1936 On the Continent

restaurants, they are legion, and it is hard to go wrong in Rouen, which is famous throughout France for its cooking. But if you are particularly anxious to taste the special dishes of Rouen—Sole Normande, Canard à la Rouennaise, Gélée de Pommes—washed down with excellent old cider, try the Restaurant de la Couronne at the hotel of the same name on the Place du Vieux Marché.
    If you are looking for something less elaborate, a light lunch for instance, go to any of the “Brasseries de Cidre,” where they will serve you, in more or less genuine medieval surroundings, first-rate sparkling cider accompanied by all the famous Norman cheeses: Camembert, Pont-L’Evêque and “fromage à la crème.”
    Before leaving Rouen you must have a glimpse of the town as a whole. About 2 miles to the south-east of the town there is a hill called the “Bon Secours,” standing about 500 feet above the Seine, from which you can get a wonderful view of the old medieval city. A tram and then a funicular railway (Line Mesnil-Esnard) will take you therein a few minutes. It stops at the Pont Corneille, the first bridge down-stream from the Pont Boiëldieu.
    Rouen is the best possible centre for excursions in Normandy, whether you want to go by rail or by car, but there is one excursion you absolutely must make, and that is down the Seine to the port of Le Havre.
Down the Seine
    In a straight line from Rouen to Havre, the distance is not more than 50 miles. But by the Seine, which curves in and out continually, it is more like 80. The small Seine steamers do the trip in six hours.
    There is nothing boring about this six hours’ journey down the Seine in a small steamer. The country is beautiful, and at every instant some fascinating or historically interesting site comes into view one side or other of the river.
    The steamers, too, are very comfortable and you can get something to eat and drink at the buffet on board. They run from June 1st to October 1st, departure times varying with the tide. To reserve places you have to apply at the Quai du Havre at Rouen, not far from the Cours Boiëldieu. The steamers call constantly at riverside places along the way and the tickets allow you to break the journey if you want to. The landing place is at the Pont Boiëldieu.
    Within the first mile the steamer calls at Croisset on the right bank, and you should visit there the house where the great Norman novelist Flaubert died. Farther on, short stops, still on the right bank, will enable you to give a rapid glance at Dieppedalle, Biessard and the Val de la Haye, where a column has been erected to commemorate the transfer of Napoleon’s ashes from St. Helena; Sahurs, too, with its strange church.
    On the other bank you can get a glimpse of the square towers of the castle of Robert le Diable, that ferocious ancestor of William the Conqueror. This bank, with its steep white cliffs pierced in places by deep grottoes, has practically no landing places, except at La Bouille, a picturesque village at the foot of chalk cliffs more than 300 feet high. The Seine then pass through a forest region without any interest other than its natural beauty.
The Norman Abbeys
    About 20 miles or so from Rouen the steamer comes to Saint Martin de Boscherville on the right bank, the ruins of the first of the famous Norman abbeys which are scattered along the whole of the lower course of the Seine as you approach the sea. It dates back to the time of William the Conqueror, and its chapter-house is one of the earliest specimens of pointed Gothic. Ten miles farther down, after the steamer has passed the second of the big bends in the Seine after Rouen, the ruins of another abbey come into view on the right bank: the Abbey of Jumiéges, founded in the sixth century. The remains of this Abbey are considerable, and the Abbey church, the towers, the cloister, chapter-house and guest-house offer a kind of retrospective survey of Norman architecture from the eleventh to the fifteenth century.
    About half-way the steamer reaches Caudebec-en-Caux, which overlooks the last segment of the Seine before it opens out into the estuary. Already you can feel the sea-breeze; in fact, it is at Caudebec that a huge tidal wave more than 6 feet high sweeps the whole 200-yard width of the river, at the rate of 30 feet a second, at the time of the equinoctial tides.
    You should get off at Caudebec and have a look at the old houses in the Rue de la Boucherie as well as at the church. The