Ah, Bonjour! Day 5

Et, alors, voila! 

(a pretty consistent refrain from our guides)

As I'm writing, our longboat is docked in Rouen and across the Seine, music is playing--singers serenading in English, which will immediately switch to French when the song is over.  How wonderful is that!

                                    

photo of our Viking longship docked in Vernon taken by my sister in law, Lori.  We're sailed at 5 am from Vernon to Rouen, arriving around noon time.

The weather has cooled considerably, down to the upper 60's and partly cloudy.  For many, this switch makes touring the cities by foot decidedly easier.  Moi?  J'taime le weather chaud.

Today's shore tour was strolling through Rouen, historically noted as where Joan of Arc was burned not once, not twice, but three times at the stake.  She had a rough life, Joan did.  As our tour director pointed out, she probably can be recognized as ensuring France survived as a nation with all that entails for modern history.

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               A likeness (alleged) of Joan etched into a Rouen building by sandblasting.  Many of the                                 buildings here blackened with age and in need of a good sandblasting.

Symbols of the Norman empire.  This was a pretty screwed up time in history, not to say that current history isn't also pretty screwed up. 

The city itself is an interesting combination of historically new and modern, the conflict between the two evident in a number of places.  It just boggles the mind when reading that a building was constructed in 1000 AD and it required a century for construction.  This includes the Cathedral of Notre Dame (if you're noticing a pattern here, congratulations.  A significant number of cathedrals in France are named for Our Lady aka Notre Dame, which also happens to be the name of the high school I attended in Chicago.  Small world!

Cathedral of Notre Dame, Rouen

There are a lineup of statutes in the church, removed from outside and preserved inside the church.  This one invited me to take a photograph with it.

Street views of Rouen.  As you can see, we were jammed up with the tourist groups today.

The site where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake once, twice, three times.  Those kings!  What a great group of guys.

After the tour, we headed over to the Museem de Beaux Arts and found ourselves walking down this street, an avenue probably not found in the United States.

Road

William the Conqueror

Duke of Normandy, King of England


                                              

                               Today's selfie taken in front of the Musee de Beaux-Arts 

I took 4 years of high school French, just enough to make me dangerous.  I can get a conversation started but when the person responds in French, I clutch.  My brain says, what are you doing, talking to me in French?

Yesterday while walking around the chateau at Le Roche-Guyon. I happened upon a preschooler sitting on the stairs outside the gift shop, waiting for his mother.  He reminded me quite a bit of my youngest grandson, Ace, so I sat on the stairs next to him and started off with, "Bonjour!"  He responded brightly, and without any fear, the same and I was able to ask him his name (which I don't remember) and how old he was.  "Tres annees," he replied confidently, showing me three fingers.  Then I panicked.  I don't have much else here, I was thinking.  He was shooting off in French, assuming naturally that I spoke the language, but I had only fooled him into thinking so.  Nonetheless, I'm going with this being on the top of the list of wonderful things that have happened here.

Tomorrow will be a significantly long day, for all the right reasons.  We bus over to Normandy, the WWII museum at Caanes as well as heading down to Omaha Beach.  I'm guessing I won't blog after we return to the ship tomorrow, but then again, you never know.




























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