A drive through north-west France

[RooFlyer]

I tried to tell the Grand chancellor Hobart that they didn't need to clean the room every day. It really is a waste
Didn't get anything because they kept cleaning the room everyday.

Accor have a formal program of skipping cleaning - its 'green' you know.

I hang the 'do not disturb' sign on my door full time too (and let the front desk know that I'll collect any laundry from the front desk).

 

[Siebert]

The bus gate experience at SYD sounds all too familiar. Priority boarding loses most of its value once everyone is standing together waiting for the same bus. At least the onboard service seems to have made up for it.

 

[SYD]

The bus gate experience at SYD sounds all too familiar. Priority boarding loses most of its value once everyone is standing together waiting for the same bus. At least the onboard service seems to have made up for it.

Bus gates around the world are always a bit of a zoo.

Fortunately, I’ve only had the one so far ex SYD T1 and I was surprised by the scale of the bus gates! But fortunately, a quick ask and as J PAX escorted to the front of the line.

Unfortunately, no seperate lines for status PAX.

Some places like DOH might throw on a special comfy bus but having already rocked up to the gate earlier than usual (because it’s a bus gate), the special bus doesn’t depart until the regular boarding time…

 

[RooFlyer]

Of course: Primatial Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Rouen. It was cool inside!

It is famous for its three towers, each in a different style. The cathedral, built and rebuilt over a period of more than eight hundred years, has features from Early Gothic to late Flamboyant and Renaissance architecture. It also has a place in art history as the subject of a series of impressionist paintings by Claude Monet, and in architecture history, as from 1876 to 1880 it was the tallest building in the world.

The cathedral was enlarged by St. Ouen in 650, and visited by Charlemagne in 769. However, beginning in 841, a series of Viking raids seriously damaged the cathedral complex.

The Viking leader Rollo became first Duke of the Duchy of Normandy and was baptised in the Carolingian cathedral in 915 and buried there in 933. His grandson, Richard I of Normandy, further enlarged it in 950.

In the 1020s, the archbishop Robert began to rebuild the church in the Romanesque style, beginning with a new choir, crypt and ambulatory, and then a new transept. The Romanesque cathedral was consecrated by the archbishop Maurille on October 1, 1063, in the presence of William, Duke of Normandy, soon to become William the Conqueror after his conquest of England in 1066.

On the left, the Saint Romain tower, begun 1145 with a 15th century top. On the right, the 'Butter tower' constructed between 1488 and 1506. It received its name because donors to the tower were given dispensation to consume butter and milk during Lent.

In the 13th century four smaller towers, or tourelles, with spires, were added atop the buttresses that were built to support the west front, two on either side of the central portal below. In the 14th century, to enrich the decoration even further, three gables were attached to the west front below each of the tourelles. The gables were filled with sculpture; over the north portal, statues of the first archbishops, apostles and saints, and on the south, kings and prophets from the Old Testament.

A central lantern tower over the transept is a tradition of Gothic architecture in Normandy. The lantern tower with its flèche, or spire is placed over the transept, almost in the centre of the cathedral, and is 151 meters high, the tallest of the three towers. The first two levels of the lantern tower were built in the 13th century. The original Gothic spire was destroyed by fire in 1514, and rebuilt in 1544 in wood and lead by the master builder Robert Becquet. The next builder, Rouland Le Roux, consolidated the first two levels of the lantern tower and added flamboyant decoration and sculpture.

Another fire in 1822 destroyed the lead and wood spire, which was then replaced, after much controversy, by the architect Jean-Antoine Alavoine with one of iron and copper, finished in 1882. He surrounded the new spire with four smaller spirelets, made of copper. One of these fell during a hurricane in 1999, going through the roof and damaging the choir stalls below.