Lazy morning, busy afternoon.

   

We had a lazy morning, floating down the Seine on our way to Rouen.  I was glad though to get up early enough to see the lock crossing (since the other ones have happened at night).  It is an impressive maneuver, with inches on the side of the boat.  I was also cool to see how much the level had to go down before we could go through (basically, the entire height of the boat). 

 During the crossing, I became genuinely concerned by the fate of these two swans, as there is clearly not enough space on the side of the boat for them to wait.  But this was obviously not their first lock crossing either - they just patiently waited for the water level to drop, and then went through the doors ahead of us.  

 As we continued down the Seine, the fog started to lift until, by the time we got to Rouen, we again had bright blue skies. On our way there, our tour director gave an excellent lecture on Joan of Arc, since she is so linked with Rouen’s history.

In the afternoon, we took a walking tour of Rouen. I really enjoyed it.  Joe - who is even more of a Philistine than I am (that’s a high bar)- said that “there were too many churches”.  In Rouen’s defense, it is very hard to tour it without seeing many churches, as it has over 100 of them (for a town of about 130,000, that’s quite impressive….).

 Rouen was bombed heavily at the end of WWII.  The allies were trying to take down the port and the bridges- but you know how bombs are…..  they don’t always fall exactly where you want.  And so a large part of downtown, particularly the part near the river, was destroyed.  Rouen has done a remarkable job at rebuilding some of it’s most important monuments (see later about the cathedral),  preserving the areas that were not hit, and remembering this tough time in it’s history.  Some of the remembrances take odd shapes….  As in this bullet ridden building (the Hôtel de Ville), where legos have been used to highlight some of the bullet holes….

  Our tour took us first to the St Maclou church, which is in the area where a lot of the narrow cobblestones street, lined with   timber framed houses still remain.  

  The church is beautiful, and some of the detail is very cute.  As with other churches (including the cathedral), the statues on the lowest part of the church have either been removed, or beheaded during the revolution (they REALLY were into beheading!).

  We walked from there to the cathedral - the tallest one in France at 500 feet (for comparison, Notre Dame de Paris does not reach 400, even which the steeple).  That cathedral has seen a lot in its history and the fact it still stands and is so beautiful is remarkable.  Some of the stained glass was destroyed by the Huguenots, some of its statues got beheaded, but the 3 most harmful things that happened to it was WWII,  pollution and time. 

 The bombings of WWII took most of its stained glass windows, including the big rosace.  It destroyed a big part of the Seine facing side, and a few of the sarcophagi.- but the one containing the heart (just the heart- not the whole thing) of Richard the Lion Heart is still there. A lot, but not all, of the windows have been replaced (you can tell the original ones because that have deep blues that are no longer used).  The facade has been restored. 

 

  The pollution damage has been tough to fix:  the limestone statues and details are very sensitive to acid rain and some have been damaged beyond repair.  So all the original ones have been moved inside, and replaced by replicas outside.  Here are a few more details of the carvings and statues - as with many gothic cathedral, there could be hundreds….  These are truly fascinating.   

  We then walked though more pretty streets to “le gros horloge”, which used to be one of the city gates (For those of you who speak French - it is indeed called - LE gros horloge - even though we all know that horloge is feminine and thus it should be called “la grosse horloge”.  But, it was translated from the latin at some early time, and in latin, horloge is neutral, so they went for Le - and now we are stuck with this grammatical oddity). 

 

   And then we ended at the new Jeanne D’Arc church - built in 1979…..  let’s be kind and call it interesting….. the inside is pretty.  It is built next to the place were Joan of Arc was burned at the stake.  

 Our tour ended there, but I continued walking through the pretty town, and even went to the museum!!! (A rare event on such a sunny day!)- because I wanted to see some Monet in person.  Here are my 4 favorites.  (The fourth one is the view of Rouen at the top 

of the blog..

 

 
I walked around the tower where Joan of Arc was imprisoned.  It stands in a random residential part of town and now hosts an “Escape Room”, with a Nazi/Resistance theme.  I find this all very odd and tacky.  

The light was very beautiful as we sat for dinner on the outside deck. The weather continues to be just amazing.