Christmas 2022, Sun, 18 Dec 2022 | written by Simon
Jemma and Simon at a City, Museum, Temple in Europe, France

Last night we drove to Rouen and found that it has a massive low emissions zone which prevented us from driving in without a sticker. We found a place to park a bit outside of town.

In the morning we drove even further of to get a wash in a swimming pool. After, we parked as close to the centre as possible and went for a walk. Interesting sights:

  • Tower where Joan d’Arc was tortured, unfortunately closed on Sunday.
  • The Palace of Justice, a huge gothic building in an incredibly unified style, despite having been rebuilt several times
  • An astronomical clock.
  • Loads and loads of medieval houses with some of the most picturesquely uneven walls.
  • The cathedral, with it’s magnificent facade which inspired a series of paintings by Monet.
  • A couple more gothic churches
  • Hotel de Ville, with Napoleon’s statue in front
  • The square where Joan d’Arc was burned, and where now stands a very interesting looking modern church dedicated to her (sadly closed).
  • The art gallery, which hosts a couple Caravaggios and a nice impressionist collection.

In the meantime, we had a delicious lunch with obnoxious amounts of cheese. It was hard to find a place to eat – the are many, but they are really expensive. We don’t care about food enough to pay 28€ per person for a brunch. Rouen seems like quite a foodie place.

By the way, today is the finale of some important sportsball thing, world cup or something, and France is playing, so there are many football fans around. We quite enjoyed going to the art gallery at the time of the game and not knowing what the result was.

Observations from today:

  • German and French Christmas markets are very different. The Germans are more about buying stuff and food to take home, then about eating and drinking Glühwein, and maybe at the end some experiences. The French are first about eating and drinking, then about experiences – rides, carousels, We’ve even seen some water zorbing! – and finally you can also buy some things to take home.
  • Parking is really easy in France, lots of quiet parking lots all over.
  • Food is significantly more expensive than Berlin.

It was really cold today and it was really hard to just stroll and take in the city and it’s atmosphere. We really want to come back, because walking around between all those medieval houses seems like the main attraction and we wish we could enjoy it more.

At the end of the day we were really tired and ready for a less busy day, so we decided to skip our planned next stop, Lissieux, and drove towards Bayeux.