Normandy, etc.

Day 1: Normandy

This past weekend, I went on a little vacation out of the city, which was awesome. on our first day, we went to Bayeux, a small town close to the famous Normandy D-Day beaches and home to the famous Bayeux Tapestry. To fully understand the tapestry experience, you have to see it, but I'll do my best to give you a general idea. When you walk into the room with the tapestry, it's dark with a lighted display case about 18-24 inches tall at eye-level.
The tapestry tells the story of William the Conqueror. The room extends about 150 feet away from the entryway. As you follow the story down to the end of the room, you realize that the room is bigger than you originally thought. The room is 150 feet long, but the tapestry display case actually divides the room in two. So when you get to what you thought was the end of the tapestry, you find it turning a corner and going back towards the entrance on the other side of the room. Basically, the tapestry is an enormous U-turn with the epic story told in over 50 scenes and 231 feet of tapestry. Pretty amazing, right? 

After we saw the tapestry, we got to walk around Bayeux a bit before getting back on the bus. The Cathedral was really beautiful. One of my favorite things about it was  All of the natural light inside. Yes, it's beautiful from the outside, but the inside sets it apart in my opinion. Most of the Gothic cathedrals I've seen so far have been marked by darkness inside the cathedral. See, they put up these beautiful stained-glass windows (which are really beautiful, don't get me wrong) that restrict the flow of light inside the church. In this one though, they had a smaller area for the classic stained-glass, and everywhere else there are regular windows with minimal stain which are still pretty and let in the light. Just look at the way the light flows down on the pulpit. It's a natural spotlight.

 But they also had several really gorgeous stained-glass windows in the ambulatory which are more classical for the time and make really great use of the natural light in a completely different way.

After we finished in Bayeux, we headed for the American Cemetery, which was erected just off the D-Day beaches on land that is legally American soil, given to the US government in gratitude for our role in the French Liberation. We were really lucky to have gone when we did, because normally it rains pretty much non-stop this time of year. While we were there, though, it poured that first morning, then cleared up into a really gorgeous day. This is the view from the cemetery looking out at the English Channel. It looks almost tropical, but isn't; my thoroughly windswept hair and frozen feet can attest to that.

 This is a map of the D-Day beaches, laying out where the different soldiers came in. The bloodiest and most famous of these beaches is the Omaha beach, where there were the most soldiers and consequently the most casualties.

 This was my second visit to the cemetery, and what struck me most was the "American-ness" of the area. Before I flew out here to France, I spent a day in Washington, and took a little (and highly patriotic) tour of the national mall before leaving my mother country for 10 months. My first few weeks in Paris, I visited a lot of the French national monuments. Looking at that cemetery, the difference became very clear, and I had my first real wave of homesickness and patriotism. It was a bit of a foreign feeling for me, but at least I wasn't crying like a certain someone I know... cough-Rouge-cough. Americans tend to do more clean-cut (generally very white) sort of monuments, generally accompanied by freakishly well-trimmed green grass. You don't see that sort of thing in France. Most of their monuments are darker, roughly hewn, and if there's grass it generally is nice, but not to the freakish OCD clean cut extent that it is in the States. I'd never realized it before, but now that I did, it made me really miss home for the first time since I've been here.

After the cemetery, we moved on to the Point du Hoc. It's an area that juts out of the coast with a perfect view of the French coastlines. Before the Liberation, this area was occupied by German soldiers whose sole purpose was to keep something like D-day from happening. In order for the British and American forces to invade the beaches, they had to send a group of Rangers ahead of them to take out the German camp so that they could invade without the Germans knowing about it. This area has a whole lot of craters from the cannons and the remnants of the German bunkers, as well as a memorial to the Rangers who died trying to take out the Germans.

Just some general looks at the area. It was crazy windy and cold, but the view sure was pretty. You really have to watch where you step though, because there are these huge craters everywhere, and if you don't watch your step you could end up falling into one.

Some perspective, so you can understand how enormous these craters really are. Claire and I are standing at the bottom of one of them. I'd guess it was around 10-15 feet deep at its center.

So now we have food from the hotel that night. This is the entreé. In France the entrée refers to the salad or appetizer, not the main course. In this case it was a nice salad with warmed goat cheese served on a pear with a sun-dried tomato. It was pretty delicious. I also had a glass of red wine and a whole lot of water. The wine was good, but I'm a light-weight in terms of alcohol consumption, so a small glass was plenty for me.






