June 11, Day 3: Rouen (continued) : The Cathedral and Lunch

After we finished our tour of the Gros Horloge, we walked to the Cathédrale Notre Dame de Rouen. Well-known for the numerous paintings done of it by Claude Monet, the cathedral narrowly escaped destruction during the Second World War. It was heavily damaged during the bombings of April 1944 and has been under construction in one part or another pretty much ever since.

The two towers are very different from each other. The one on the left, the Tour Saint-Romain, dates from the 12th century, while the one on the right, the Tour de Beurre (Tower of Butter) was built mostly in the 15th century and completed in 1506.

There is a nice short video on Monet's cathedral series on this page of The Green Lion Color Palette, a website devoted to the exploration of artists' use of color.

I did not even attempt to take photographs of the remaining stained glass windows, but in this photo set, you can see them up close, even better than we could see them when we were there.

This street musician on the Rue du Gros Horloge accompanied our tour of the big clock.

En route to the Cathedral

An exhibit of photographs documented the bombing of April 1944 

More music: we toured the Cathedral to the music of this organ.

In honor of Audey's husband-to-be: Saint Thomas

After visiting the Cathedral, we went to lunch at the Café Le Socrate, where we were joined by Frédérique and Benoît, Benoît's lovely wife Virginie, and two of their three sons, Guillaume and Xavier, both of whom aspire to follow their father and grandfather into the meat business. Jacques told me that so far, five generations of Vachers have been butchers! 

Guillaume took this photo of all of us.

Ch and I had hearty salads for lunch: greens with toasted bread covered with melted cheese, hard-cooked eggs, and for him, meat.

After lunch, we stopped in at Frédérique's shop, L'Affiche à la Carte, 82-84 rue Ganterie. She does framing and sells art prints; calendars, cards and all sorts of neat stuff!

Nicole; Guillaume, Frédérique and Jacques