Rouen cathedral and a Sunday market

The inside of the Cathedral was lovely, though they are generally rather impressive structures. The current Cathedral’s construction began in the twelfth century and has had many additions and restorations since then. Monet painted images of the Cathedral on numerous occasions as Rouen isn’t far from his home at Giverny.

the lovely stone staircase in the nave

The interior was light filled and so beautifully symmetrical

close up of the cathedral organ

After checking out the cathedral, everyone wandered into the town square via the Rue Gros Horloge (street of the big clock).

The Gros Horloge - astronomical clock dating to the 16thC

Rouen is also known for its original half-timbered buildings – so here’s a slightly dodgy picture of some.

there are quite a few ofthese old buildings in the centre of town

Next stop – quite a few scenic spots on the Normandy coast.

the famous bridge

It was the wrong time of year for the waterlilies but it’s almost never the wrong time of year for tourists.

the cherry blossoms were out all over France

Cherry blossoms are always beautiful and it was lovely to see so many of them in bloom as I travelled around the country.

most of the tulips were flowering too

The garden had so many different varieties of tulips it was amazing. They are such lovely, colourful flowers and the ones I saw below looked as if they had been painted into existence.

pink tulips from the garden

After walking through the gardens I had a look through Monet’s house. They have it set up much as it would been back in his day and there is one room filled with replicas of his paintings. The most interesting part of the house, to me, were the Japanese prints on the walls. Monet was a collector and there are prints on the wall in every room, some by well known artists such as Hiroshige and Hokusai. It was nice to see some of his influences in a place so strongly associated with Impressionism.

the front of the pretty house, complete with stroller toting tourist

Next stop – Normandy.

It was also nice to be going to France this way because it echoed my first trip, taken on a train ten years ago this April. I remember Paris being beautiful and sunny and being excited to finally be visiting Europe. Armed with the same backpack and a better camera I had a great time. I’m just focussing on Paris in this post, although I visited other areas of France, because I have lots of nice pictures to share.

Side view of Notre Dame

Well I didn’t see any hunchbacks inside but it does have quite an atmosphere. Instead of being brightly lit, a lot of French cathedrals tend to use only natural light or minimal lighting making their interiors shadowy and mysterious.

the atmospheric interior

I quite liked that fact that some of the Cathedrals were quite dark. Although it made it hard to see some of the details in the lovely sculptures, I’m sure it is far more authentic than them having every nook and cranny jammed with a lightbulb.

the Louvre and its queue

This is the Louvre queue midway through a Saturday in Paris. This isn’t even the queue for tickets, this is the security screening queue you have to through before they let you in to buy tickets with busloads of other tourists. I do quite like the glass pyramid by I.M. Pei. It’s iconic and they have some inverted ones in the shopping area below.

Eiffel tower from below

Instead of braving the queues at the Louvre, I actually headed for the Eiffel tower. I missed the chance to climb it on my last visit so decided that this was on my must do list this time.  I took the stairs (rather than elevator) option and climbed up 670 steps to the second viewing platform. While it was rather cold and windy up that high, the view was excellent and I could even pick out the far away Sacre Coeur basilica.

the crowds below

On my return to Paris after a whirlwind trip through Normandy and Brittany I spent the best part a day sightseeing before racing to Gare du Nord to catch the Eurostar back to London.  During my sightseeing day I wandered through the Luxembourg Gardens and snacked on crepes before heading to the Latin Quarter for a walking tour. In the morning I had visited the Museum of the Middle Ages where you can spot some of the original statues from the front of Notre Dame. They were in place before its restoration in the 1800s following the French Revolution when it suffered some damage.

fountain in the Luxembourg gardens

And just to truly show that I was indeed in France, here is the obligatory tourist pic with the Eiffel tower.

See, I really did go to France!

Stripy chairs on a pebbly beach

Early in the day looking towards the pier

Entrance to Brighton pier and ice creams, lollies and donuts galore

Brighton Pavilion with fence in foreground

I walked from Brighton to Hove and back in the morning sunshine before ducking into the Laines for a wander and shop. The Pavilion is well worth seeing, if only to gawk at how ornate one residence can be.

And just for fun (or at least I thought they were amusing), here’s a couple signs I spotted on the beach.

...by English standards of course. Pebbles?!

Ha ha...yes it's a bit childish

I think a return trip is in order this summer. Hopefully there’ll be enough sunny days to accomplish this.

The first was a young adult novel, The forest of hands and teeth by Carrie Ryan. Set in a future where civilisation has regressed technologically and heavily fortified human settlements are found in isolated pockets surrounded by the forest of hands and teeth. The world outside these heavily controlled settlements is teeming with the Unconsecrated – the dead who do not rest but hunger for human flesh. The story centres around Mary and her struggle with the repressive regime of the Sisterhood which gives way to a struggle to survive the forest when the defences of her village are breached. It contains a nice conflicted love and duty storyline that doesn’t get too bogged down in Twilight style misery. Although not as thriller-like as The enemy (see below) it was an interesting book and I’m waiting to get my hands on the sequel The dead tossed waves.

The enemy is a young adult thriller by Charlie Higson, who also wrote the Young Bond novels. Set in London in the aftermath of a global pandemic that only affected people over the age of 14. Many died from a baffling, quick spreading illness but there were some who did not. These adults now wander the streets, infected and ill but with an almost mindless need to consume.  The early story is centred around two groups of kids and teens (all under 14) who’ve set up fortified base camps in what were once their local Waitrose and Morrisons supermarkets. In the year since the adults all died or became infected they’ve eked out an existence by banding together to stay alive but it soon becomes clear that they can’t stay safe where they are forever. This knowledge propels the kids from relative safety out onto the unsafe and infected London streets. Although the premise of both novels is somewhat similar, the writing style is quite different. During the first chapter or two of The enemy I wasn’t sure about the story (especially following on from the previous book) but it soon sucked me in. As with The forest of hands and teeth, I await the next story titled The dead.

Just to round out the trifecta, I followed these two books with a novella by Jack London, The scarlet plague. Published in the early twentieth century the story of the scarlet plague, another fast-moving, debilitating epidemic, is recounted from the point of view of an old man sixty years after it swept away most of the world’s population. Mainly focussed on events at the time of the plague, it also touches on how the world has changed since the devastation. The book is not long but it is compelling to see how far and fast London thought humanity would fall as a result of such an epidemic. It’s not cheerful reading but it is an interesting hour or so.

One of the upsides to living somewhere with proper winters is that you get a proper change of seasons. Trawling through my millions of photos last week reminded me how lovely Kew Gardens was last Spring. I was being lazy last year and didn’t get around to posting any of those pics, so here’s a few as a nice reminder that prettier (and hopefully warmer) weather is on the way.