Rouen in June 2001

After our first week in Vouvray (Loire Valley) way back in 2001, I drove our friend Cheryl to Paris, where she wanted to spend the second week of her vacation. There I picked up another of our good friends, Charles-Henry (CHM), and we drove up to Rouen to see some friends there. I can't remember if we stayed for one or two nights, but I do remember that CHM had planned out an itinerary for our drive from Rouen to Vouvray. That would normally be a three- or four-hour drive. Well, with Charles-Henry navigating and picking out places he wanted to see, we spent at least 12 hours on the road that day.

Here are a few photos I took in Rouen that weekend. Rouen is a small city (pop. 110,000) surrounded by an extensive urban agglomeration (pop. 400,000). That makes a metro area of about half a million inhabitants. I lived in Rouen for a year (a school year) back in 1972-73 and made good friends there who I saw often on my other trips and stays in France. They had a little ground-floor apartment where I or Walt and I could stay when we visited. They lived in a much larger apartment upstairs in the building, which was within easy walking distance of all the city's historical monuments — the old market square where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in the early 15th century, the even older cathedral, two other major centuries-old churches, an ancient clock tower, and the restaurant where Julia Child had her first ever meal in France 60 or more years ago.

Another thing Rouen has is an extensive collection of old half-timbered house, as you can see in my photos. The city one of France's major ports, so seafood there is fantastic. The Normandy cheese, including Camembert, Pont-lÉvêque, Neufchâtel, make for decent eating too. Another thing striking about Rouen is the climate. It's rainy a gray much of the time. When I was working there 50 years ago, the principal of the school where I was working as a teaching assistant told me, as an introduction to life there: A Rouen, il ne pleut pas beaucoup, mais il pleut souvent. That wasn't really a joke, and I got used to the drizzle and mist after a while.

If you want to see more of my posts and photos of Rouen, click or tap this link and start scrolling down..