Friday, May 19th, 2023 Le Havre, France
When we booked this transatlantic crossing as the final leg of our world cruise vacation, we didn’t realize it had a stop in Le Havre; a few weeks after making the booking, as I was documenting the itinerary, we were very pleasantly surprised to discover the ship was stopping in Le Havre - it’s a port that is steeped in transatlantic voyage history – all of the liners from the golden age of transatlantic crossings would stop in Le Havre after departing Southampton on their way to New York, including the ill-fated Titanic.
We are in Normandy, the land of William the Conqueror, D-Day beaches, the Bayeux Tapestry and Dunkirk – but today we are visiting the ancient city of Rouen the site of the execution of Joan of Arc. Our excursion was scheduled for the afternoon, so we had a late breakfast in the Britannia Restaurant and a stroll around the decks, checking out the port and the city of Le Havre. First established in the 1500s Le Havre sits at the month of the river Seine. The view across the port to the city revealed a metropolis constructed almost entirely from concrete following its destruction during World War two – it’s pretty bleak!
Shortly after lunch we joined the others on our tour, met the guide and boarded the bus for the one-hour journey to Rouen. We made our way out of Le Havre and into the open Normandy countryside of gently rolling hills with the occasional farm. Our guide explained a bit of the Norman history and pointed out a few interesting things along the way – she was very knowledgeable and spoke a lot. By the time we arrived into Rouen we already suffering a bit from information overload, we did despair as we planned to make our own way around the city once the guide had given us the overview and revealed the pickup point and time. Rouen was very busy and the old winding streets do not lend themselves to road traffic – the bus parked a little way from the center, and we had a short walk to the cathedral.
As we approached the cathedral the crowds increased, and we soon got our first glimpse of the magnificent structure. It is famous for its three towers, each in a different style. The cathedral, built and rebuilt over a period of more than eight hundred years, has features from Early Gothic to late Flamboyant and Renaissance architecture. It also has a place in art history as the subject of a series of impressionist paintings by Claude Monet.
Our guide gathered us in front of the cathedral and began a long, detailed, speech about the history of the building – I was beginning to realize that this guide was intent on saying her piece no matter what; her information was interesting but too detailed. In addition, the guide would not reveal the meeting point or time – forcing us to tag along. The exterior of the cathedral was spectacular though on closer examination the stone carving were extremely weather worn with little evidence of repair. After about half an hour we were finally guided into the cathedral, we let the group move on and made our own way – keeping a careful eye on their progress. The interior was surprisingly bright with huge arches reaching up to the vaulted ceiling. Many of the windows were only partially filled with stained glass, perhaps as a result of bombing during the war. All in all it’s a pretty awesome cathedral.
We caught up with the tour group and suffered a slight rebuke from the guide for “wandering off”, she still would not reveal the details of the pick-up location and time and so we followed along through the crowded, narrow, streets while she continued her speech. The center of Rouen is a very picturesque place; the streets are mostly pedestrianized and there is an interesting mix of medieval and contemporary buildings. We stopped at an amazing astronomical clock constructed into an archway over the road; the Gros-Horloge (Great-Clock) mechanism is one of the oldest in France, the movement having been made in 1389.
Fighting our way through the crowds we came to the ancient market square and the Church of Saint Joan of Arc and the place where she was burned for heresy in 1431 – a small garden to the north of the church marks the exact spot. The church is quite modern having been completed in 1979 and has a strange shape, supposedly like a long ship and there are interesting stain glass windows – though now the guide was hurrying us along and we did not get to go inside the church and literally had about 1 minute at the burning site, but at least now she had finished her speech and we discovered the pick-up point and had some free time.
Artiste Patissier Jullien was a fantastic find with the most amazing pastries, it was very hard to decide what to pick for our afternoon treat – but we settled on an apple tart and a chocolate mousse cake. The only downside of Patisser Jullien was that they did not serve coffee but instead had an arrangement with the bar next door called Le Fleuron where the bartender was happy to make us cappuccinos and allow us to eat the cakes we had purchased at his neighbor’s store. Strangely I did not find the loud rock music of the bar took anything away from the experience, which was delightful.
On the way back to the meeting point we stopped and picked up a couple of bottles of local wine ay a quaint wine shop. We also came across a procession of young kids in period costumes waving flags, I have no idea what parade was about, but it was interesting to watch.
The Queen Mary 2 slipped her moorings around 7PM to the sound of a serenade from the Regal Princess; it’s common for ships that are in dock to exchange horn soundings as one leaves – as a kind of salute, though the Regal Princess is the first ship I’ve heard that could actually play a short tune on her horns. We got to see a little more of Le Havre docks as we sailed out, the port appears to be a major export point for huge wind turbine blades which we could see stacked on the dockside. A small crowd had gathered on the short pier to wave us off, and as the ship left the harbor, we could see more of the concrete city known as Le Havre. Just to the north of the harbor we could see a nice beach area with a more traditional looking town out on the point.
Comments