Traveling in France #1 (Part 1 of 6)

During Year 4 in Paris, we plan to travel to different parts of France.  

Recently, Susan's longtime friend Susan Morris visited us from Houston.  (Susan Morris also visited us in Florence during Year 2 and in D.C. during Year 3.  We are so happy when she visits.)

The Susan's met many years ago when they became pen pals at age 13.  Susan Bendlin's aunt Helen was teaching in Houston and asked one of her students if she wanted a pen pal.  So, Susan from Houston wrote to Susan in Chapel Hill, and the two Susan's have been pen pals and great friends ever since.  Over the past decades, they've seen each other in person about ten times.

When Susan Morris visited, she said she wanted to see Normandy.  So, off we went, with visits to Rouen, Honfleur, the WWII landing beaches, St. Malo in neighboring Brittany, and Mont St. Michel.  It was a wonderful trip with many happy surprises.   

Rouen:  Let's start our adventure in Rouen, the capital of Normandy.  Rouen is known for many things, including its cathedral and its place in history.

The Gothic-style cathedral is dedicated to Notre-Dame de l'Assomption de Rouen (Our Lady of Rouen).  It was constructed over 8 centuries on a site of an earlier church from the 300's.  Completed in 1880, the cathedral with its nearly 500 foot spire was the tallest in the world for a few years.  During the Liberation of France in 1944, Allied bombs partially destroyed the cathedral.  After being carefully  rebuilt, the cathedral is again immense and beautiful.  

Fans of Impressionist painting know the cathedral because Claude Monet painted the facade more than 30 times in different lights.  Some examples appear below.

 In the Cathedral's nave (pictured below), your sight is drawn upward by the pillars and high ceiling.  If you look closely at the pillars, you can see that they lean away from the center.  We learned that the architects designed the building this way to prevent the pillars and walls from falling inward. 

The cathedral has beautiful stained-glass windows.

At one point in its history, some of the windows in the side chapels were made taller with the addition of new scenes at the bottom, like the scene depicted below.

Greg liked the stone stairway pictured below.  It reminded him of an M.C. Escher etching.

Relativity by M.C. Escher

The Rouen cathedral has a lot of history associated with it, because Normandy played a pivotal role in the history of England and France.  One of the historic personages was Richard the Lionheart, King of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine and Count of Anjou.  The cathedral is the burial place of Richard's heart, in the tomb pictured below.

The cathedral also has a chapel dedicated to Joan of Arc, who departed this world from Rouen.  More about Joan of Arc shortly.

After visiting the catchedral, we strolled through Rouen.  Along the way, we passed by the site of the Rouen home of Robert de La Salle, who explored North America from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.  La Salle claimed the Mississippi River basin for France.

We also passed by the Palais de Justice, completed in 1507.    

Like most of Rouen, the Louis XII building was largely destroyed during WWII.  Thankfully, it was restored.      

The heart of Rouen has many medieval half-timbered houses.

The half-timbered house pictured below has upper floors larger than the ground floor.  Our guide explained that land was expensive and builders found a way to construct large houses on small lots.

During our stroll, we walked by one of the town's very old gates.  The gate features a great astronomical clock, the Gros Horloge, which dates from 1389. 

If you look closely at the clock (below), you might notice something odd.  The hours for 5 to 8 o'clock appear upside down.  Our guide explained that the original clock mechanism operated differently than a more modern clock.  Instead of the hour hand moving, the dial rotated counter-clockwise.  So, each roman numeral indicating the current hour appeared right-side up.  (There was no minute hand.  Knowing the precise time was not that important long ago.)

Next Up:  Learning about Joan of Arc in Rouen.