France: Amiens, Rouen

I guess the fine art of vacation blogging still eludes me. I'll try though.

In October I started blogging about my trip to Paris and the the north of France, in November I got as far as Beauvais.

In real life everything was a bit faster.

Amiens had a beautiful cathedral, a nice riverfront, and hortillonnages, which are sort of gardens on a swamp. It also had gardens that were not on a swamp. At night the town was dead-dead-dead.

Rouen was quite a lot livelier than Amiens. Bigger, too. Full of half-timbered buildings. Or maybe half-full of fully-timbered buildings? Whatever.  Beautiful. Cathedral, churches, clock tower, pederstrian area. I am so totally gonna visit there again.

They were really proud of Jeanne d'Arc, which was a bit tasteless since their only connection with her was that they burned the poor kid at the stake. But their is Jeanne d'Arc this and Jeanne d'Arc that everywhere, the actual place of burning is marked, and there is a Jeanne d'Arc church next to it, which is shaped like a flame on the inside (how tasteless is that?) and has hanging eaves for some reason.