I'm going to put the pictures up first on photobucket so you can have a look before I tackle the tour details. I figure that's the best way to hold your interest while I tackle my entries. It seems I have a lot to say, so each entry is taking more time than I thought, so the least I can do is give you something to look at while I compose my entries and explain things.
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v
I apologize for the sheer number of pictures. There was something about this church that seemed to grab us both and not let go. There was a kind of reverence to it that I've never experienced before. When you walked in, you could feel the history, it was as if the walls were talking, sharing the secrets of the church. The beautiful stained glass, the sculptures, the musty, damp smell, the flickering candles lighting the vast space, the age, the ability of this sanctuary to survive despite it's turmaltous history, it sucked me right in, this coming from somebody who hasn't stepped inside a church in many moons...
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v
I apologize for the sheer number of pictures. There was something about this church that seemed to grab us both and not let go. There was a kind of reverence to it that I've never experienced before. When you walked in, you could feel the history, it was as if the walls were talking, sharing the secrets of the church. The beautiful stained glass, the sculptures, the musty, damp smell, the flickering candles lighting the vast space, the age, the ability of this sanctuary to survive despite it's turmaltous history, it sucked me right in, this coming from somebody who hasn't stepped inside a church in many moons...
Anyway, I will edit down the number of pictures at some point, but I hope you enjoy them for now. Feel free to look up the Cathedral's information if you want to get ahead of me. I'll say this, the tour guide knew her stuff , it's too bad she ruined it with her Supreme Frenchness, at least it was at the end of the day. But I digress, as I'm getting ahead of myself...
The port for this stop was actually called Le Havre. I was just happy that it wasn't a "tender" port. A tender port requires that you use the life boats tethered to the side of the ship to get right into port because the ship is too large to fit in the actual port space. I was thrilled not to deal with this issue on our first full day of touring. I'll be honest, I was a bit of a nervous wreck on the first day. I'm not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, and I don't normally eat breakfast, it makes me feel nauseated. I had to eat, that was a given. Rouen was an hour and a half each way on the bus and the last thing I wanted to do was get hungry half way through the ride and feel faint with hunger.
The meeting time in the lounge was 7:45am so that meant ordering room service no later than 7:am. I'll just say it, it was AWFUL. They brought Mom the wrong cereal (this happened almost everyday that she ordered something, it was like they were just picking room numbers and breakfast orders out of a hat and sending stuff out at random) I had asked for cut up strawberries and watermelon and got neither, having to contend myself with tiny balls of honeydew melon and cantalope. They did bring me the bagel I asked for, too bad I could have used the thing for a frisbee, more often than not, it was hard as a rock. They sent up a fresh one the first time, playing into my love of all things bread, but it went down hill from there. I can laugh at it now, but OMG early breakfast is bad enough but early BAD breakfast just plain sucks.
Mom and I are practiced picnicers. We carry food and drinks everywhere and despite her early protests, this trip was no exception. We actually brought our own plastic containers for food storage. Not large ones, but enough to carry fruit, buns. muffins, the portable stuff/ We had a ship full of food prior to the excursions so why not take advantage of it? We also each had our own water bottle. This is where having the wheelchair really helped as everything went into the bag on the back. This option saved us on more than a few occasions. The days were long and we had alot to see in small spaces of time so it was nice not having to constantly stop for food.
Anyway, the drive into Rouen from Le Havre was about an hour and a half each way. The truth of it is, I think we both wanted to drive into Paris and do the river cruise on the Seine, but Paris was a full three hours each way and both of us were concerned about that much travel time on our first day.
The first thing we noticed was that we weren't in England anymore. We saw some older cars and trucks but nothing like the big transport trucks you see on Toronto's roads. The highway was busy, but you didn't here constant honking and no one was cutting in and out of traffic. The signs were clear and people were moving.
Our guide knew her stuff. She was from Paris originally but had been doing these regional tours for years. If her personality had matched her knowledge, we would have been okay, but I'll talk more about that later.
