Bayeux

During one of our shopping excursions, we took my daughter into a French comic book store. These differ from American comic book stores, because in France, comics are treated as an art form, and are printed primarily as graphic novels. The paper, printing and binding are all top quality, and my daughter was very impressed. However, she didn’t want to buy any books, because they were all in French.

There’s a small town in Normandy where one of the most precious artifacts in the world is kept on display. It’s the Bayeux Tapestry, which documents the events surrounding the Battle of Hastings, where William the Conqueror of France invaded England in 1066. It ranks up there with the Rosetta Stone, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Samuel Pepys’ diary in terms of historical significance. I’ve been hearing about it since high school.

The tapestry was intended to be displayed in the nave of the Bayeux Cathedral, and was completed around 1077. It’s made of linen, and it’s nearly a thousand years old. Today it’s kept in controlled conditions in a library adjacent to the cathedral. It’s a lengthy story, illustrated by embroidery, in one continuous strip, 230 feet long by 20 inches high. I convinced my daughter that it would be interesting, because it’s the world’s first graphic novel. As you walk around the town of Bayeux, you see little brass markers on the sidewalk, which lead you to the tapestry. The symbol on the marker is a stylized tree, used in the tapestry to separate the “frames” of the story.



When you enter the display area, a reproduction of the tapestry winds around in a serpentine path, which all of the visitors follow in a shuffling walk. Information about the period, the symbols, the images and the story is presented. It’s tedious reading, so we ducked out and went into the theater where a film provided a much better summation of the story. Basically, it involves the story of Harold (an English Earl) who is captured and held for ransom by a French Count while on a diplomatic visit to France. William, the illegitimate son of the Duke of Normandy arranges for his release, and the two become fast friends. Because the King of England has no heir, Harold promises William that if he is named successor to the English throne, he will step aside and name William as the king. Unfortunately, he breaks his vow, and is crowned King of England during an appearance by Halley’s comet.



William, outraged by this betrayal, built a fleet of ships, crossed the channel and conquered England in 1066. Harold was killed in the battle. This is the last time in history that England was successfully invaded.

Once the film finished, we went in to view the actual tapestry. As a historical record, the tapestry is invaluable and compelling. As an example of decorative embroidery, it is horribly disappointing. I guess I was expecting something of stunning beauty. Instead, it looks cartoonish and dorky.



It clearly represents a lot of work, but it wasn’t a work of love. Instead, the general consensus is that it was commissioned by a member of the French clergy and produced by a bunch of English monks, sweating under the lash of their new masters. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I thought it was going to be one of those breathtaking artistic experiences. It’s not hard to see why nobody does tapestries anymore.

Bayeux is a picturesque little city, somehow completely unscarred by the events of World War II. However, once you’ve seen the cathedral and the tapestry, there’s not much left to do there.

Jour J

Everyone is familiar with the term “D-Day” but I never thought to ask what the “D” stands for. As it turns out, it’s meaningless – a code letter used by the military to indicate a specific day in a series of events where the date is not fixed. It follows in a series of similarly named days: “A-Day,” “B-Day,” etc., each referring to a specific event that must precede or follow another event. In France, the day when the Allies invaded Normandy to free them from German occupation is known as “Jour J.”

We drove along the coast from east to west, starting at Juno beach where Canadian forces landed on June 6, 1944 as part of Operation Overlord, the largest seaborne invasion in world history. The Germans had developed massive defenses along the Normandy coast, which was the largest construction project in the 20th century, extending hundreds of miles along the entire west coast of Europe and along the coast of Norway.

Surprisingly little of it is left. There are occasional gun emplacements and bunkers. Some of the guns have been preserved, but mostly all you see are occasional pillboxes and concrete pylons. These ugly remnants of war are surrounded by charming little beach cabanas and summer vacation homes. After all, this is prime waterfront property.




We proceeded from Juno beach to Sword beach. Each of the invasion beaches has a memorial of some kind, and usually a museum commemorating the sacrifices of the forces that landed there. We stopped in one cute little museum that commemorated two events: The Normandy invasion and the 1927 trans-Atlantic flight by Admiral Richard Byrd and 3 crew members to try and claim a $25,000 prize by being the first to cross the Atlantic from New York to Paris. He wound up ditching in the ocean off the Normandy coast, but if you’re interested, there’s a museum that tells the whole story.

My daughter, of course, was bored to death by the museum.



Eventually, we came to the town of Arromanches. There’s a large cliff overlooking the beach, from which you can see the incredible artificial harbor created by the Allies in a matter of days to support the landing. The port cities of Cherbourg, Le Havre, Calais, and others were too heavily defended for a successful seaborne assault, so the Allies had to build their own after taking the beaches in Normandy. They towed pre-built concrete caissons across the channel and dumped them off the coast to act as a breakwater, enabling them to move men, ammunition and machinery to support the invasion until the liberation of Antwerp in September, nearly 3 months later. It’s not intact, but is an impressive sight from the top of that cliff.

The sunken caissons sweep in a magnificent arc for thousands of feet. Down on the beach you can see some things that look like bales of hay. Those are caissons, and they're huge.



