Mes Amis, today we are up and packed and at the breakfast table by 8:30. As today is another travel day, we put our belongings in the big blue beast and head out to look for a last museum in Bayeux. Alas, it doesn’t open until 10:00 and we have to get down the road. By the time we find our way out of the byzantine one-way streets and road construction zones we could have probably made the visit! Shades of Omaha during road construction season - lots of orange cones.
Finally on the highway and headed east to our eventual destination of Rouen. We take a slight detour to check out the village of Cabourg and its hotels along the beach. After negotiating a pedestrians only road along the beach and escaping before the Gendarmerie find us to issue a ticket, we are back on the road. We make a pitstop for coffee at a roadside restaurant called Flunch (not a typo) and pull into Rouen around 12:30. Again, we encounter construction and pedestrians.
Rouen is a nearly 2,000 year old city that has been ruled by Romans, Normans, English and French over the ages. It is famous as the death spot for Jean D’Arc and for its cathedral. After finding the cathedral parking garage and squeezing the beast into a very tight spot on the first underground level, we abandon our luggage and go looking for our hotel, The Cardinal Hotel. Amazingly, we have found the nearest parking spot to the hotel, as the place is directly across the square from the Cathedral. However the square is under reconstruction , so there are some twists and turns to be navigated on foot.
Rouen, in the old central city, is pretty much confined to pedestrian ways so we will not need the car during the visit. We check into our hotel and solicit a recommendation for lunch. We walk a few blocks and alight at The Studio cafe. Pictures of French and American movie stars adorn the walls. We have an excellent lunch of andouille sausage with apples, or sea bass and salmon over cheesy risotto, or braised pork cheek with mashed potatoes. Dessert is cheese or a shared creme brûlée. All accompanied by some wine and beer. A most satisfying luncheon.
We make haste back to the car park and unload our luggage, dragging it through the construction zones back to the hotel for a quick unload and break, then off to explore this city. We are first looking for the Ossiary of the Church of St. Maclou. This is an area were they have excavated bones from the early Middle Ages, which were buried under the church. Unfortunately the display is closed on the weekends, so we strike out. As we wander the little streets around the cathedral and environments, we pop in and out of little shops, finding items that we nearly purchase, but nothing sticks.
We wander into the Cathedral, which is huge, under reconstruction and apparently all set up for the throngs of people expected tomorrow for Palm Sunday. Very nice but, our taste for cathedrals is waning. this is our fourth, or maybe fifth on this trip. They tend to blur together.
Our next quest is the site of the burning at the stake of Jean D’Arc. We find it via our tourist map, next to the ugliest church imaginable. This Eglise Jean D’Arc is an upswept modern structure covered in what appear to be imitation slate tiles. The church was not open, so there is no way to report on its interior, although, given the large number of stained windows apparent from the exterior, it may have looked much better from the inside. The actual burning site is marked by a large cross outside the church entry and is surrounded by a park, under construction.
Next we want to find the Couronne Restaurant, reputed to be France’s oldest, founded in 1345. (Jean D’Arc was brûlée in 1431, so this restaurant, if dated actually, was not playing off her notoriety.) We google it and set off, finding that we are taken around the block and back to our starting point. We had already passed it and didn’t know it! It faces the Jean D’Arc church. This restaurant is the one that Julia Child first dined in the day she arrived in France, and it awakened her to French food and her entire career, setting the stage for TV stardom and millions of American aspiring cooks and chefs. There was one reservation available for 8:00, but this seems too late for us. We have had enough of getting up from the dinner table at 10:00 and struggling back to fall asleep.
We split into couples and head back separately exploring for awhile. The Coverts find a supermarket and secure a bottle of wine, a baguette and some cheese and crackers to share in their hotel room. Needelman’s shop a bit and then find a creperie for an omelette crepe and a glass of beer.
An early evening for all as we wind down this penultimate day of driving around France. Tomorrow, we go to Giverny and then to Paris to drop the car.