Anyway, during the drive she spoke about the different regions in the area and how one area would cook with olive oil because it was what they were known for, while the next would cook with only butter because it was what was avaliable to them. Thje cheeses were shared both regionally and globally as they were shipped all over the world.
When you hear someone talk about the UK, you begin to realize how much smaller it is than Canada. We tend to forget how truly vast Canada is (or maybe that's just me because I'm not blazing trails all over the countryside) Things in the UK take on a very "local" feel. One area will have a different tradition or value system from another and yet, everyone I spoke to talked kindly about their neighbours. They very much worry about keeping their own traditions. Any tv (or telly) I saw tackled local news/issues. They could care less about "the West." As for the threat of terrorism, as one person told me, "We travel in spite of the threat, if we stop, they win." believe me, after the "security check" I got on the way home, I had no fears of ANYBODY getting through and causing a problem.
Now on to Rouen...
They call it Normandy's "ancient capitol" because it used to be the capitol city before essentially being demoted. Though still a "capitol" that title only extends into the "Upper Normandy" region now. It still holds an important place thanks to it's harbour (it reminded me of the small boat harbours that we have in my area though for the most part those are pleasure boats). Rouen still uses their harbour for commercial purposes and there was a fresh market right in the town filled with seafood/local butters/cheeses ect...
As you drive in to the harbour, you can see hints of modernization as new housing is being constructed along the waterfront. You can tell that it's going to be a slow progression, however, nothing like you would see here
That said, it's the church that you can't miss and the church that I'm guessing is the talk of the town. It took over 300 years to complete and the city is in the middle of sandblasting it in an attempt to "clean up" it's "blackened" exterior. You can see it's effects in my photos. The cause: pollution. Apparently, the scaffolding has been up around the church for about two years now, and drives the locals crazy, but if you saw how painstakingly they are cleaning each section, you would understand the timeline.
If you'll notice in my pictures there are some figures on the outside (saints) with no heads. That's not a mistake. The English weren't fond of the saints so when they conquered the area, they beheaded some of the statues.
Our tour guide was full of information about this church unfortunately, she kept running ahead, so there always seemed to be about 10 of us WAY at the back of the group. Thank goodness they stuck around, because it was our first go on cobblestone with the chair, and though it wasn't as difficult as we thought it might be, (Mom is a darn good driver) there were some steps up/down around the church that required some lifting and this woman had no interest in helping, so the nearest guy grabbed a side, and hoisted me up or down. Not ideal, but we managed.
At one point, a lady had to run up ahead and tell the woman to slow down. Her answer to this was to hold her clipboard up for about 30 seconds with our orange bus number two sticker visible, then start charging ahead again, just as we all caught up. We finally just gave up and started doing our own thing which is kind of what lead to the incident...
As I've said, the church was a marvel. I thought of my friend Jill, who probably would have loved to see something this detailed/revererent in person. There is a hush over the church as you enter it along with the musty smell of age. As you look around you know you are witnessing something special. The interior is huge and filled with stained glass that they had to re-construct piece by piece after some of the panels were hidden during various wars. I couldn't have even imagined putting one window back together, never mind several.
The pictures will probably be your best bet for doing this beauty justice, my puny words will be insufficient.
After coming out of the church, I noticed the town clock. This was my favourite feature in each of the cities.
It seems the UK likes to mark time by the town clock. Each city we visited had one and it fed right into the "old world" charm of the town centre. Rouen was no exception and in the end, it bit us in the butt. :-)
After the church, we had an hour of "free time" to walk around the city. We hit the chocolate shops and honestly, we were a bit disappointed. The chocolate didn't seem to be any better than anything here (or the glorious Cadbury quality we discovered in England/Ireland) But the bakery looked stellar. We wanted to go in, but the line was WAY too long for us to stand in if we wanted to see anything else.
