April 21, Orléans

Took a trip into Orléans itself today.  It's quite a  historic city going back before the Roman time.  It is most famous for being the home of Jeanne d'Arc for a while and the site of one the main battles she was involved with.  Many of the old buildings are half-timbered, which reminded us of Rouen.  The cathedral is enormous and quite impressive.  We were fortunate to catch part of a service and hear the organ playing.  Here's a few shots from today.

Jeanne d'Arc statues are everywhere.  Here are two, one in front of the former city hall (which, itself, is quite spectacular inside) and one in Place Jeanne d'Arc.  Evidence of the effects of the second world war are one these two statues.  Note the bullet holes in the standing statue (47°55'7.2"N, 2°01'10.9"E).  The mounted statue was rebuilt in 1950 with the generosity of the people of New Orleans (47°54'9.4"N, 1°54'29.5"E).  In liberating Orléans from the Nazi's, the US forces bombed the hell out of Orléans resulting in much of the city needing to be rebuilt.  When you look at the photos on display near the second statue and compare what you see in them with what it looks like now, it is incredible how much destruction was sustained.

 Half-timbered buildings (47°54'0.0"N, 1°54'20.4"E)

Ok this last shot may seem a bit odd, but we were told by friends of ours who spent extended stays in France last year to try 'duck in a can'.  Our initial reaction was to laugh but they insisted.  So this was tonight's meal.  Someone asked in a comment if we'd had anything decadent yet.  Perhaps not decadent but surprisingly tasty and no doubt unique to France.  It is confit de canard -  basically pieces of duck cooked in a can with copious quantities of goose fat.  You take the duck pieces out and warm them on a baking sheet in the oven and cook potatoes in the goose fat.  We had white asparagus with this as it is white asparagus season here.  We will definitely do the 'duck in a can' again, but I suspect we'll skip the white asparagus in the future.