This is the main dish. It's an enormous chicken leg with a really delicious savory sauce on it with mixed vegetables (green beans, zucchini, mushrooms, and onions, all steamed together), and a sort of quiche/gratin with cheese, egg, and potatoes. It was really good. My favorite part was when we all traded plates so that everyone's food got eaten. If you didn't like something, there was somebody at that table who did! 

Finally, the dessert. I'm pretty sure God himself brought this one down from Heaven. There's a crunchy chocolate brownie thing on the bottom, followed by a thick chocolate mousse layer with cocoa powder and toffee layered on the top with a creamy sauce surrounding the island of chocolatey-ness. The plate-trading continued during this course as well since poor Claire can't have gluten. We just couldn't stand to see all that food go to waste!

So it's a little blurry, I know, but here we have Mont Saint-Michel. She's a city built into a mountain off the northern coast of France. She's surrounded by water at high-tide, but when the tide recedes, there can be up to 10 kilometers of sand and clay beds between the city and the mainland.  Right now to facilitate tourism, there's a roadway that leads right up to the city, but they're working on a new bridge to replace the roadway so that the city can be experienced in its original form. She was built in the middle ages and has never been taken, even during the Hundred Years' War. It's a pretty amazing feat, given France's military history.

Closer look at the city. The main attraction in Mont Saint-Michel is the Abbey, which has served as both a Monastery and a prison. To get to the Abbey, you have to walk into the city and all the way up the hill; no cars allowed inside the city gates. Very few people live here now besides the Nuns and Monks in the Abbey, mainly because it's crazy expensive and really touristy. Most of the old buildings inside the city have be made into restaurants and souvenir shops. But they've kept the general historic feel of the city, which is pretty great and not a little overwhelming.




Here is the view from the courtyard in front of the Abbey. One of the main reasons Mont Saint-Michel has never been taken is because of the tide phenomenon surrounding the fortress. Like I said before, there can be up to 10 kilometers of sand and clay at low tide; it becomes a marshland of quicksand that could quickly gobble you right up (think Princess Bride or Lord of the Rings volume II). They do guided tours of the low-tide area, but you are not allowed out there without a guide, because Gollum and Wesley won't be there to save you from the quicksand and the ghosts of all those who ventured out there without a guide...

Cool cats Mallory and Sylvie chilling out with me at the Abbey.

This is a view of part of the Abbey. Mostly I took it because we've been talking a lot about medieval architecture in my Art History course and this was a prime example of some of the stuff we've been talking about. Plus, it's pretty.

Here's the cloisters, where the monks spent a lot of their time. Beautiful garden/courtyard at the top of the mountain.

My attempt at an artsy photograph, but also getting a picture of the smaller island further out to sea. At low tide, if you have a guide/Gollum with you, you can walk to the island without getting wet. This window is also a prime example of the windows I was talking about in the church that are stained and look pretty but don't constrict the light as much as regular stained glass windows do.

Something you may not know about me is that I'm crazy about vaulted ceilings. I love the really beautiful Gothic look the pillars and ceiling have in the room on the left. On the right is the cutest kitten ever. We found him on the way to lunch. It was pretty much all we could do to walk away from him. Pretty much broke my heart.

More food! this is the gaspatcho we had as an entrée (remember, that means appetizer, not main course, guys). Pretty much cold tomato/vegetable puree dressed up. I'm not much for cold soup, but I took a couple of bites and ate the tomato on the side.

Here we have a classic French dish: Moules mariniere and fries. That's mussels with a tasty white wine and butter sauce. They're amazing, especially if you get them on the coast. They're good in Paris; in Brittany, they're fabulous. I ate all of mine and about half of somebody else's. Then I used the bread to soak up every last bit of that delicious sauce that was left over. Cleaned that plate like nobody's business!

Finally, the dessert; an apple tart with a heavenly custard cream sauce. Kinda like apple pie, but not. Instead of cinnamon and sugar in the filling, there's a thicker, custard-like filling with the apples. It was also really good.

So after we finished up in Mont Saint-Michel, we took a couple of trains back to Paris. I would much rather ride on a train than a car, so I was pretty happy (I get a little car sick). Plus the French rail system is one of the best in the world, so definitely no complaints from me. Picked up some dinner on the way home and made it to bed at a half-way reasonable hour.

So that's it for now. I know this one was late and a little picture heavy, but cut me some slack. I had to cut down the nearly 100 pictures I took throughout the weekend down to just 30. I think I did pretty well if I do say so myself. I had a wonderful time and will post again soon. À Bientôt!