Rouen! Rouen! Must I die here? Ah, Rouen, I fear you will have to suffer for my death!

I found quite cheap tickets to go to Rouen, so I jumped at the opportunity to see the place where Joan had spent her last months. I arrived in the city of Joan’s death around 11 in the morning, and checked out the maps in the train station for where I would need to go. The main places I wanted to visit in the day included the tower where Joan was held captive, the church that was built in the market square where she died, where her ashes were spread into the river, and a memorial that I was sure was going to be difficult to find.

Well, the first stop on my list was one of the easiest. It was just a few blocks away from the train station, and I went their first. The man running it seemed to hope he would be able to close up for the break at noon earlier, so he was very disappointed when I showed up and told me that I would only have 15 minutes to go through. I agreed, and continued into the tower.

The tower was split up into a museum on each level. It included the history of Joan and many other statues of her. They even had a handwritten part of the manuscript from Mark Twain’s take on her life. I wandered through the levels of the museum, and then I made my way up to the top floor where Joan was held. To say the least, I found it rather creepy. Upon walking into the top level, I immediately felt a bit claustrophobic. There was only enough room to walk in about 10 feet, with the pathway winding around the outer wall. The windows were far off to one side where you could not actually see them, and to the other side of the walkway was a concrete wall that you could not see over unless you were probably 7 feet tall. Looking up, you could see the ceiling, and at the end of the 10 feet there was a locked door. I just had a bad feeling upon entering this level, and since there was not anything there, I took my pictures and left.

Upon leaving the tower, I decided to walk in the direction of what looked to be a cathedral. However, after finding some German influenced architecture and walking through a pedestrian shopping area, I found the Hôtel de Ville and a different cathedral, the Church of St. Ouen. Since the area was pretty, I continued to walk and found the intricately adorned Palais de Justice, and I grabbed a quiche for lunch. Then, I finally found it, the cathedral I was looking for.

The Notre Dame Cathedral in Rouen was spectacular. It had been heavily damaged during the second world war, and it was fascinating to see the pictures of the destruction and then be walking through it without seeing any evidence that any part of it had ever been destroyed. There was a Joan of Arc chapel that featured Joan on the stake, and one of the most picturesque staircases I have ever seen.

I walked out of the cathedral and noted that the tourism office was just across the street. I walked over, hoping they could tell me how to get to the memorial monument for Joan. The person helping me didn’t know where it was, but we easily found it on a map of the area. When he gave me the map and wrote out the driving directions, he was shocked that I didn’t have a car to get there. So, he did his best to tell me the right bus to get on and where it was.

I was off again, and this time my walk took me by the River Seine and the place where they threw Joan’s ashes into the water. I also meandered the Theatre des Arts, and a sculpture of Corneille, who was born in Rouen. I also saw some old ruins that had been preserved, presumably they were a building that was destroyed in WWII. I tried to look up what they used to be, but I was unable to find anything. The ruins were just beside the bus stop, so I decided to go inside. I grabbed the timetable and stop information for the bus the travel office told me to take, and it looked to me that it was going in the opposite direction. I got in line and asked about it, and the lady helping me didn’t know what I was talking about, but the one working beside her did. They told me the correct bus to get on, so I grabbed the information for that bus, found out it was in ten minutes and walked down to where the stop was.

When I got on the bus, I asked the driver if she could let me know where to get off for the monument. Again, she didn’t know what it was. However, a passenger sitting near the front of the bus heard us, and he told me he would tell me where to get off, and then the walking directions to it. The bus ride was much further out than I thought it would be. I would say we rode a good fifteen minutes, much of it uphill. I could never have made it to this place on foot with the time I had allotted myself for the city and all of the other things I wanted to do. The passenger got off at the same stop as me, and told me where to go. I didn’t have to walk very far, but the monument wasn’t in view of the road. I walked behind the buildings of the main street the bus had gone through, and past a church to the entrance of a cemetery. Caddy-corner to the cemetery was the monument I wanted to see.

