Rouen was a quick cathedral visit, morning tea, art gallery. Plenty of Monet works here, including one of his famous Rouen Cathedral pictures. Joan of Arc a popular figure, interesting life story that I had never taken time to read: much original primary material available due to the fact that she was tried and convicted, then a few years later retried and acquitted (a little late for poor Joan). As notes and interviews from both the first trial and retrial were taken and not lost, a fair bit of the real story came to light after the documents were dug up centuries after.
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| Interesting detail in Rouen Cathedral |
Lisieux was of interest to me because I have a favourite cup from which I drink tea that has a picture of a church from Taunton on one side, and a picture from Lisieux on the other, the town and city being sister cities and all. So, amused me to drop in on the place. A nice visit, good lunch, patisseries everywhere etc. as has come to be expected in Normandy. Lisieux happens to be the second most visited place, as a destination for pilgrimage, in France. St Therese of Lisieux was from here and an enormous Basilica built, appears she has gathered quite a following.
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| Basilica at Lisieux |
Caen was the destination for the night and we stayed in a hotel near the centre of town. What was amusing was that this evening, for whatever reason known only to the citizens of the town, the required dress-code appeared to be onesies and fancy dress. Some "students let their hair down and behave badly" event. Well, there were literally thousands of them and the small percentage that did behave badly created a lot of noise and mess.
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