Road Trip Day 2: Rouen, Normandy and Juno Beach

Thursday morning we set to work figuring out how to get the GPS working and after reading various online forums (thanks, Google) we realized that we needed to reconfigure it for France and then we had to just wait for about 20 minutes, without moving, for it to locate itself.  What a relief since our whole idea had been to just drive around and figure out our trip as we went.

Photo Credit: Alanna Martin, @ Mont-Saint-Michel

Around this time, my camera battery died and I didn't have the right charger with me.  So I would have to rely on the photo-taking skills of my companions throughout our entire journey in the north.  Fortunately, they are very skilled and well, we were a little paparazzi-ish sometimes!  Lots of great photos to choose from.  Here's some photos a couple of us took of each other taking photos throughout our trip.

@ Chenonceau

Photo credit: Judy Martin

We did some exploring on foot in Rouen, first checking out the very tall and impressive gothic church around the corner from the hotel.  Turns out, it wasn't the famous cathedral, but the Abbaye Saint-Ouen.  It was closed over the noon hours, so we just wandered around the outside a bit.
















Rouen had a lot of medieval colombages style buildings, a lot more than Tours, and it was a very cute downtown.

Photo Credit: Judy

We continued wandering, trying to find various sites of interest, recommended by our trusty friend Rick Steves.  Judy brought along the travel book we had used in 2007 and once again, Rick proved to give us some great background narrative to various places we visited.  We didn't use his recommendations for accommodations in the same way we had four years ago and instead we found ourselves logging onto www.booking.com whenever we could find free WiFi, which ended up being at McDonalds more than I'd like to admit.  The place we booked ON Thursday afternoon FOR Thursday night (yes, it was that kind of trip!) was through this site and it was a great little hotel in a tiny place called, Beauvoir (the place is so small that that link is actually for the hotel!).

Credit: Judy.  Oh hey, that's our car there too!

But that was obviously our final destination on Thursday and there was still a lot to see on the way there. So in Rouen, we finally found the Notre Dame Cathedral of Rouen. Even though it is very, very big and very, very tall, for some reason it seemed hard to find. There were a lot of tall spires around Rouen and the entrance to this cathedral seemed to elude us! 

Credit: Alanna

 Then we finally found the square where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake and the church and monuments that are now there.

Credit: Judy

After burning some rubber, I did make it out of the scary, steeply-inclined parking lot and we were on to the direction of the sea!  We hoped to make it somewhere near Mont-Saint-Michel (we still hadn't booked the hotel in Beauvoir and didn't until we find internet at a McDonalds around 5 pm!) and we knew we wanted to find some Normandy Beaches from WWII, particularly Juno Beach because of its Canadian significance.  Rick Steves also mentioned Honfleur as being a worthwhile Normandy town to pass through, and so we did!

Credit: Judy

We also saw the impressive Bridge of Normandy from a distance.

Credit: Judy

It was a fun drive, jumping off of the Autoroutes and winding around some remote roads (still with 90 km/h speed limits!) and seeing some quaint Normandy villages.

When we finally got to the beaches, it was dark!  But we made it!

Credits: more from Judy!

And then, finally in our nice quad room, Judy put the pots of gourmet French yogurt on the windowsill and we went to bed.  It was the second of many more packed-full days to come.

Credit: Alanna