I did feel bad that my french didn't help me at all. Thanks to Quebec, Canadian students have to take French through grade school so I did have four years of French, and let me just say, it did me absolutely no good. LOL. As soon as they started talking it was "excuse me?" NO WAY could I keep up with even the gist of the conversation. So thank you to the chocolate lady who spoke English and rescued us, and to France, I'm really sorry that I'm so clueless.
The hour we had on our own was very rushed. We had taken to getting postcard from each place we were in, and debating over which ones to pick took some time and you'll see in the pics that we also had to hit a candy store (see Mom holding the candy kitty cat you didn't think I would leave without my kitty fix did you?)
If we had time, we would have stopped and had a coffee in France (Mom was dyinmg for one by this point) but we had no time. We started looking for the meeting point but we should have known it wouldn't be that easy.
Mom had run ahead to get the meeting spot from our illusterous tour guide.because once again, she had surged ahead, wanting to see as much as we could, Mom had left me at the end of the street to run ahead and ask. That was our first mistake. I never saw the meeting point.
We also nerver got to see where Joan of Ark was burned at the stake. I wasn't sure that I wanted to anyway (kind of rolled my stomach) but I was a HUGE fan of Joan of Arcadia (tv show) and loved the parallels. Anyway, we never made it to her monument because French lady rushed ahead again....
Anyway, Mom came back to me, knowing where we should be in an hour, or maybe not....
The hour zoomed by, we got as many pictures as we could and tried to soak it in but it wasn't long before we were looking for the right direction....
Did I mention that the town clock had two sides? They were identical and Mom was getting confused. She kept mentioning a striped carousel and I had no idea what she meant because I hadn't seen it. We went around and around the square looking for anything familiar, Mom was totally confused and quickly losing it because the meeting time was quickly approaching and she just couldn't seem to figure anything out, it had all started to look the same.
I was being wheeled VERY QUICKLY down slanted cobblestone and uneven sidewalks. At one point, I thought she was going to send me flying out of the chair on to the pavement. We went around and around the square looking for anybody in our group. No luck. Mom kept talking about a red and white striped carousel and cursing herself for not taking more notice of things. I couldn't help, because I hadn't been there.
We must have gone around that square (and run around to different sides of the town clock) about five times. Mom was iquickly reaching her limit. Her breathing was so fast, I thought she was going to have a heart attack and I knew the tears were close.
I spotted buses and suggested we follow the road down to them, but Mom was intent on finding the right spot. FINALLY she spotted it. There was no carousel. It was a striped booth/awning in THE SHAPE of a carousel top. Anyway, our tour gude was standing there with her sour French face saying "Where were you, we're all waiting I told you 12:20PM." My Mom was breathing hard, close to tears, she was convinced they were going to leave us there...
This French chick stands there chewing us out over being ten minutes late and has the nerve to say she was "kind enough to wait for us." She didn't even notice how upset my Mom was and started berating us...
Let's just say, I cut that little tirade off and told her to knock it off in a big hurry. She actually had the nerve to say I was rude and "don't speak to me like that."
Thankfully, everyone on the bus was understanding and concerned about the shape Mom was in. I have to say, all of the passengers on our tours were very understanding and never once rushed us. Several times, people would come up to both of us and say "We can't believe how you two just tackle everything." and we do. If not, I'd sit around and never get a chance to do anything. Mom's never met a hill she can't conquer when I'm in the chair (as you'll see later in the trip) and she views it as a fun challenge.
Anyway, we got back to the ship and reported the tour guide immediately. Princess was horrified and we also found out that we were supposed to be given contacts numbers and she was the ONLY ONE that hadn't done this (It was our first tour so we weren't aware of procedure)
Oh well, we made it but as one passenger put it "France is a beautiful country if only it wasn't so crowded with French people." ;-)
I'm just kidding. There has to be one in every crowd and she was it for France. We got a discount off the tour but frankly it did little to appease me after seeing Mom like that.
We were happy to move on.
Hello Scotland!
No comments:
Post a Comment