canada. For instance, the song "Forget You" is not really "Forget You"....use your imagination to replace forget with another f word... Also, Niki Minaj....... potty mouth, her songs are full of the f word, and the play them on the radio here.... my virgin ears 😊 However, the strange thing is the car will show the name and artist of every song on the display, but the bleep out the naughty words. So the song has no problem singing the f word, but to show the name of the song, it displays F*** You.... Strange double standard. I am appalled by this whole country 😊 Just kidding. Other than that Sydney called me weird beard all day. I did not bring a razor on the trip, nor have I been able to find one, so my beard and mustachio are growing in and it never really looks very good. Hence, weird beard. I have however learned the French word for razor and have asked people if they have any, most have shaving cream but no razors????? I guess
weird beard is here to stay. OK.... going down for dinner. Will update you when I get back.
Okay I am back from dinner, 3 wines later. Wow, that was a meal...... mmmm mmmmm yummy. I did not order the fois gras as I did not want to insult them by sending it back, and it was also 50 dollars, maybe I ill wait for another time. What I did have was the menu de jour. It was a starter cucumber salad (conconbre salad), roasted chicken (poulet), and white chocolate mousse avec rouge berries Mmmmmmm mmmm mmm. Syd had something fishy with a white sauce, but back to my chicken.... mmmmmm mmmmm. I also had 3 glasses of local wine. They grow the grapes in the back yard of the hotel, craziness. It was well enjoyed. Nappy time now. Talk to y'all tomorrow.
Our assessment of Rouen, France
Kyle - 7/10 - "if you are in the area check it out, especially for the cathedral.... if not dont make a special trip"
Syd - 7/10 - "Juis suis smart, papa weird beard, et mois bien cathedral Rouen"
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Evelyn
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Food
Love the pictures of the food. They make my mouth water. Good tip about 501 places. I think I will pick it up and plot out our next trip using it. Agree with you about Rouen. Did you see Joan of Arc's statue there. While in France try to check out one of the Commonwealth grave sites of our soldiers. I think you will find it moving.