There’s a museum in Arromanches that looked interesting, but we we really didn’t have time to see it. However, they did have a bunch of World War II war materiel on display outside, which I found fascinating. This stuff has been lovingly, obsessively preserved, and I found myself wondering where do you go to buy tires for a World War II howitzer?



Little shops line the streets of Arromanches, where you can buy World War II uniform reproductions, as well as actual artifacts from the invasion that have been found in the area or dredged up from the ocean bottom. If you want, you can buy an actual German hand grenade (shown at top left in this display case photo), but I couldn’t figure out how to get it home on the airplane.



We continued west, eventually arriving at Omaha beach, the site of the bloodiest fighting and the greatest loss of lives in the entire invasion. Over 6,000 Americans lost their lives on this beach. It’s surprisingly pastoral, with people racing sand yachts up and down the beach.



Hard to imagine that 60 years earlier, it looked like this:



On a clifftop overlooking the beach, we visited the American cemetery. There are war cemeteries scattered all over the region, for British, Canadian and American soldiers. There are German cemeteries as well. The American cemetery is beautifully landscaped, and very moving. Thousands of graves lie in orderly rows.



Many of the markers don’t have a name on them, bearing the legend, "Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God." Hundreds of such markers stand in mute testimony to the chaos of war.



I spend a long time struggling to comprehend what a horrifying nightmare confronted these men 60 years ago, fighting with what we might consider primitive arms today. This neat, peaceful, manicured cemetery situated on a cliff overlooking a beautiful stretch of the Normandy coastline offers no insights into the shocking surge of death that consumed the lives of the soldiers buried here.

Rouen

I spoke to Gipsy at the registration desk, and she told us the place to shop was Rouen, a city just north of where we were staying. Rouen is easy to pronounce if you say the word “run” while swallowing a potato.

Rouen is a city full of medieval halftimbered buildings that are bigger on the top than they are on the bottom. Some of them look as though they shouldn’t be standing, but they’ve been there since the 14th century.



We visited the beautiful Rouen cathedral that was heavily damaged during World War II (and by a rare tornado in 1999). It contains a tomb similar to the one shown here, containing the heart of Richard the Lionheart. The rest of Richard is buried all over France.



Rouen is home to a charming avenue called Rue Gros Horloge, which means Big Clock Street. There’s this huge, ornate 14th century medieval clock hanging on a building (it used to be on a tower, but was moved in 1529 to hang awkwardly on an archway over the main shopping district). It only has one hand, indicating the hour, and a wheel showing the day of the week. I guess in the 14th century, nobody cared if you were 20 minutes late for a meeting.



Rouen is also where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. There’s a very nice public square with a beautiful modern church, and a plaque identifying the square as the place where public floggings, humiliations and executions once took place. On the way back to the car, we passed the Palais de Justice, a beautiful, ancient building that is still covered with bullet holes from the fighting during World War II.



Eventually, we pointed the car north and headed for the English Channel (known as “La Manche” in French, which means “The Sleeve” because of its shape). We stopped at a few seaside villages along the coast, most notably the town of Etretat, which has magnificent palisades flanking the beach, punctuated by natural arches.



There are some very old buildings along the coast that somehow survived the Allied invasion. This one is actually a hotel.



By the way, we found out where Osama Bin Laden is hiding:

Giverny

One morning we got up early and drove down the secondary road that runs along the Seine through a series of small towns down to Giverny, where the great Impressionist painter Claude Monet lived. One of the towns we passed through was Les Andelys, which has a large castle up on the hill overlooking the town.





The French use the word “chateau” for “castle,” but they also use it to mean “large house” or “small house.” So it’s all contextual, and makes no sense. We couldn’t visit the castle, because they all closed at the end of September – one of the problems of traveling during shoulder season.

We passed homes that were half-timber construction (typical of the region), and some that had thatched roofs. It was like being transported back in time.



Eventually we reached the town of Giverny, where the home and gardens of Claude Monet have been lovingly preserved. You must pay a small admission fee to enter the gardens, and it’s a little more if you want to see the house as well. The gardens are magnificent, even in October. I can’t name all the flowers that are planted there, but they are growing 8 feet tall in some places, in profuse, voluptuous splashes of color.



There’s an underground passageway that takes you beneath the busy road that runs past the town and brings you up at the lily pond where Monet painted his famous series. It’s a beautiful spot, and my daughter was quite captivated seeing the lily pond and the paintings that were completed there.




Monet was an avid collector of Japanese prints, which cover the walls of his house. At one point, he had a small footbridge built over one end of the lily pond, in the arched Japanese style, which is known as the Pont Japonais. This bridge became the subject of a series of famous paintings. I found it amusingly ironic that on that day, the Pont Japonais was groaning beneath the weight of a dozen or so Japanese tourists, frantically snapping pictures.

Monet’s house is surprisingly modest, although that may have been the way things were back around the turn of the 20th century. Besides the dozens of Japanese prints from his collection, there were lots of copies of his paintings done by students. This is to give you a feel for the way the house must have looked when he lived there, but the copies sucked, so it didn't really work. It’s filled with period furniture that matches the furniture from the original house. My daughter was amused by the lumpy featherbeds.

