French Ventures: Caen & Normandy

My final trip during my time abroad was within France to visit the home of one of my friends at the ENS, Arthur. He was Hattie's housemate all year and we spent quite a bit of time talking about different things. I love that he is so political. I look forward to the days when we are each the respective leader of our country... or you know, whatever happens.

We chose some dates and before we knew it, Arthur had mapped out the whole trip. I had been wanting to visit Normandy since I came to France. It was one of the only places in France I really cared to see when I first got here (and before I learned about all the other awesome places I could visit), but it was far and I didn't know anyone else who would be interested in visiting the World War II cemeteries with me. It was just my luck that Arthur specializes in studying history. And that he lived there and knew the area and all that other stuff. The chips fell into place, or whatever the saying is.

We arrived to his house late at night and it was so comforting to smell the cow farms on the outskirts of Caen. I'm from the Deep South of Ontario, Canada. Farm country is my home.

Taken in Alberta circa summer 2007

It was an action-packed few days, and I am guilty of not having taken very good notes, so I'm just going to say that the order we did things doesn't matter so much as what we did. We ended up putting 500 km on the vehicle we were driving in approximately three days.

The first full day we visited Mont Saint-Michel, one of the most visited tourist attractions in France, and one that I had never heard of. Basically, it is a tidal island just off the coast of Normandy where a commune was built in ancient times.

At low-tide it is possible to walk from the mainland to the island across the sand, but there is a risk of sink holes. The water rushes in for high tide "as swiftly as a galloping horse" (as described by Victor Hugo or "à la vitesse d'un cheval au galop"). There is a causeway for pilgrims (this is a site of Roman Catholic pilgrimmage) and tourists and another one currently being constructed that will allow the ocean to flow in underneath. The surrounding bay has salt marsh meadows that were ideal for grazing sheep. The sheep that graze here have become a Normandy specialty and they are called "salt meadow lambs" or agneau pré-salé.

On top of the mount, an abbey was constructed. According to legend, in the 8th century, the Archangel Michael came to St. Aubert, the bishop of Avranches, in a dream asking him to build a church on the mount. Aubert ignored the instructions repeatedly believing that it was just a dream until Saint Michel burned a hole in the bishop's skull using his finger. The Abbey was home to monks in residence. Arthur and our tour guide taught Hattie and I about the history of construction of the Abbey through architecture. The different periods of architecture made it easy to identify the time periods when different additions had been made to the Abbey and who had constructed them. The history of the possession of Mont Saint-Michel is tied to the story of the conquer of France by the Normans. Officially, Mont Saint-Michel is part of Normandy because of the Norman conquer of the area in 1066 CE. During the Hundred Years' War, the English were never able to take the Mount.

We stopped just below the Abbey for a picnic lunch, looked in the "tourist village" (essentially) in the commune for some decent postcards (and found none) before we headed off to our next destination..

While Arthur visited with some of his family, Hattie and I set off exploring the port town of Granville. We found the old city, by accident, and it was gorgeous.

We headed home for dinner, and I answered a call from my Grandma while Hattie and Arthur planned dinner. My Grandma asked me what we were having for dinner, and I relayed the question to Hattie, who realized with a horrified look on her face that they'd planned to eat fish soup and smoked salmon for dinner. At this point, I still didn't know if I loved fish, but I definitely didn't like smoked salmon. But when in Normandy, do as the Normands do... it turned out to be smoked trout which was pretty good and I didn't mind the fish soup. Slowly but surely, I was becoming a fish eater...

The next day was chock full. We started our day at the Bayeux Tapestry (tapisserie de Bayeux) which consists of 50 scenes made in the 1070's. It depicts, in images, the story of William the Conquerer (Guillaume le Conquérant), a Norman who conquered England (Battle of Hastings). The museum where it is kept gives a narration of the story and the historical context of the making of the tapestry as well as information about the history of Vikings and the Normans. It also shows some of the influences the Normans had on the English in terms of architecture, etc. While still in Bayeux, we snuck into the Cathedral to learn a little bit more about the differences between architectural styles and to see where the tapestry had historically been displayed once a year. The tapestry survived the Hundred Years' war, the French revolutions and World War II, including the bombings and the invasion by Allied forces to free France from Germany.

Keeping with this theme, our next stop was the American cemetery at Omaha Beach. When you enter the cemetery, you are officially entering the USA. To get into the museum there was a security check almost as bad as an American airport, but we skipped that and headed straight to the gravesites.

There were thousands. I couldn't fit the width of one section into my camera. There was a giant memorial sculpture with information about the attacks. I hadn't realized that most of the work Canadians did on D-Day and following was the liberation of the Netherlands and Belgium.. they had been involved in D-Day at a different beach that we would be visiting later, but the Americans and the British did most of the work liberating France. The Canadians had the fewest forces available in terms of manpower (considering what a small country we were, that we had barely recovered from the First World War and that the British sent us off to be slaughtered at the Battle of Dieppe, the test run for D-Day) so they represented a smaller number of troops on D-Day.

