Rouen & Giverny

Yesterday I had my last program trip to Rouen & Giverny. Both are located in the Normandy region. Rouen is famous because it's the city where Joan of the Arc was burned at the stake. I didn't even know that before arriving so it was pretty neat. A lot of things in town were named after her. The city was beautiful. We had to suffer through a 2 hour over-detailed city tour and then only had 1 hour for free time, but it was awesome to see everything. Here are some pictures..

lovin it

So having only an hour for lunch in France is very difficult since everything goes so slow and there are 2-3 courses. We all rushed off in search of restaurants. When a couple of friends and I got to one, it took a half hour for our appetizers. We were supposed to meet back with our group at 1:45 and we got our entrees at 1:30. We scarfed our food down, payed, and had to leave without even getting our desserts. On the way back to the group, we saw other people in our program outside at a restaurant and we reminded them that we had to be back right now, and they said they haven't even gotten their entrees yet! Only in France would it be acceptable to wait one hour for your food. And a quick funny story.. the menu was all poorly written on a chalkboard so it was difficult to read, especially being in french. All of us just kind of winged it, guessing we knew what we were ordering. Well for my appetizer, I ordered what said "brochette aux poulpes" or something like that, so I assumed it must be bruchetta! Yum! Except not at all. The server arrived with a kabob of octopus for me.. Luckily one of my friends at the table likes octopus so she was happy. 

In the tour, we got to see the huge cathedral of Rouen that is famous because it is in a couple of Claude Monet's paintings! Of course, there was ugly construction, but the church was amazing. 

And here is their city hall...

So obviously Rouen was beautiful. Another French city I could stay in forever. And next we were off to Giverny! Even more beautiful. In case you're not familiar with Giverny.. it's the location of Claude Monet's garden and house, and also where he painted most of his famous art work. I had been looking forward to this trip all semester and it was so beautiful. Unfortunately there were about 1,000 other tourists trying to capture the picturesque gardens, so it wasn't calm or peaceful like I had imagined. But oh well! 

THE bridge in all his bridge paintings!!

the group :)

So the day was great. Last program trip :'( So sad I only have 6 days left. It's unimaginable that I'll back in America next week! OMG. This week I have exams (aka tomorrow) and I haven't studied one minute yet. Oops. Better get to it! 

Not so fun fact: I have approximately 300 paintings to study for my art history exam. 

Not so fun fact #2: Only 14 paintings will be on the exam.