26 June 2014

Honfleur

Caroline came back to the apartment at 9am to return our security deposit and we left Caen.  There was a bombed out church close by our apartment.  I would have loved to have seen more of it or learn more about it, but there were really no signs that fully explained it.  Just something that said it was bombed during WWII (really??) and that was that.

St. Catherine's Church
in Honfleur

We had a long day today!  We decided to visit Honfleur, Rouen, and then on to Paris.  Our goal was to walk around the Eiffel Tower at night.  Hmmm….best laid plans.

le petit mascot!

We arrived in Honfluer, which is where impressionism (painting) is said to have started.  We found great parking (thanks again Rick) and were able to walk over to the square port area for which it is most famous.  It was a cloudy day, so the colors were muted, but it was still very pretty.  We actually both thought that the colors would have been more vibrant, but they were muted and drab, even without the cloudy day.  I guess upon reflection, sunlight wouldn’t have helped too much, hahaha!!  Tried to get a coffee, but alas, shitty service seems to be the norm in France.  No coffee…on to the church.

altar in Notre Dame
Rouen

The church of St. Catherine is an odd structure.  As Rick Steves says, it looks more like a town hall than a church.  The inside really doesn’t help shed that impression. It was noteworthy to visit because there were some unique things about it, but otherwise, you could miss it.  Found a place to get a coffee and the lady there noticed Maggie Moo and commented on “le petit mascot.”  I love that!!  That is what she’ll be called from now on, haha!

statue of St. Thomas

After the coffee, we walked back to the car and went to Rouen.  In medieval times it was the 2^nd largest city in France because of its port.  And, it has the churches to match that moniker.  There would be no reason to miss mass then or now.  If you couldn’t make it to one church, walk 100 yards and voila….there was probably another one there or in sight!

Stone staircase in the
cathedral

Parking was “fun” but we got to where we needed to be and walked from there to the Notre Dame Cathedral of Rouen.  Unfortunately, it took a lot of damage from WWII, but it’s long been repaired. They also are repairing/restoring a lot of it, so there were a few statues inside the church too.  There are a few things of note in this church.  First, there are several crypts containing the remains of notable people in history.  Or parts of them anyway! 

final resting place of Rollo's
femur...

Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy, is buried there.  Or rather, his thigh bone is.  Over time, his grave was plundered and his mortal remains removed bit by bit.  Gross….bad jujubes if you ask me!!  The heart of Richard the Lionhearted is buried here too.  Just his heart…nothing else….in a full-sized crypt just like Rollo’s femur. And a couple of other English Kings, who apparently were also Dukes of Normandy.  There were numerous stained glass windows blown out during WWII that have been replaced with clear glass instead and some side chapels where you can buy candles of course and pray!

Notre Dame

The Plague Cemetery

We left the cathedral and ate a quick lunch on the square and then continued with the walk recommended by Rick Steves.  Next on the list was a church (we didn’t go in) and a Plague cemetery that now houses an art school in its buildings.  The only way you could tell it was a cemetery was by the deathly marking in the timbers around the buildings at about 10 feet up.  There was a large cross, maybe 15-20 feet tall that was in the center of the courtyard.

Statue of St. Joan
of Arc

We left there and we walked up to where St. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake.  There is a modern church on the site and a small multilingual plaque that marks the spot where she and numerous others throughout the centuries were put to death.  There is a stone statue across from the marker and a beautiful statue inside.  

The site where
St. Joan of Arc
was burned.

The inside of this church has stained glass windows from another church that might have been bombed during WWII….I cannot remember…I just know they are not original to this church.  From the outside, it is supposed to look like a Viking ship.  I thought it looked more like a hat that warriors wore in the Middle Ages.  Another candle, some more prayers said and we left.

