A Dream Come True -- to Be in France

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 By Norma Hopcraft

At long last, some photos from France, as I promised! After 15 hours of travel, my sister Chris and I took one day to adjust to jet lag in Maisons-Laffitte, where my friend Carol's house is, the one I'm housesitting in. After a nap, we walked into town and enjoyed the shops.

    

"How can you govern a country with 400 kinds of cheese?" Charles de Gaulle once 

lamented. Here is a typical sampling.

Then we took a train to meet our French friend Martine and her little Himalayan Mountain Dog, Tibou (which means morsel in French argot) in Rouen. From there we went around Normandy and Brittany in Martine's car.

We had a very good time!

Let's start in Rouen today, and then head to Normandy.

First, meet Martine, my landlady when I lived in Paris for a year. She's an actress, and this is a photo of her that she gave me 10 years ago:

Next, here's Tibou -- or rather, here's a Shih-Tzu, a type of Himalayan mountain dog, also known as a cat-dog (because they're so independent by nature). You'll see a picture of the real Tibou later in this series.

Now, let's go to Rouen, which has an elaborate, ornate cathedral that Monet spent a year on, striving to capture an impression of its appearance in all kinds of weather, every season, all times of the day. He made more than 30 paintings of this cathedral.

When you look closely at the details, the ornateness of the entire cathedral becomes even more overwhelming.

Here's one decorative column on one side of one doorway, surrounded by stone 

cut so fine as to look like lace.

Here's the arch over the doorway. Sculptors carved the stone 

on nearly every inch of this cathedral.

The Cathedral at Rouen is so very elaborate, it's actually not to my taste, if I may be so bold to say. It's "over the top." You'll see more over-the-topness when we get to the opera house designed by Garnier.

That same evening we drove 90 minutes to Bayeux, where we wanted to see the 1,000-year-old Bayeux tapestry and the Normandy beaches the next day. We stayed in a hostel, to cut costs of course, but then the hostel magic I hoped for actually happened--I met a woman who lives in Rochester! She told me all kinds of fascinating things about my adopted city.  Here's the hostel where we met -- it's in a former convent.

The front gate to the building, from the 17th century, I believe.

The front door.

The wing where I slept, upstairs.

The accommodations were spare -- we made our own beds and the showers, sinks, and toilets were down the hall -- but the place had an abiding peace and grew on me over the two nights we stayed there.

Next post: Bayeux, the Normandy beaches, and the American Cemetery.

See my recent photos of Rochester immediately below this post.