Beattys Overseas

We left Glasgow on Saturday afternoon, taking a Ryan Air flight to Beuvais, a small suburban airport outside of Paris.  We stayed the night in a disgusting modest roadside motel near the airport, as we had planned to book a car the following morning and drive west.  The hotel was not impressive in it's hygiene, thus causing us to break out our sleep sacks for the first time (ya know, just in case of bedbugs, which can't get through the silk of our sleep sacks).  Um, ick. 

Sunday morning we hopped in our rented VW Golf and headed for Rouen, a historic city known for its prosperity during the Middle Ages and the place where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake.  Arriving into any European city on a Sunday morning is a bit like arriving into a ghosttown, since many businesses are closed or open in the afternoon.  We were lucky enough, however, to pass by a bakery that had just opened, with a line out the door, and were treated with some very high-calorie breakfasts.  First order of sightseeing was the Rouen cathedral which is a stunning structure of art.  Don't tell any Irish New Yorkers that I said this, but it makes St. Patrick's' Cathedral on Fifth Avenue look like a country chapel. 

After the cathedral we headed to the memorial sight for Joan of Arc, the French heroine who was tried and executed for heresy when she was 19 years old.  Joan said that she had visions from God which told her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. She fought in several battles on behalf of the French, and fell prisoner at a skirmish near Compiègne. A politically-motivated trial convicted her of heresy, and she was executed by fire.  Her story is amazing, but we were a little disappointed by the commercialization of her in Rouen.  The area surrounding her memorial was full of postcard hawkers and chain stores.  For us, the modern market ruined our ability to imagine her death there in 1431.

After all this cool stuff in Rouen, we went off to Caen to see the War Memorial and go to the D-Day beaches. 

- Whitney