The French have learned much from Americans, so the entire area that Monet used as a studio has been turned into a gift shop, selling postcards, shopping bags, refrigerator magnets, books, and even Impressionism-by-numbers art kits.

When we left the house, we visited a museum nearby called the American Art Museum, where there was a terrific exhibit of Winslow Homer paintings. After the museum, we took a short walk through the lovely little town of Giverny to the church where Monet is buried, along with many members of his family. By this time, My daughter had reached art and history overload, and wanted nothing more than to sit down and read a book.

Notres Chambres

We had traded out our time-share condominium in Daytona Beach for one in the town of Connelles, France that was named "Manoir de Deux Amants" (The House of Two Lovers). This agricultural community is located on the banks of the Seine about an hour and 15 minutes northwest of Paris, in the Normandy region. Normandy is known for soft cheeses and seafood, as well as apples, which are typically processed into three liquid forms: Cider (a sparkling alcoholic beverage similar to champagne), Pommeau (a more alcoholic beverage typically consumed as an aperitif prior to a meal), and Calvados (a 40% alcohol drink that is served as a "digestif" after a meal, or poured over sherbet between courses). The French love alcohol.



Once we had negotiated the nightmarish roadway tangle of Louviers, we found the road to Connelles, which was closed off for construction, leaving us clueless and stranded. Fortunately, two gentlemen strolled by and pointed to a tiny, one-lane road that looked more like a driveway, urging us to take it. We found ourselves winding through medieval-looking clusters of homes that are built right up against the curbs.

Cars raced towards us through these narrow streets at frightening speeds, forcing us right to the edge of the pavement as they shot by, our side view mirrors missing by a fraction of an inch.

My wife served as the navigator, reading the directions to me from the resort printout. As we crept through the town of Connelles, we came to a sign for a restaurant. She read the directions that said, "… the Manoir des Deux Amants is located 300 m. past the Moulin de Connelles restaurant…" Dutifully, she reported to me, "We're almost there. The hotel is only 300 milligrams past this restaurant." I laughed so hard, I almost slammed into the curb.

Finally, we arrived and checked in. The building is a renovated older structure, right on the Seine (actually it's on a small ox-bow channel about 200 feet (that's 80 milligrams) from the main channel of the Seine). There was a little footbridge that crossed the channel to a small park that bordered on the Seine. We had two bedrooms, one bath, a small kitchen (including a dishwasher and a washer/dryer combo), a small living space with a dining table and a balcony overlooking the water.

The staff was courteous and helpful, especially a girl named Gipsy (the resident shopping expert), and a man named Jean-Christophe.

Whenever I would ask Jean-Christophe for a weather forecast, he would step outside, sniff the air, and tell me, "Cloudy, weez some sun. Maybe rain in zee afternoon." He never used the computer, and he was always right.

We were only given one key to our rooms, and if you were inside, you had to lock the door with the key. This meant that if there was a fire, you would have to find the key to let yourself out.





Just 300 milligrams from our hotel was the Moulin de Connelles restaurant, which is in a beautiful converted mill building that straddles the channel. Many old mill buildings in the Seine river valley have been converted in this manner. We couldn't afford to eat there.

The Normandy region is easily accessible by car ferry from various ports in England, so there are lots of British tourists. Our resort was packed with them. It was weird to see so many cars with right-hand drive on the roads and in parking lots.
There was no grocery store of any kind in Connelles, so we had to drive to a town called Val de Reuil. This is easy to pronounce if you say the word "Roy" while gagging on an oyster.

The "Atac Supermarche" in Val de Reuil was a typical supermarket, except for some peculiar differences from American supermarkets.

For example, they charge you a one-Euro ransom for shopping carts. The shopping carts are locked together in a daisy-chain arrangement. To take a cart, you have to insert a one-Euro coin (worth about a buck and a quarter) in the canister on the cart, and the chain from the next cart releases your cart. When you finish with the cart, you plug the chain back in, and the coin pops out. So they don't have to send employees out to the lot to gather up the carts.

There was a Halal section for Islamic shoppers (they have a large Islamic population in France). The cheese section was the size of an aircraft carrier. The wine section was huge, and you could buy a bottle of delicious French wine for a dollar. The most expensive bottle we saw was about 7 dollars. Strangely, crackers and salad dressings were nearly absent. And in France, you must bring your own shopping bags- they don't provide them.

When we came to the massive cheese section, we agreed that we would each pick one cheese to take home that day. My daughter informed us that she didn't want anything "runny" or "with mold in it." She looked around for a minute and came up with a wedge of Mimolette. FLASHBACK: About 20 years ago, my sister went to France for a semester abroad program. I picked her up at the airport on her return, and she had a ball of cheese the size of her head that she claimed was the most delicious cheese she had ever tasted. It was Mimolette. So out of the 200 or so varieties of cheese available in France, both my sister and my daughter picked the same one. In fact, she refused to eat any other kind of cheese for the duration of the trip, especially the gooey, moldy the Roquefort I purchased.