A day trip to Normandy

On Monday I randomly decided to take a day trip outside of Paris since I’ve never seen the rest of the country. I had just purchased the 12-25 youth SNCF (France’s version of Amtrak) discount card so I wanted to put it to good use… and since I just learned I have two whole weeks to amuse myself, I decided to spend a day in Rouen, the capital of the Normandy region. I took the 8am train up there and arrived around 9:30am.

I walked from the train station into the city center and stopped at a restaurant for breakfast. Following that, I decided to check out the Joan of Arc Museum. One thing the city is famous for is that it’s the place where Joan of Arc was tried, imprisoned and ultimately burned at the stake. The museum is at the back of a tiny little shop selling touristy knickknacks. I bought my ticket and the lady told me to open the heavy wooden door and go downstairs to enter the museum which is in the windowless basement. It was creepy, especially considering that I was the only person down there but I remained calm enough as I looked at the little action figure sized models of the scenes of Joan of Arc’s early life. Once I finished that room, I climbed the stairs to the second floor… I turned the corner and came face-to-face with life size Joan of Arc mannequins depicting scenes of the end of her life—the trial, being wounded in war, praying in her cell, at the stake, etc. It was literally the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life! Imagine being all alone in a small, dark, silent room surrounded by dozens of very real looking figures illuminated in various stages of torture. It looked like any second the mannequins would come to life and kill me! So I literally turned and ran out of the room, my heart pounding. Unfortunately, to get to the exit you had to walk through the entire museum but there was no way I was going back there so I jumped over the security rope and ran out the front emergency exit door and out into the street. There wasn’t even a soul in the shop… I don’t know what they want people to take away from their visit to the museum, but if their goal is scaring the sh*t out of people, they’ve succeeded brilliantly!

So after that little excitement, I went to the Joan of Arc church across the courtyard (which was built on the site where she was burned at the stake) and listened to the morning mass for a few minutes. Then I walked over to the Notre Dame cathedral and took a tour of that area. Apparently, this was Monet’s favorite subject to paint and the cathedral was also featured in a novel by Flaubert. They were having a Christmas market in the square so I stopped a bought a glass of the popular holiday drink vin chaud (hot wine, it was gross) before heading off to Musée des beaux-arts to look at the artwork for an hour or so.

There's a small shopping area, so of course I did a bit of shopping before grabbing a bite for lunch. Rouen is a small, quaint little town and I quickly realized that there isn’t much to do. By 4:30pm I had seen everything so I decided to take the next train back to Paris instead of leaving at 7pm as I originally planned. It was a nice day… if a bit uneventful. Rouen is absolutely gorgeous though and it was really nice to finally see another part of France.

(Pics: City Center Square, Joan of Arc Church, Notre Dame Cathedral, street shots)