Dear Readers,
Thanks for your comments. I am feeling better and am hopefully on the road to recovery.
After Giverney, we spent 4 days in Normandy. Our first stop was Rouen & we overnighted here.
Rouen is where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. The town is a strange mixture of the very very old and the very new. You walk through cobblestone streets with houses on either side dating back to the Middle Ages; in those houses are now all the latest global stores of all varieties. Here was a typical strreet without the stores.
Our hotel (again found in a NY Times travel article) was very old on the outside but as modern as could be inside.
Our day in Rouen was a more typical Irene sightseeing day. We roamed the streets, got a flavor of the town & visited several buildings. We went to the Old Market Place where Joan of Arc was burned, saw the Great Clock (not nearly as impressive as the one in Prague).
Norte Dame Cathedral (the one Monet painted), a wrought iron museum with the world’s largest collection of wrought iron; a type of museum I had not encountered before; here are 2 photos from there)
(Doug: I couldn’t get the photos next to each other.) [Ed: fixed]
Then we climbed to the top of the Joan of Arc Tower where she was imprisoned.
We went to the a Parliament building which now houses the courts & they let us enter one. We walked on the Rue de Juifs (or street of the Jews) where the Jewish Quarter had been before the Jews were expelled in 1306. Tired yet?
Oh, I almost forgot; guess what we found on that street: a bagel bakery!
We had dinner that night at a restaurant called La Coronne. According to the article, Julia Child claimed: “It was the most exciting meal of my life”. You can see why I wanted to go! Irene Haber says: “It was a good meal.”
I was going to write about our next 3 days in Normandy, but I’ve run out of steam & time. More on another day.
As an aside, however, we are currently in Ghent, Belgium. We just saw the film “Grace of Monaco” starring Nicole Kidman. It was quite good. I can see why the French might be quite upset with it. Has it opened in NY yet?
Love,
Your Roving Reporter
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