PARIS – France (Tues 03 Nov)

We went into Rouen this morning. We first went into the Joan of Arc church. This is quite a modern church which has the ‘iron cross’ outside, which marks the spot where she was burnt at the stake for being a witch. A very cool church. We moved on from here to find the Cathedral. A cathedral which Monet was very fond of painting.

On the way there we found another grand old church, whose surface was just riddled with pockmarks from bullets, mortar and shrapnel. It is rather cool the way that they have left these places as they are as a reminded of what happened here.

We arrived at the cathedral and walked about its entire circumference to try and find our way inside, with no luck. We had started our second circuit when we spotted the tourism office and it was there that they informed us that it was closed from noon to 2pm for lunch. We had missed it by 10 minutes, and we didn’t have time to wait around, as we have to deliver our car back today.

So we pressed on to Paris. We spotted the Eiffel Tower when we were still some distance away. Our first stop was to our Hotel to drop our bags off, then over to Peugeot to drop the car off (by 4pm) and then back to our hotel on the Metro. Well that was the plan. We drove down the Champs Eylsee, past the Arc de Triomphe, around the infamous roundabout, and finally to our hotel. We hadn’t counted on the major road works, detours, and traffic lights for no apparent reason every 200m along the road (because we were under time pressure, the majority of which were red of course). After dumping our bags, we discovered that we had to backtrack across the other side of the city, to the Peugeot drop off point. So it was back around the roundabout, down the Champs Eylsee, past the Arc de Triomphe, to Peugeot. W e arrived there at 5:10pm, fortunately they had waited for us. One bus, and two trains latter we were back at the hotel. After all that we had heard about the traffic here, and the horror stories of ‘that’ roundabout, it actually wasn’t bad at all. They say that there is an accident here every 30 minutes, I find that hard to believe. They say that there are 12 lanes of traffic, I find that hard to believe also. As there are no lane markings, people drive where ever their car manages to fit, so 12 is a conservative number. The real number is more complicated, generally a little blurred, and definitely almost impossible to count. But despite this apparent chaos, it is an organized chaos that seems to work … somehow. We also found out afterwards that our car would not have been insured if we had had an accident there. Just as well we didn’t know that at the time, Justine would have acquired more grey hairs than she did.

After 27,365 kms in Europe, we are now car-less, and traveling in true backpacking style.

As far as the hotel goes, it has been operated by the same family for 73 years, and it doesn’t look like it has been redecorated since. The room is big enough to swing a cat, but only a very small one without a tail. The shared shower down the hall is operated by a token which can be purchased from reception (five floors down). I’m not sure if the 2.50 euro per five minutes of shower water, is meant to encourage people to share their showers, or to encourage them to take less of them.

However, after a busy day, and now no car, we are now sitting on the bed with the city maps and guide books spread out, planning our next nine days in this city. There is so much to see and do, where do we start. The showery weather looks like it will be continuing, so that may cramp our style a little, and certainly lessen the photo opportunities. We are missing the blue skies that we have been so blessed with until now.