One fine Saturday morning, Katie and I ventured over to the coast to Le Havre.
What should have been a 50-minute train ride turned into almost 2 hours thanks to slight flooding on the tracks between Rouen and Le Havre. But fortunately we made it, just before noon. It then seems we should have gotten return tickets before leaving Rouen, because there were only trains at 2pm and 8pm. Everything else had been eliminated. We chose the 2pm return, leaving us with 2 hours to walk to and visit the Musée Malraux.
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We weren't outside the train station 30 seconds before it started sprinkling. 30 seconds after that, a total downpour, that instantly turned to hail! We braved the wind, rain, and cold anyway and tried walking further in the direction of the museum. We didn't get a block away from the station before we were soaked to our knees and being bombarded by ice. Just across the river was a Docks mall, so we hurried to shelter.
Once inside, we decided the museum was too far away to walk to, so we walked around the mall and got
pains aux raisins.
Docks was pretty cool; there were a dozen or so semi-expensive stores and a movie theater, and boats out the back. The whole building seemed to have been two brick warehouses or buildings side-by-side that were connected by a leaky tent-like roof.
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Come 2pm, after walking back to the station in the hail, we discovered our train was delayed 40 minutes. We verified this information three times with a SNCF worker. We got coffee and worked on
français des affaires atelier. At 2:45, the only train to Rouen listed was at 4:45. Another worker told us that she had no idea where the 2pm train was, and that she didn't know anything.
But, we could take a bus part way home, then transfer to a train. Katie and I proceeded asked a real sales person, since taking a bus in traffic would be ridiculous. She apologized for the stupide comment by the helper and told us to take a 5pm train that was sure to leave.
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Back to the mall we went for another hour and a half, and, fortunately, were able to visit a Creatures of the Deep expo for 3 euros! It was pretty cool - there were even real weirdo jellyfish preserved in glass cases that you could walk around to see! All in all, it was a very interesting day at Le Havre, and, after seeing the hillsides around the train station once the clouds moved out, I will return some other (non-rainy) day to discover Le Havre that awaits beyond the train station.
