Gay Paris

We left the Normandy Coast midmorning and headed off to Paris (or Pah-ree, as our GPS says, to my amusement). Since it was only about a two-hour drive, we decided to stop in the town of Rouen, which was right on the way.

Rouen is a relatively large industrial city with a very pretty city center. The church (Notre-Dame, of course) is one of the loveliest we have seen from the outside. It is filigreed and a wonderful example of Gothic architecture. Apparently Claude Monet painted 20 different pictures of this one church, and for good reason.

We then walked down the street lined with half-timbered buildings occupied by restaurants and stores, towards the main town center, Place du Vieux Marche. On the way, we walked beneath a big clock. Back in the 1500s when the clock was built, it only had one hand. Apparently it was unnecessary to know the time to the minute as we do today. At the end of the street is the town center.

Rouen is famous (or perhaps infamous) for being the site at which Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. You know Joan, the little teenage girl who dressed up like a boy (after claiming to be told to do so by a variety of saints) and helped France kick England’s butt in the mid-1400s. Well, England was not too happy about this, as you can imagine. As a result, she was tried and sentenced as a witch, and burned alive. At the time, Rouen was under English rule. Later, the Catholic Church apologized for not believing her about the talking saints, and canonized her in 1920.

In the middle of of the 13th Century Place du Vieux Marche stands a contemporary church, built in 1979, in honor of St. Joan of Arc. We attended the noon Mass, our first Mass in French. Following Mass, we picked up a sandwich at a market and ate it as we walked back to our car.

Our drive to Paris went flawlessly. With the help of our GPS, we found our hotel fairly easily. We checked in and dropped off our luggage, and headed for Orly Airport to hand over our car. It was with great joy that Bill turned over the keys to the man from Auto Europe, and proudly walked away after having driven over 11,000 kilometers (which amounts to 6,600 miles) without one dink on the car.

We took a train back into Paris and walked to our hotel. We unpacked, rested a bit, and about 7:30 we went out for dinner. We had the Paris version of Tex-Mex at the Indiana
Café at the Place de la Bastille, just down the street from our hotel. Not quite like Mexican food in Denver.