Normandy

In which I walk in the footsteps of Joan of Arc, Emma Bovary AND Julia Child, drink cider, eat butter and mix up my French words like a crazy American lady.

{Rouen, France}

The sound of accordion music fills the air as I turn out of the alley and walk toward the Great Clock of Rouen. It seems a street musician has claimed his spot in the cathedral square particularly early on this Sunday morning, and his songs have been floating through the empty streets, following me like an old-school French soundtrack as I walk past the half-timbered buildings of the old town. The street that I’m walking on is named for the clock - the Rue du Gros Horloge - and standing underneath the sculptured arch of the Renaissance bell tower, I can see Rouen Cathedral all the way down at one end of the block. It is this cathedral - lacy white and delicate, and looking for all of the world like a tiered Victorian wedding cake - that Claude Monet painted over and over and over and over again at the end of the 19th century. He painted the cathedral in every light imaginable, over fifty times in total, quite often from the same spot - not far from where the accordionist is playing this morning. To be honest, I’m not 100% sure his paintings do the cathedral justice (sorry, Claude, it doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re a genius!)…what is crisp and white and in real life tends to appear slightly muddy in the hands of the Impressionist.