Signa's Post: Paris/ Rouen (Day 10)

This will be my first entry where I am actually on my vacation. So yeah. Today we had to get up at six (ughhh). We had to catch a train to Rouen in Normandy. I was ready pretty fast but some of the fam (read: one person) was taking a little longer which made us leave a little later than we would have liked to but whatever. We had to take the metro to get to the other train station where we would take a nicer train from Paris directly to Rouen. We literally took up an entire area on the metro because we had our huge bags on our backs plus our carry-on backpacks on our front. When we got to the train station we headed over to our train. Dad told us that we were in first class (#swaggin). The train ride we really relaxing. The view was above average so that's cool. And Astrid and I had these really good macarons from some fancy French dessert shop called Ladurée. When we got to Rouen it was raining (so I guess having my parka was pretty helpful). Astrid had been wearing a dress and decided that she was going to change because it was quite a bit colder than it had been in Paris when we left earlier in the morning. So instead of grabbing the clothes she wanted to put on and go somewhere private and change, she did a "deck change" in the middle of the train station platform. We had to walk to our hotel but on the way we passed the Hotel Astrid so of course Astrid had to get a photo. We aren't staying there in Rouen but we are staying at one of their locations in Caen tomorrow. Our hotel is super nice. Our room has 2 beds so Astrid and I decided to share one and Britta got her own. We dropped off our stuff and headed out to explore the town. We went to this church were we had a tour about Joan of Arc. It was actually really interesting. After that we went to a crêperie for lunch. It was really good and Astrid could actually eat the crêpes which I think she was pretty excited about. We headed back to the hotel to rest for a while before going back out. It was only for about 15 minutes but it was a nice break. Afterwards we went to another church (it was really pretty and HUGE). Mom and Dad were walking around while we sat down because we didn't want to stand anymore. After we left, Dad said he would wait outside as we went into H&M to check out their European inventory. Mom said that he did that because "he would rather poke his eyes out than come into the store with us." But that was fine. Astrid got a shirt and then we went out to find Dad. He then led us to yet ANOTHER church. This is the church where Joan of Arc had her judgement done and then was burned at the stake super close by. We just strolled around to try and find some possible places to eat, but since it was too early to eat dinner (any time before 7 is too early), we went back to the hotel and just chilled there for like an hour and then went to find dinner. We ate at this place just by a church, and on the side of the church there was a fountain spouting fresh drinking water. When I took a closer look at the fountain, I realized the cherubs that were on it were holding their "tic-tacs" and peeing out of them (actually the water was coming out of them but whatever). The place we ate at was satisfactory. Astrid and I had decided that when we went back to the hotel after we would do our nightly workout. When we got there we watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother before working out. We were just about to start our workout when Britta came into the room and said that we had to leave because the light show that we were going to see was about to start (the light show was on the side of the first church I was talking about and it was supposed to be really cool). It was going to start at 10:30pm but they said that a whole bunch of people were already in front of it waiting so we headed out and were there at 10pm. Turns out that people were just there super early and it did actually start at 10:30 but we did not realize that until we had been waiting for 30 minutes. The show was really cool. It was better than I thought it was going to be. They were doing 2 shows (they were different) but we didn't get through the second one because the ocean decided to fall from the sky on top of us. It was insane. One second it was just windy and the next we were running towards our hotel soaking wet. When we were inside we watched people running down the street trying to find cover from our window (people watching is very common here and very fun). After that I took a shower and went to bed.