This weekend my friends and I needed to get out of the city for a bit and decided to go to Rouen (a city about an hour long train ride from Paris) on Sunday. I honestly didn't know anything about it before we went with the exception of hearing the name in a couple of French/History/Art classes. Our train left pretty early from a train station across the city from my apartment, so I only ended up getting about four hours of sleep the night before to make sure I made it on time. Anyway, I was excited to go sightseeing and discover a new town. The four of us sleepily boarded the train and promptly fell asleep for the duration of our train ride. We had to force ourselves to move from our comfy train seats and get out into the city. After finally finding a map of the town (which was surprisingly challenging) we headed off to our first stop: Musée des beaux-arts (an art museum).
Of course I took some pictures:
Jeanne d'Arc hearing voices (I love her face in this painting!)
Butterfly!
By the time we made it through this fairly small museum we were more than ready for lunch. In France almost everything is closed on Sunday. We didn't think about this when making our plans to go to Rouen. The town was practically deserted...really weird, but kind of cool. After searching for an open restaurant for a while we finally found a cute little cafe. I had a cheese omlette (completely acceptable lunch food in France) and fries. It was really good and the cafe was adorable! They did have a bit of trouble with their translations on the menu. One of the funniest...
Glace can mean ice or ice cream but I"m pretty sure they meant to say scoop of vanilla ice cream here.
After lunch we headed out to see the Rouen Notre Dame cathedral. We found not only it, but also another church and an abbey (I think?). They were all amazing! I'm officially obsessed with all the huge gothic cathedrals here. They are so beautiful and make me feel tiny! I love it!
Here's a random assortment of pictures from the cathedral, church, and abbey.
By the way it was absolutely freezing in the cathedral (definitely colder than it was outside). We could see our breath! I can't imagine sitting there for a whole service in the middle ages.
Even just walking through the town was adorable. It looks like where I imagine Belle (from Beauty and the Beast) or Snow White living! So cute!
Huge clock on one of the streets!
Next we hit up the Joan of Arc stuff. First stop was the church of Jeanne d'Arc (her name in French). It was surprisingly modern and (in my opinion) kind of strange looking from the outside. Here are some pictures:
Finally we went to the Tour de Jeanne d'Arc--the tower where she was held prisoner. We got there 5 minutes before the tower closed so we sprinted up the stairs to see the top (which turned out not to be very exciting).
At this point it was time for us to head back to the train station to go back to Paris. I had an awesome day! Rouen is a super cute town with lots of great things to see! We didn't have time to see everything we wanted to. There's also a ceramics museum, a Flaubert museum, and a natural history museum. Maybe I'll have a chance to go back!
Sightseeing goals for the week:
- go back to the Musee d'Orsay (actually accomplished yesterday!)
- Pantheon (actually accomplished yesterday!)
- Grand Palais
- Le Salon d'agriculture (kind of like a state fair in the US)
Mallory, your pictures are simply amazing! Not only do they look like magazine quality, the subjects are breathtaking. I can only image how impressive all the cathedrals are in person!
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I agree about the pictures. Your photography and artistic framing has dramatically improved. My real question is, were all of those previous pictures where my head just happened to be 'accidentally' cut off BEFORE or AFTER you became such a skilled photographer??? ALSO, I want to see more pictures with you in them!
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