Rouen, Paris

May 20th -

Last weekend Tim and I headed up to Rouen, north and slightly west of Paris, to check out where Joan de Arch was held and eventually burned at the steak. There’s not much to see at the site itself, but plenty of information around, and from the bits and pieces I know and learned there, I’d really like to learn more about her. It’s fascinating that a woman in the mid to late 1400’s, only 16 years old, was able to capture the hearts of a country and was feared by another so much that they put her to death!!

On the drive to Rouen we discovered that there are 2 ways to get places. One is on the auto routes, which often have steep tolls, or take the smaller back roads. We started out on an auto route but quickly changed our minds and exited on to a smaller set of roads that wound along the Seine River, past Chateaus in tiny villages, and through green rolling fields. It was hard to imagine thousands of soldiers marching through these fields, but the scars are still evident in some areas of the smaller villages and stone farm building half missing. It took a lot longer to get to and from Rouen, but I would definitely recommend the roads less traveled.