Rouen (roo-wah)
I’m on my flight home, but let’s pretend I’m still in France.
My friend Krista, her dog Auggie and I arrived in Rouen at about 2pm Saturday. We were staying right in the old town and immediately set out to explore with the time that we had. There were some protests happening in the center and we saw a few police officers, but otherwise it felt like a regular Saturday.
Rouen is totally charming. I can’t seem to get enough of medieval churches on this trip.
I was interested in seeing the town because I’ve recently been on a genealogy kick and discovered I have ancestors who first arrived in Quebec from Rouen in the late 1600s. There were many buildings that seem to be from around that era or even earlier.
I was curious about the Joan of Arc museum but no dogs allowed, so Krista and Auggie relaxed at a cafe while I tried to speed through what turned out to be a 75 minute video tour, with clips from various JoA films as well as actors re-enacting various parts of her life. Kind of a strange experience but also interesting.
I realized recently that I held various assumptions about what happened to her and the full story is a lot more complex. For some reason I always thought she was executed by the French, but it was of course the English army. Her real threat to the English wasn’t her skills as a warrior, but the inspiration she gave the French army to fight back during the hundred years war. It was in fact French Bishops and judges that decided she was a heretic, but she was imprisoned and burned at the stake by the English. One of her chief crimes was wearing men’s clothes! A lot of her story happened in or near to Rouen. The exhibit ended with a great exhibit of 20th century memorabilia related to her myth.
After the museum we did more wandering and then had an amazing cheese fondue dinner.
Everywhere we go Auggie is allowed to sit on a chair next to Krista and even though it’s totally not against the rules in France we always manage to attract a fair amount of attention from other diners and passersby. How could he not? He’s adorable.
this photo was taken the next night in Dieppe