At Longues-sur-mer on the cliff, we looked at some German batteries:

There were children playing in them. We also stopped to take a look at the artificial port at Aromanches which the British can constructed to bring in supplies during and after D-Day, since all of the ports had been destroyed by the Germans to prevent an Allied invasion.

It's currently sinking into the sand, but it was obvious from where we were located (pretty far from it) that it had been an impressive innovation.

We made it just in time for the last hour of the Juno Beach Centre where all of the employees were Canadian students. We cringed a bit at the French accent of one of the girls and were on the verge of asking her to speak in English, but we must have collectively thought it was more polite to let her tough it out. It was a sort of pat on the back for us that we could tell that it was a bad French accent... you know, hopefully indicating that ours was really good. Or at least good. To be honest, it was a so biased and Canadian-centric and reeked of propoganda, but it definitely wasn't done by historians and as far as we can tell it's funded by donations.

Having studied World War II in my Canadian history classes, a lot of the information was stuff I already knew, but it was nice for Hattie and Arthur to learn about the Canadian contributions to the war effort. There was a lot of background information about Canada's historical background leading up to the war in terms of our relationship with Great Britain and our history of immigration.

Our last stop before we turned to drive toward home was Corseulles Beach....

...where we basked in the sunshine (which is unheard of for Normandy).

At sunset, just before we reached Arthur's home in Caen, we stopped at the Canadian Cemetery at Reviers.

It was really overwhelming and sad. They wrote the ages on every tombstone and the names. The drive home was beautiful and peaceful. The countryside of Normandy has been painted extensively by the impressionists because it is so layered and interesting...the rolling hills and the way you can see for ages. The sea contrasted with the sky gives so many blended shades of blue. It's all breathtaking. Impressionism is still my favourite genre of painting.

The next morning, we set off for the Abbaye aux hommes which is now the City Hall for Caen. It was built in the 11th century, in order to appease the Pope because William the Conquerer married his first cousin, Matilda of Flanders, and the Pope had ruled against it. In order to get back in the favour of the church, both William and his wife had to an Abbey. The Abbaye aux hommes is connected to the Saint-Etienne cathedral. The Abbaye aux dames was the Abbey built by his wife.

William the Conquerer as designed by Christian Dior.

William the Conquerer was buried here, but his tomb was destroyed and his remains scattered during the 16th century Christian reformation (by the Calvinists). During the Renaissance, the Abbey was remodelled by the wealthy men who decided to become monks. The interior of this area of the Abbey is excessively fine. Monks, who generally take a vow of poverty, are meant to live in very poor conditions. For these men, the definition of poverty was slightly different. To stay warm in the absence of a fireplace which was reserved for visitors, the monks had the walls covered in carved wood.

They also commissioned beautiful paintings to be done on the ceilings and had mirrors in their dressing room. The room in the picture now functions as the marriage hall. During the French Revoltuion, the monks were chased from the Abbey and it was turned into a school. Arthur's grandfather attended school here. You could see some graffiti which had been scratched into the wood and walls of the Abbey.

During the Second World War, the Abbey became a Red Cross hospital and the French sheltered here during the bombings and the Battle of Caen. All of the cities of Normandy were battle sites and most of Caen was destroyed. Arthur showed us some old etchings of what the city looked like before World War II. It still looked practically "medieval" with timber-framed houses (I don't know if they are technically medieval.. I think it was the Tudor period in England, if that clarifies things). There were only some buildings left that hadn't been destroyed.

In the gardens inside the Abbey, you can see the damage done by shrapnel, but the allies didn't bomb the building because they knew that the citizens of Caen would be sheltered there. There's a rumour that the French chose this building due to a famous saying referencing the towers of the Abbey: if the towers were to fall, so would the monarchy of England (since it was linked to William the Conqueror).. and so the French may have believed the British would take a little more care not to damage the building. At least, that's what our tour guide told us. Following WWII, the building was transformed into the City Hall.

We spent the late afternoon at William the Conqueror's castle which now serves as the Normandy Museum and the Fine Arts Museum. The Normandy Museum was closed for renovations, which we didn't realize, but it took four employees to tell us when it was going to re-open. We scratched our heads that it takes four employees to inform people that the museum is closed for renovations... At least the French can see their tax dollars disappearing. The Fine Arts Museum was nice. On the way out, Arthur noticed someone dining at the museum's café who turned out to be the head of an anti-gay marriage group. We all made obnoxiously loud comments about how close-minded homophobic people can be and then scampered off to look around the castle battlements....

....and to see the port.

If you're looking for a tour guide who knows how to maximize your time to sights ratio, Arthur is your guy.

Our last day in the area, we went to Cabourg to look around Paris's playground. Apparently this is where the Parisian's have come for ages to hang out on their vacations. It was more touristic than any of the other places we'd visited and we bought some souvenirs and postcards before heading to Paris.

Norman sex toys: Make love, not war.

Arthur took us to his old high school, Henri IV, where Kanye West had a fashion show and the library looks like it's straight out of Harry Potter. The next morning I visited the Musée de l'Orangerie featuring an exhibition by Claude Monet with Hattie and then explored a bit on my own before taking the train back to Paris and concluding my out-of-Lyon adventures for the remainder of my trip.