Day 23 -- Travel from Normandie to Roissy-en-France, Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rouen

Friday was a travel day from Normandie to Roissy-en-France, a northern suburb or Paris right near the airport from which we would be leaving the next day.

On the way back towards paris we stopped off to each lunch in Rouen and to visit the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rouen. Rouen was only slightly off our route, and given an early attraction to it in art history class and Monet’s series of atmospheric paintings, I really wanted to see it.

Both the stonework and the brickwork on this Gothic cathedral were among the most impressive we saw while in Europe.

In order to get ready to leave the next day, Jen, Erick and Mary dropped the rest of the family off at the motel at Roissy-en-France and then drove into Paris to drop off the car (which was apparently an adventure involving long waits, steep ramps, drug users in a stairwell and smell of urine and defecation).

After everyone was back at Roissy-en-France, there was not a lot of time to explore, but I did go out in the evening for some photography opportunities. Roissy is essentially a modern, upper-middle class French suburb with a lot of hotels due to its location near the airport.

After having spent so much time in old cities and villages, it was somewhat odd to be in a place where little seemed old at all.

Day 23 Reflection

Thinking about the difference between the well-polished Roissy-en-France and the quiddities of Parisian Cafés, crumbling Norman churches, and even London canal boats, I was reminded of this quote from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451:

“Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are. That’s my definition anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often.”

There is obviously nothing wrong with new things. Every old thing was once new.

But perhaps the attractiveness of old things is that, just like a man or woman who has grown wise, older things and older places are more experienced at being in the world. They have acquired quality, texture and pores in Bradbury’s sense.