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Several years back we had the opportunity to live in a small town in Normandy, France. The nearest large city was Rouen, where Joan of Arc met her demise in 1431. Legend has it that when she was burned at the stake, her ashes and heart were thrown into the Seine, which courses through the city of Rouen. The Roman Catholic church purports to have fragments of her bones which are about to undergo DNA testing to see if they could be from the martyred young woman.

No matter what the tests prove, even more fascinating to me is the indisputable fact that had you been outside of the restaurant La Couronne (pictured to the left, it was established in 1345 and is STILL serving up meals) you could have looked across the Place du Vieux Marche and watched her bruleed yourself! The website for La Couronne states that "The location of the stake can be seen from the windows of the dining room." How's that for ambiance?

One thing that has always amused me about the French is that they have had an official group that approves (or disapproves) a word's entrance into the language in hopes of guarding its purity. They do not care to have words like "le babysitter" or "le weekend" to be considered equal to historic, pure French. (Anyone who saw the original 1973 version of "La Cage aux Folles" will remember that Geroges' son's fiance's father had a title something like "minister of the moral order.") When we lived in Normandy it was very popular to have the names of American universities on shirts -- whether they existed or not!! Also popular on shirts were the words "training" and "jogging." Go figure.

From where we are located at TheBigDay in Portland, Oregon, we can't look out on anything as historic as where Joan of Arc was burned, but we do have our connections with France. One of our founders has been traveling to la Belle France twice a year for many years. When they married a year and a half ago, many of their guests had the opportunity to use our website from across the pond, visiting Terry and Pascale's "enregistrement de lune de miel."