Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Rouen Market Festival

Rouan

After finishing with the Normandy phase of the trip we began heading towards Paris. The reason for that was to get closer to Charles de Gaul Airport. A visitor’s bureau lady in Fouras recommended our itinerary. She told us we might want to lay over at Rouen. She said it was a beautiful French city on the Seine River.

When we arrived we were glad to have the GPS in the car because it took us straight to the hotel, located on some very narrow streets. They had courtyard parking and we were able to get the van a nice slot. After settling in we took a walk down into the “Centre Ville” where a Joan of Arc festival was getting ready to start. This is the town where the English burned her at the stake.

In the region each local municipality has a distinctive type of hat and as we walked through the displays it was fun to look at the vendors in their colorful local attire. It was sheer luck that we happened to be visiting at this time because the festival is a gala annual event. This gave us a chance to nose about the shops while still seeing all the activities taking place in the market square. There was so much going on I’ll devote a couple of blogs to it, although we only stayed a short time.

When you see the Seine river cruises advertised on TV, Rouan is a layover and there were plenty of tourists thronging the narrow streets and marketplace. Most were from the British Isles but there were plenty of Americans thrown into the mix.