September 9 -- arriving in Rouen

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Rouen is the capital of Normandy.

In the quest to visit as many culinarily-significant regions of France as possible, we had wanted to visit Brittany (which is west of Normandy). Brittany turned out to be hard to visit without a car. Normandy has some similarities to Brittany (both are apple-growing regions), but the main thing about Normandy, from a touristic point of view, is World War II.

It was Normandy's beaches on which so very many died, on D Day in June, 1944.

Reminders of war are everywhere, in Rouen.

A memorial to citizens of Rouen who died in the war, in the train station.

The turquoise beside the windows are functional shutters.  Love the choice of color to go with the brick.

Looking back at the gare.

A Very Old building, a new building, and an old building.

This is the side window in the white building below (which is also the white building at the end of the block on which we saw the brick building with the turquoise shutters -- you can see the blue awning, above).

They have everything.  Drinks, snacks, and in a room on the second floor, they have billiards and foosball.  ("Baby-foot"? I inquired, and was told "foosball.")

Same blue awning, bottom right.  This is clearly new construction.  I was interested to see all the color -- it almost looks tropical.

This keep is all that remains of the large city fortress where Joan of Arc was imprisoned during her trial for heresy.

Lots of different sorts of construction in Rouen, too.

It occurs to me to wonder if so many kinds of construction are due to so many instances of destruction, over the centuries.........

Older brick building with stone corners (and stripey chimneys).

At the other end of the block, a new building reminiscent of the older one.

The hôtel de ville is gothic.  We are so used to seeing gothic cathedrals that it is hard for me to look at all the gargoyles, etc, and not think "church."

War damage, on the hôtel de ville.  (Those sticky-out things, on the left edge of the building, are gargoyles, against a blown-out sky.)

We'll see more of the hôtel de ville later.



Now it is lunch time.   We are in search of apples and cream.

Cider.  This was our favorite cider of the trip.  Not as alcoholic as some, and more appley.

Looking through the lace curtain at one of the tables outside.  Outside tables are very common.  We'd rather eat inside.

Duck, carrots, peaches.  Yum.

You can see my daughter's take on this lovely day here.



In order to facilitate chronological traverse of these posts, here is a link to the post that comes after this one.

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