Rouen 2: Vikings versus Monks.

You know what I think might be very unAustralian? Complaining whilst on holidays...

Oh well. I am going to go for it. But bear in mind this is good natured complaining, I am of course, still enjoying myself immensely.

Okay so you check into your hotel. There is no elevator. This is a first world problem, so you decide to trooper it up the stairs with your bag laden with French philosophy books you really shouldn't have bought. Then you reach your room. It has a small single bed, a shower and a toilet in booths in the same room. No doors. This is a-okay because it is only going to be you in the room.

Then you see the window and realise that while you are sitting on the thone, you have a direct view into someone's kitchen. And they have a direct view up to you. Frantically you try to shut the blinds. Only to realise they are broken.

You then realise that the carpark beneath your window has six skips and six million flies. And you room has about 5 of those 6 million.

Ball bag.

Really I should be out seeing the sites, not describing my hotel room. But to be honest, I am having a pretty awesome time here, chilling out, watching numbers and playing interwebs. This is like, the first genuinely free time I have had for quite some time and I am loving it. I lay in the sun in a park for like, an hour today.

So anyways, I am sure you guys would much rather hear about the sight seeing I did, right?

Well. Eat your heart out, blogosphere. Sara's day two adventures in Rouen.

 

Interior of the Church of St Jeanne D'Arc.

 

Hotel Bourgtherolde. Very pretty former mansion, now a luxury hotel.

 

This is from the walls of the courtyard of the hotel depicted above. The images show the meeting of Kind Henry VIII of England and Francois I of France at the Field of Cloth of Gold. This was an all out diplomatic rave aimed at securing an alliance between the two young kings. The highlight of the whole affair was a wrestling match between the two kings. Francois won, but the English accused him of cheating!

 

View of the square from inside the courtyard of the hotel.

 

The grungy part of Rouen. Here I saw two goths walking along, literally chained together at the hip. I was very tempted to take a photo, but I am not sure how vicious the average Norman goth is.

 

Pretty little streets!

 

These pictures are of the Abbey Church of St Ouen. Very pretty. This is Flamboyant Gothic style. The Monastery at this site has been here since the 553. However, the original Church and Abbey got destroyed by Vikings (yes, true) in 841.  

 

Here is one such viking, Rollo himself. Rollo was the great, great, great grandfather of William the Conqueror. He was a very clever Viking, who decided that rather than hanging out on a boat, he was going to carve himself a fat slab of France and live there. That fat slab became the Duchy of Normandy, and Rollo was Duke of Normandy number 1.

  He is a descendent of all living European monarchs. He is also, interestingly enough a descendent of the Dukes of Aquitaine after William III. Hence, Eleanor of Aquitaine is related to him. What a small France....

 

A rock. It's a copy of a rock given our mate Rollo by the King of Denmark Haradra. 

 

More pretty abbey shots.

 

The Hotel De Ville which is right beside the Abbey. 

 

Inside the Abbey. The humans visible should give you a bit of perspective on the size of this thing!

 

Well that's it. I think I might go and search out some food now. Perhaps crepes. Tomorrow I am going to go to the Rouen cathedral and see if I can get inside to have a look at Rollo's grave. Then it's back on the train and off to Caen to see William the Conqueror's ducal court and the two abbey's he and his wife built. 

Rouen: where history goes to die.

I spent the day traveling from one end of France to the other. I woke up in Bordeaux and I am now in Rouen.

 

Rouen is remarkably different from lots of the other towns I have visited so far. It couldn't be more different from Bordeaux where I like to imagine I am a merchant's daughter in a flowing dress. In Rouen, you can pretend to be a medieval apprentice in a city under siege. Or... you know.... a terrified French person in World War One or Two. 

There are two reasons I have called this post "where history goes to die." 

The first, is because, William the Conqueror and Joan of Arc both died here. The second is the attitude the inhabitants take towards some salient historical facts...

Lets start with some photos of the medieval quarter. 

 

Here is a picture of the street where I ordered steak tartare only to have the waiter demand in a surprised voice "you know that this is RAW beef? Are you absolutely sure?!" 

 

This here is the oldest Auberge in France. It is from 1345. CRAZY!

 

 

In case you can't see this, this says Le Bucher, which translates to something like the fire. It's where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. Yes. True. Epic right? 

 

Here is a view of the town from up the Tower. 

 

The Cathedral. It is magnificent, but mostly destroyed....

 

No excuse here, this is just a pretty picture. 