I have to say that this was one of the largest monuments to Joan I’ve seen. Joan was featured in the center of the great monument, with angels on either side of her. There were lambs overlooking the spectacular view down onto Rouen. I think the view alone made the journey worthwhile. I could see the Seine stretching down and through the city that had finally embraced Joan years after she met her end there. I spent a while there meditating and taking in the beauty of the area.

Once I left, I ran into one of the funniest things I think I ever saw in France. Well, most fountains are large; they seem to have purpose. In this little village that the monument was in, the Hotel de Ville had a fountain. I think it was one of the most pitiful ones I have ever seen, you can make up your own mind:

After arriving back in Rouen proper, I walked to the Joan of Arc church, L’Eglise Jeanne d’Arc. It was not the typical church one would think about encountering in France. To me, I’d say the best description of it is that it was an alligator. It spread out, and the roof of the church extended to also serve as a cover over the little market area. This was the place where Joan was burned on the stake, and outside the building there was a sign stating that this was the place where she died, and there was a statue of her being engulfed in flames. Inside the church, it was just one big open space with stained glass along one side. There was a choir group practicing while I was inside, which made it a rather unique experience. Not only was the building modern, but I also saw one of the most interpretive statues of Joan inside this church.

Now, while I did enjoy Rouen, I felt the most creeped out here of anyplace I went. There were several things that have made me come to this conclusion, including the Tower that I already mentioned. The second thing of the day happened when I left the church. Now, I’m not used to people running after me, but there was a guy that I guess saw me as I was leaving and thought he just had to talk to me. So, I kept hearing someone yelling “Wait!” in French, but I didn’t know it was for me until this guy grabbed my arm. I was in the middle of a bunch of people, so I didn’t think anything too bad would happen, but I pulled my arm away and said to leave me alone. He then apologized for scaring me, and asked if we could go grab a coffee somewhere… Well, I’m sure you can guess the response to that one. He just kept trying to talk to me as I kept trying to walk away, so I finally said I was meeting someone, and then he let me go. While my original plan was to go directly to the Joan of Arc museum after the church (which was right across the square from the church), I decided to walk a bit further to get away from that guy before going back to the museum. This was just a weird occurrence that I did not want to gain a stalker from.

I eventually made my way back to the museum. It was necessary to walk through the gift shop first to get into the museum, and from the gift shop I walked down a flight of stairs into a somewhat poorly lit cellar area. I thought it was supposed to be a wax museum, so I was a little bit disappointed when it just started out with old artifacts that weren’t even real. I don’t think they had one authentic piece of anything in that museum. After I walked through a couple of rooms of copies of old tools and statues and figurines, the wax museum came into view. These wax statues were seriously some of the scariest things I’ve ever seen, which is the other reason why Rouen sort of gives me the heebie geebies. The wax statues weren’t really lifelike, but it felt like their eyes were following me. And, in the second room of the figurines, there was a door that creaked closed as I walked in. To my knowledge (and the fact that I had not seen or heard anyone other than the employee in the gift shop area), this sort of scared me. Then, I kept hearing floorboards creeping both in front of me and behind. Needless to say, I decided to try to take it a bit quicker through the museum. I did relax a little bit, though, when I noticed that there were buttons on the wall that you could press for explanations, and that somehow made the museum funny and creepy at the same time.

After hightailing my way out of the museum, I grabbed a refreshment then decided to take a tour of a big clock (La Grande Horloge) that I had seen while walking about the town. It was pretty fascinating learning about the people who had worked on it and the different bells that had been in it over the years, but I was a bigger fan of the views. At the very top of the building I could look out on the city and see every place that I had visited that day.

I got the train back to Paris at the end of the day, and, while I enjoyed seeing these places from Joan’s past, I was happy to be rid of the unease that that day had brought me.