Chocolate, King Richard and cars

Mission Accomplished-both of them!
Two, well actually three things accomplished today. First was that the cathedral had opened the area with the Plantagenet graves. I was all over the room as I ran from one side of the cathedral to the other to see Henry II's son, also know as Henry' the young king and then to the other to see the Lion-heart effigy. Henry, the young king spent the better part of his life behaving like a teenager in rebellion. His father officially made him then co-King of England, the only time England was ever ruled by Associate kings, but in fact, Henry Plantagenet held all the power and the purse strings and his son spent a good deal of his adult life in rebellion, first with his mother Eleanor and his brothers and later, just on his own. He ransacked many churches in southern France, down by Aix, to get money and died there penitent, lying in ashes to repent for all his sins. He asked that William Marshall bring his body back to Rouen and his cape to Jerusalem. England's greatest knight did both.

Only Richard's heart is buried here, his body was at Fontevraud until the Revolution and his entrails are at Challus where he was killed from an infected archer's arrow. Still, I was super excited, completely confusing the English couple behind me with me hyperness. I explained that if you want to look for Richard, it needs to be here in France as he was so infrequently actually in England.

The other accomplishment of the morning was to actually find again the award willing chocolate shop and an awesome pastry shop found earlier in the week. The chocolate shop was discovered last night after it closed, on a small street. All the chocolate is made in Normandy and it was awarded the best in France a couple years back. Minor retail damage done here but I know it will be appreciated at home! The pastry shop has an old man as the pastry chef and a woman who I guess is his wife out front - I had to photograph the wrapping of the apricot tart because it was wrapped so nicely it deserved to be photographed in front of the art museum!

Next stop was the Beaux Art Museum where there are some good St. Jeanne displays and a couple of rooms of impressionists, including Monet, Sisley and Picassaro. Awesome part is that here there were only a handful of other people in the room so you could get up close and then step back in a way not possible in Paris.

Final accomplishment was finding the car rental and driving back into town to part at the underground. Still cannot get the GPS working so that is tomorrow's goal before the trip to Les Andelys.