 

This here is the Tower of Jeanne D'Arc. 

This tower is all that remains of the Castle of Rouen which was built by Phillip Auguste after his conquest of Normandy. 

In the ground floor cell of this tower, Joan of Arc was shown a series of torture devices in an attempt to frighten her into confessing the voices she heard were the devil, as opposed to a series of saints. 

The tower is now a small museum to Jeanne D'Arc. However it did have a brief life as a German bunker during World War Two. During this time it was covered in camouflage paint, as you can see here.

Now for some Joan of Arc history...

Look anywhere around Rouen and you'll get this story about the nasty English and their general desire to put maids to death...

Most of the information goes not further than this... no mention of the fact that is was an Ecclesiastical Court that tried her (this was a bit like the International Criminal Court Pope's medieval UN).

However, this sign does have some rather important fine print...

 

Ahhhhhh...... the city was the capital of who? OH! The French. Which French? Oh, the French who wanted to be ruled by the king of England, those French. 

Of course there is no mention here of the fact that Joan was in fact captured by the French and then SOLD to the English. There is also no mention here of the fact that the French Dauphin who Joan put on the throne did zero to nothing to help her.

And of course, we skip over the fact that the same church which canonnised her, burned her for heresy because she wore pants!

And so to end, I leave you with the Sublime to the Ridiculous Joan of Arc gallery. I like looking at how masculine versus feminine she is throughout the different eras. Here I have ranked them from 0 - 10 with zero being macho-Joan and 10 being pretty-poney-Joaney.

 

5/10

 

9/10

 

1/10

 

10/10

 

8/10 (but this one is actually really awesome I think!)

 

8/10

 

9/10

 

9/10

 

7/10

 

16/10

Until next time (a la prochaine!)

Bordeaux

Hello everyone!

Well the course is ended, I am no longer a student in France, but a tourist again.

I am also in Bordeaux, a beautiful city in the South of France. This is actually the first city I visited in France when I was here last time and it has been an absolute pleasure to be here again with Leslie (my French friend from Wollongong) and Ben and Lisa two other students from UOW.

Because I have to be up at 6am tomorrow morning to make the trek to Rouen in the North of France (for those of you who have been enjoying the Game of Thrones references, this is a journey roughly approximate to the distance between King's Landing and Winterfell), this blog post will be rather photo intensive...

Bordeaux is a city with a rather interesting history. Close to the sea, it has been an influential trading port and wine growing are for centuries.

It is the capital of Aquitaine which was part of England from the mid 12th Century when Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry II Plantagenet until the middle of the 15th century.

In the 19th century, what we in the Anglophone world call the Victorian Era, and what the French call the Belle Epoque, the city of Bordeaux flourished from trade and heaps of new buildings sprung up. I like to think of it as the Perth of 19th Century France. These beautiful buildings now line the waterfront at Bordeaux creating a very impressive skyline.

 

Here is my arty-farty picture of the bell tower which marks the entry to the medieval quatier. 

 

Bordeaux has an absolute abundance of delicious and cheap meals. We didn't eat here, but how cute is it!?

 

These two pictures are of the Bourse, or treasury. They are right on the river. 

 

The Hotel de Ville. 

 

My attempt to capture how pretty the water front looks at sunset....

 

I feel that my attempts to capture the deliciousness of the food were more successful!

 

Chocolate fish!

 

These are canele, a traditional Bordelaise food. They are chewy on the outside and soft and vanilla-ey on the inside. Truly awesome. 

 

This is me in Stalingrad......the tram stop, that is....

 

And here is the blue lion of Bordeaux....which is, to be honest, rather small when you compare it to the Australian tradition of big bananas, big oysters, Marinos and potatoes!

This Saturday was of course the 14th July or Bastille Day (Fete Nationale if you're French). There was a beautiful firework display that we watched by the river, along with what must have been every other person in Bordeaux. 

Here are some pictures of the city by night....

 

 

I love that there is accidentally a hipster in this photo....

The night had a rather dramatic end. After Leslie and I walked Ben and Lisa back to the hotel (about an hour and a half) we realised there were no more trams. Leslie decided that she wanted to take a bike from the bike rental system. I then realised I haven't ridden a bike since I was about 12... and this ride was going to involve bumpy cobble stones and dodging the drunken partiers at 2am. 

We ran into some Australians, (not literally) thank gosh, and ended up making it home in one piece but with a significantly higher heart rate, and not just from the exercise!

 

Love from France!!!