DAY 83 – ROUEN 11/03/2009
Starting late, we wandered down the road to explore Rouen a little bit today. It's a fantastic medieval town, with lots of expressed timber frame houses and a cool undercover market area. The town centre was bustling, and we did a bit of shopping and bought lunch. It was quite humourous trying to buy a pita wrap from this bakery, as the owners didn't speak English and the sign for the wraps had fallen down so we didn't even know what to call them or how much they were. We got there in the end though. In the afternoon Keeley crashed on the couch and watched TV while I went for a more extensive walk around town. I saw the tower where Joan of Arc was imprisoned and tried, and the exhibition inside is very good. It doesn't tell the story so much, but looks at the impact she had in artwork, literature, and to the town of Rouen. There was a cool model of the town in medieval times, which was nice, and lots of cool sculptures. I also saw the gigantic Gothic cathedral, which is incredible. We've seen a lot of churches on this trip, but the Gothic architecture never seems to get old. I just wandered around for the next hour or so after that, saw a chocolate shop selling carnival masks like Keeley's, but made entirely of chocolate, and generally soaked up the atmosphere.
Marion prepared us a French specialty tonight for dinner – duck pate stuff followed by the most amazing (and terribly fatty) duck meat that just fell off the bone. It was fantastic. We ate cheese and bread and then went out to a nightclub that Marion said would have a lot of her uni friends there. It was a very enjoyable night.
DAY 84 – ROUEN 12/03/2009
We had a very big night last night, where we went to a club that was pretty empty, but we did get free drinks and meet Marion's friend Julian. It was nice to go out and not have to worry about spending money. We got up slowly and got on a train to Caen, a town a couple of hours west of Rouen. After grabbing some food and checking out the cool town centre, with its crazy tram-buses, cool castle and chocolate bread, we got on a bus to a small town north of Caen in the hope of seeing the D-Day beaches. When we arrived we were a little disheartened to see only a port where the ferry to Portsmouth (UK) departs, and not much else. However, with some closer exploration we discovered a cool museum to the D-Day landings housed in a Nazi bunker. There were some cool vehicles out the front, like tanks, amphibious troop carriers and drop-ships, and the bunker itself had been restored to pretty much as the Nazis had used it. Apart from the dangers of walking through it (the doorways were very low), the number of pieces of memorabilia and things was mind-boggling. There was a fully equipped first aid room, we saw the sleeping quarters, and the lookout room with almost 180° views and a period telescope. There was also a model of the beach defences set up by the Nazis – 14 different layers of defences from the water to the bunker, including a big concrete wall, barbed wire, mines, big steel tetrahedrons to stop the amphibious cars and tanks, spikes, etc. The bunker even had its internal communication system still intact – a series of pipes with mouthpieces linked to each room where they could talk to each other. The best part was being able to walk on the roof, five storeys up with a panoramic view of the town and the beaches. After finishing at the bunker we walked along the beach, past the go-kart track (seriously), saw some wind-karting (karts with sails on them) and a cool memorial to the landings.
We got back into Rouen pretty late, and Marion was at a meeting with other people from her student union. We had some pasta, Keeley watched some TV then I went out with Marion and her friends while Keeley stayed home. We went to an Irish pub putting on a rugby theme night, and I met more of Marion's friends (including her secret boyfriend) and generally had a good time. It was really good that everyone made the effort to speak English not only to me but around me, and they were all very friendly. We're meeting some of them for brunch tomorrow, so that should be good.
It will be sad to leave Rouen tomorrow, but exciting to see Morten in Copenhagen.
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