Road to Rouen

As promised, if somewhat belatedly, here's how we spent our last couple of weeks in France.
We arrived back in Paris after our week in England and quickly reaquainted ourselves with the city. It was great to be back after almost a month. We went back to our favourite kebab place, L'As du Fallafel (see food blog) and also tried out a great little Breton creperie, although neither of us were game enough to try crepes with andouille - tripe and intestine sausages!
We started off staying in the 12th arrondissement, not too far away from our old appartment, but then moved out to a hotel on the outskirts of Paris, in the 20th. This was a whole other side to Paris, but still a very likeable one. Instead of gourmet shops, there were halal butchers, and there was a great multicultural feel to the place.
During this time, we had been applying for jobs in the UK and trying to sort out visas, discovering that we had to wait until 21 September for a visa appointment. This left us with three weeks to kill, and with funds running down even staying in cheap hotels in Paris, we decided to pick a destination in France at random and spend a few days there. We ended up choosing Rouen (in Normandy) because it was the cheapest destination by train, it had a nice cathedral, and we found a cheap hotel on wotif.com. So we packed our bags once again and headed for Rouen. What we discovered is that Rouen is a beautiful, charming town, which feels quite Germanic due to its large number of half-timbered buildings.

Its world famous cathedral has the highest steeple in France and was immortalised in paint by Monet.

It was also extensively damaged in World War II and painstakingly restored. Rouen's other claim to fame is that Joan of Arc was burnt on the stake there, and there is a memorial in the town square to mark this. It also seemed to be a mini foodie paradise, with lots of good fruit shops and stalls, a daily market, numerous patisseries, and a terrific chacutier. The old part of town has several paved pedestrian streets, so it feels very cosy. One of the highlights of our stay there was the light show that was put on at the cathedral each night. Coloured slides were projected onto the front of the cathedral to make it look like Monet's paintings. It was also transformed into brown and white dots, and stripes at one point. Very impressive.
Having come to the end of our stay in Rouen and not wanting to head back down to Annonay yet (we were welcome back there anytime but were also worried about the possibility of needing to get back to England for interviews), we looked at where to go next, eventually deciding on Caen, also in Normandy. Caen is closer to the sea, and like Rouen, also suffered in World War II. It was the home to William the Conqueror, and his castle is in the middle of Caen for all to visit. Caen doesn't have quite as much charm as Rouen, but it is still a lovely town. William the Conqueror's castle is well worth a visit, as are the Men's and Women's Abbies, which respectively house William's bones and the bones of his wife. One completely random thing was finding a real estate agent called Foncia Bastard. You don't see that every day!

On the last day of our stay in Caen, Stu got the news he'd been hoping for - he had an interview in England the following Friday.
We decided to both go down to Annonay, with Stu flying to London for the interview and then the two of us going to London on the Eurostar after our visa interview (we'd checked to make sure the visas would get issued on the spot).
We were warmly welcomed back to Annonay by the Dhennins and we made ourselves useful during the week by doing all the cooking and cleaning. We were told before we left for England that we can always treat it as our house. They are a truly wonderful family. We'd love for them to be able to come to NZ some day so we can repay the favour.
The day before we left Annonay, Stu got more good news - that he had been successful in the interview with Ford. Woo hoo! Bit of a relief. Now we'd at least be starting out in London with one of us working.
So then it was back to Paris for a night, get visas (which went without a hitch) and get on the Eurostar bound for London.
Now we're here in London, Paris is already starting to seem like a distant memory. We are going back just before New Year for a planned AFS reunion that now looks like it will just be two of us plus partners! Stu's started his new job, I've had a fairly positive meeting with a recruitment agent and we're flathunting. It's not necessarily what we wanted to be doing, but life's like that I guess. I'm sure London will grow on us!

(P.S. The title of this post is a blatant rip-off of the most recent Supergrass album, which is highly recommended!)