Waking up was a slightly laborious process; Jane had informed us last night that her usual mode of waking up was to set her alarm and hour and a half before she had to be anywhere, then to snooze for half an hour, and I told her this wasn't going to work so we compromised and I ended up waking up wa-ay earlier than I should have anyways because, having failed to fully close the curtains the night before, the sun rose directly into my eyes. Sigh. Breakfast was good, hot chocolate, bread products, then we were off to Bayeux. It was a short walk from the parking lot to the museum, where we saw the [very famous, people] Bayeux tapestry, crazy to think how old it is, older than most of Paris [embroidered in the eleventh century, the part that survives is 230 feet long and is about how William the Conqueror came to ascend the throne of France, and half that length is battle scenes, very neat], and then, in the museum above it, recreations of famous Japanese scrolls, which was weird, and then we were free on our own for two hours.
With the resident water feature calling me, I walked along the river Aure for a while, pretty slow-moving but it still had fish, and the bank for a while was a nice park, the other side of the river kept by cafes and residences. Making my way back to the vielle ville, the historic bit, I toured the shops for a bit before figuring out the reason there were stalls set up everywhere selling daggers, weird jewellery, carved wooden Things, live chickens, home-brewed beer, soap, whatever, and the reason that a lot of people were dressed freakishly and carrying swords was because that weekend a medieval fare was taking place, which was, of course, fantastic. Around what one prof later told us was a liberty tree, planted just after the French Revolution behind the cathedral, was my favourite booth, whose vendors had apparently trapped normal pigeons, were keeping them in wicker cages and for two euro you could write a message, have them attach it to a bird, and then they would hand it to you and instruct you to Throw it, and hopefully the trauma wouldn't be too taxing. My second favourite booth was the one selling the chickens, as they also had a peacock that I first though was a peahen, until I figured out why so many children were running around with feathers.
We met up again in front of the cathedral and took a relatively short turn about it with a guide picked up from the tourist office, who also next accompanied us to Arromanches, a small town on the coast notable for its being the site of Gold, one of the British landing beaches on D-Day. We visited its museum, of course, full of memorabilia from all parties involved that also had a series of cases of models illustrating the construction of its [because there were two] Mulberry Harbour, and I had no idea, no idea, absolutely insane, seeing the models was one thing but we watched a bit of the movie that had original footage, they built this huge, huge artificial harbour that they floated over from England, a hundred miles, and it was largely complete after twelve days [here's an ish-video good for an internet attention span], and until they captured other ports was how they got absolutely everything into France and Europe for their war, and just seeing that video, the effort and expense, however many hundreds of people they don't mention who drowned to make the harbour, it sounds stupid but I never really realized before how much they must have disliked the Germans. That the Nazis were a threat, you know, and I also know it's different, different government, mentality, but it makes me wonder how they can just exist by each other. I know the US has some rather serious issues with Cuba, but there is still nothing on that level to be able to make a comparison ....
That was long, sorry; we took a bit of a break, and I went wading, and there was a lot of algae, for some reason, red and green and white, and then we took our bus to the American cemetery, of course, and halfway through our visit my camera was reincarnated, yay, waitwaitwait, before going to the cemetery we went to Point du Hoc, which we all thought was weirdly full of holes until we figured it out [bombs] and saw where Germans had stationed guns for a while before moving them before D-Day occurred, coincidentally, and walked around the cliffside and into the command centre of the station [totally don't know the lingo], which involved storage, living quarters for the officers, their workspace and the watchman's post, also interesting. Then we went to the cemetery, watched the flag-taking-down ceremony, assisted by a veteran, then our guide led us to a few of the well-known spots [in the midst of which the camera revived], including two Roosevelts and where Steven Spielberg met the inspiration for his Saving Private Ryan. Our wandering was cut a bit short with its closing, but food for thought, definitely, we didn't even walk to the back.
Dropping our guide off back in Bayeux, we set off back for Paris and got there around 10.20, having stopped halfway through to feed the weaklings. I held out for another gyro in Saint Michel, my new weakness, I'm afraid, as were Nutella crepes last year, and then returned to the apartment.
No comments:
Post a Comment