Rouen!

This morning we woke up super early to get on the TGV out of Paris. We allotted ourselves plenty of extra time (about 45 minutes more than we thought we would ever need) and were at the Saint Lazare station 14 stops of the metro later, although we had to wait longer than anticipated to get on the metro line, as they apparently don't run as many trains on Saturday mornings as they do during the busy work-week. Go figure. When we got to the TGV station, we struggled to figure out where we were actually supposed to go. The first board that we found that listed the trains and their arrival stations did not list our stop of Rouen Rive-Droit, nor did two others that we looked at. By this point we were starting to get a little nervous and put a little extra skip in our steps, as our departure time was getting ominously close. We stopped and asked a guy at the information desk for help, and he was able to at least point us to the correct half of the 35 different train platforms. In the end, we found our train just as it pulled into the station, composted our tickets, and climbed aboard. The last few experiences I had had with the TGVs indicated that about twenty seconds after you board, the train leaves, so we frantically climbed on. This was a bit different however, as we ended up sitting around for about ten minutes before actually leaving. We couldn't help but note that we could have stopped for some breakfast on the go, after all.

The train ride was about an hour long or so. When we got off the train we realized that we had forgotten to look up how to get from the train station to our hotel. Thankfully, I had made an itinerary where I listed all the addresses. We didn't have a map, so we had to improvise at finding our hotel's street by cross-referencing different metro bus maps, but in the end we found our street. We took Rouen's mini-metro, although we later realized that it was probably unnecessary, as the distance actually wasn't all that far. When we got onto the street for our hotel, we stopped an looked around, unable to figure out where to go to find the place. Hayley suggested that we go down the opposite street to keep looking. I shook my head at our sillyness as I looked up. We were standing almost right under it. This hotel isn't great. No A/C (and it is rather toasty in here) and a weird shower, but I guess you get what you pay for.

The city of Rouen itself was an unexpected surprise. We expected to find a quaint little Norman town with not much but pretty sights. What we found instead was a quaint little Norman town that was the site of Joan of Arc's trial and burning. Quite a number of things in the town actually revolve around the event. We saw the actual spot where she was burned alive for heresy, a giant medieval tower (the remnants of what had once been a small castle), the Joan of Arc museum with a really informative life and death wax scenes, and a church that has been built in her honor. All of the surprise history was really cool and made our trip here much more fun. The town itself was absolutely gorgeous. While Rouen took a heavy beating during bomb runs in WWII, destroying a lot of the historical buildings, many houses still remained that had been constructed between 1400-1700 A.D. It kind of felt like stepping back in time. This was further aided by the cobbled streets and giant golden clocktower (Le Gros Horlage) which were very interesting. We took a little train tour around town to get off of our feet, which gave us a good historical account of all the streets. We also paid a visit to an incredibly beautiful Gothic cathedral, one of a few dozen named Notre-Dame. This was by far the tallest church I have ever seen in my life. They had a few gorgeous stained glass windows, but unfortunately WWII had wreaked a lot of destruction upon the church, blowing out windows and destroying or breaking many of the Biblical statures therein. These events are totally our of order, by the way. I was really dizzy all day and forget which order we did things in xD

In the streets of Rouen, there were tons and tons of food shops and boutiques that were really cute. We stopped a yellow-walled Macaroon shop, where we sampled a few different flavors of the hundred or so they had. At some point we had some delicious ice cream. In the evening, we decided on a nice-looking outdoor restaurant in the center of all of the medieval buildings. We were in no rush, so we decided to wait around until they opened up for dinner. We sat at the table for roughly an hour and a half just talking and enjoying the scenery before they chased us out to set up for dinner. When we came back just a few minutes later, all of the tables were almost completely taken up and we got the last two that I saw. In the typical French style, the staff were in no hurry. The pace of life is a lot slower here, and dinner was an interesting experience for us antsy Americans. We waited for quite some time before we were given a menu, then longer still as we waited for our order to be taken. Our food arrived quickly, however. I ordered a phenomenal Lasagna à la Bolognaise and Hayley got Speghetti a la Napolitien. We finished eating and had to wait around for another half an hour to get our bill. We probably spent about two and a half hours for the dinner experience tonight, but it was well worth it. 

For now, we crash. four or five hours of meager sleep and a day of fun in the sun has us dead on our feet. In the morning we leave for Caen, one of Normandie's largest cities. I have a feeling we are going to leave a little extra-extra early for the train ;) wish us luck! Thanks for all the well-wishes, everyone :D