Took a picture or two of the beautiful clock and made our way back to the car, where we hopped in and tried to make it out of town with as little fuss as possible.  Tom-Tom was a little bossy and didn’t know the detours, but once we followed the signs out of town, she was a little happier :o)

St. Joan of Arc statue inside the church

Life went well, as I was able to drive 130 km (78 mph) for a good part of the trip.  The killer were the tolls!  During the day, we must have spent close to $40 on tolls!!  Holy cow, that was crazy!  We paid the last toll, Tom-Tom didn’t recognize John’s requests to go to CDG airport, and we hit major traffic.  Again, imagine rush hour on I95/395/495 if you’ve lived that nightmare and you get the idea.  

Clock that only has
an hour hand

It was a parking lot.  And I had to pee. And we needed gas. And Tom-Tom continued to be petulant.

So….I drove along in first gear for about 10 miles probably.  That was fun.  (Again, sarcasm in case you didn’t catch it).  Found a Shell station on the side where we could fill up and pee and then got back into the mess.  Several police cars and ambulances went screaming by, but at no time did we see an accident.

Finally, Tom-Tom and the roads decided to cooperate together and she got us toward CDG.  After a couple times around, I managed to find the place to drop of the car and thus began the 2^nd part of our nightmare:  trying to get from CDG to Paris.  

Cuteness!

In case you haven’t gathered, I have a scathing disregard for American credit cards’ lack of a chip that is what Europe uses in its automatic machines!  UGH!!!!  After buying what we thought were tickets to Paris, we discovered that in fact, they were just the metro tickets that we needed and not the RER tickets that we needed.  Good news, we needed the metro tickets.  Bad news, the machines from which we could buy the RER tickets accepted credit cards (which we have) with the chip (which we don’t have).  The machines also do not take any paper money.  This is ridiculous considering the tickets to Paris cost 9.50E.

This meant that John got to stand there with all our (I mean, MY) luggage, which was too much.  UGH!!  I stood in line to pay with my inadequate credit card and was helped by a grumpy, uninterested clerk who was more interested in her cell phone text than paying attention to me.  Got the tickets we needed and I got one for John for tomorrow’s trip so he was all set.

Such cute houses in
Rouen!

Then the hour long ride to Gare du Nord to catch the metro to Bastille to get to our hotel.  If you are handicapped and want to ride the Parisian metro….too dang bad.  It’s not going to happen!  At Gare du Nord, there were escalators going up, but none going down the two flights of stairs to the platform.  Luckily, two very nice ladies helped me carry two things down while I schlepped the other two and John took his.  Merci beaucoup!!

Got on the metro and then encountered some loud, rude Parisians…..I felt a little better I suppose because it’s not only Americans who are loud and rude.  Got off at our stop, only to realize that we were in the freaking bowels of the metro system and had 5 or 6 flights of stairs to climb up with no escalators in sight.  Or elevators.  UGH!!  I really, really, really hate all the luggage I have.  Next year, I wear one outfit and wash it every night :o)  As long as it’s clean, no one should notice, right?  Hahaha!!

More cuteness in Rouen!

Once outside, the weather was nice and blissfully cool and just beginning to sprinkle.  Luckily, it didn’t really matter because we didn’t get wet on our walk to the hotel and we were able to get into our room with little difficulty.  Well, there was barely enough room for my luggage and me in the teeeeeeeensy elevator.  It said it could fit three people?  Maybe three toddlers!

The hotel room had free wifi and air conditioning, so these two Americans were blissfully happy to be there!  We had planned to go see the Eiffel Tower, but it took us almost 5 hours from the time we arrived at the traffic jam to the time we sat down to dinner at 9pm.  Thus, no time to go downtown.  We were tired, sweaty, irritated, and grumpy.  Had a decent dinner, but nothing amazing.  Finally had a crepe with sugar.  That was good :o)

Came back, John got ready for his flight tomorrow (we hope!!) and he checked the loads and we both quickly answered some emails and hopped in bed in a blissfully cold room.  He had to get up at 5am to make sure he could do the backward route to the airport.  Originally he was going to have time to leisurely make it out there to get his flight, so we decided to stay in downtown Paris.  Best laid plans…..if we’d have known then how things would be, we would have stayed middle distance between the airport and Gare du Lyon.