It's spring(ish) in Caen! We've had decent weather temperature-wise, though we did get some rain today.
First I should talk about yesterday and the city of Caen. So I learned in the train station in Rouen that I was mis-pronouncing the city's name when I asked for a train ticket - and the lady misunderstood me as saying "Cannes," the city in the south of France. Caen is more like "kah(n)" with the N as an afterthought while with Cannes you actually hear the N. I'm just going to add it to the list of city names I can't quite say correctly, though at least now I don't say "Cannes."
Anyway, Caen was home to William the Conqueror, who was the Duke of Normandy back in the 11th century and who became the King of England. He lived here in Caen so there are a lot of monuments and buildings that have something to do with him.
Exhibit A
So William, after doing some conquering, decided to live in Normandy and marry his distant cousin, Matilda. The Pope didn't like that and told them they couldn't get married. But they did it anyway, which made the Pope angry. To apologize to the Pope, both William and Matilda promised to build abbeys in Caen. Above is the men's abbey - in which William is buried - and below is the women's abbey, which is about a mile from William's and is home to Matilda's grave.
Exhibit B
Both structures were built in the 1060s, so they're pretty formidable and really impressive. The men's abbey was particularly interesting. Now the town hall is built up right against it, which makes for an interesting juxtaposition between Medieval and modern times.
In front of the abbey/town hall.
Another very old and William the Conqueror related building is the castle in the center of town. It's more of a fortress than a castle, but at one point it was William's main residence. Now it houses two museums and a public area where you can walk around. It's also possible to walk up along the old walls of the fortress and see the city of Caen from above. There are a lot of churches and spires to see. (Of course, because this is Europe.)
Some of the outer walls of the chateau. It was pretty impenetrable.
Walking along the walls of the castle so we could look out and see the city.
More view of the castle walls. I don't have any good views of the city because the sun wasn't right. Plus it's not actually the best bird's-eye view.
On the ground there are the actual ruins of the building where William the Conqueror would have lived.
Despite having several 1000-year-old buildings, the majority of Caen's buildings aren't that old. Much of the city was destroyed during the bombings in World War II, so a lot of the buildings are a bit more modern. But they're all made out of the same "Caen stone," a limestone that is mined in this area, and the city is pretty nice. It's very different than Rouen, and it's certainly very different than Périgueux.
Pedestrian street in Caen.
Another pedestrian street. We ate dinner on this street tonight.
That's Caen in a nutshell. (Oh yeah, plus they loves apples in Normandy so there is cider everywhere.) I think we hit most of the major sites yesterday, so we'll probably do a little more exploring but also do day trips the next few days. Tomorrow we're going to Bayeux to see the Bayeux tapestry and the town and Friday we'll look into going to Mont Saint-Michel.
This is going to be a long blog post, but I want to write about what we did today as well, otherwise I'll just continue to be one day behind on my posts and I'll probably forget to write about stuff.
Today we did the tour of the D-Day beaches. We started out by going to the museum in the morning; it was an extremely well-done museum about the history of the war. There was just the right amount of information. Not too much, not too little. Before we headed out to do the tour, we watched a video about the D-Day landings; there were no words, just images/movies...and it was pretty powerful. It's hard to imagine all those men (mostly young men) fighting on those beaches and knowing they were probably going to die. Frankly, it wasn't easy to watch, but it was moving to think about how brave they were. This feeling was of course exacerbated when we went to the beaches themselves.
To sum up the tour, we saw five different sites with a guide from the museum on a five-hour tour: Pointe du Hoc, Omaha Beach, the American Cemetery, Longues-sur-mer, and the harbor at Arromanches. I'll put up pictures and give a brief synopsis of each location as I go. In all, it was well worth the money we spent on the trip. We did the tour in English, though when we first talked to the guide (a woman maybe 5-10 years older than us) she thought we were looking for the French tour because we spoke in French to her. She complimented us on our French and we spoke with her a few times in French during the trip and then again at the end (we were the last ones in the van and she wouldn't let us tip her because she said we were young and needed to spend it on traveling instead and then she gave us suggestions of where to get drinks or food). She was a great guide and we definitely learned a lot from her.
Okay, so the sites of the D-Day tour.
Pointe du Hoc: this is where the Army Rangers attacked. They literally scaled the cliffs with their bare hands (because the rope ladders were wet and slippery, as were their grappling tools) as the Germans were shooting at them. It was very foggy on D-Day and the seas were rough, so the Rangers had been blown off course and had to navigate back to Pointe du Hoc. Unfortunately this meant they did not have the element of surprise when they attacked.
The remains of a German bunker. There used to be a massive gun in the front space there but it was destroyed and then broken down for its metal.
This land is not hilly. All the holes are from bombs, either from the air or from the sea. There were massive craters all over the landscape.
Some of the cliffs the Rangers scaled.
The actual point of Pointe du Hoc. The Rangers had to scale the cliffs because, as you can see, there isn't a beach at this site so there was no way to land ships or men.
Omaha Beach was our next stop. This was one of the main beaches where the Americans fought and it was also the bloodiest location of D-Day. Interestingly enough, you often visualize the beaches as a short stretch of land; Omaha itself is four miles long and all the beaches together are 60 miles of land. That should give you an idea how massive the attack was.
Today, Omaha Beach just looks like a normal beach. There are some German bunkers still visible but all remnants of D-Day were washed away in a storm that took place shortly after the attack. We did see some examples of the obstacles that were on the beach when the ships came in (big concrete and wooden blockades), but I didn't get any pictures of them.
Looking out at the English Channel. The seas were much rougher on D-Day and it was much foggier.
Looking up the beach. All the area with sand counts as Omaha Beach.
A quote by Eisenhower on a monument at Omaha Beach that I liked. I made the photo extra-big so hopefully you can read it.
Overlooking Omaha beach is the American cemetery, so that's where we went next. It was a very beautiful resting place for all those men and it was a very nice cemetery. There are almost 10,000 men buried there, all American, all who fought and died in the Battle of Normandy (which was, of course, a much longer campaign than just D-Day).
This was the Garden of the Missing. It listed every man's name who was never found (many of them drowned when their boats were hit by bombs). There are bronze markings next to the names of people who were eventually found and laid to rest either in the cemetery or elsewhere.
Looking at the cemetery from the main entrance area.
The cemetery with a view of the Channel on the left.
It was a very peaceful place. Very moving.
Bear with me, I'm almost finished. We stopped quickly at Longues-sur-mer, a spot with four old German bunkers that had been disabled during the D-Day attacks. The enormous guns were capable of firing 18 kilometers (12 miles? I think?) and were used to protect the Omaha and Sword (a beach where British forces attacked) beaches. Here's a photo just to show how large the guns were:
That's our tour guide.
Finally we stopped at the cliff above the town of Arromanches to look at the old ruins of the fake harbor the Allies built. They brought enormous concrete boxes over, filled them with water, and then built a harbor along the coast so they could bring boats into calm water and unload men and supplies to keep the attacks coming.
It was hard to get a picture of this, but you can see the shapes in the water of the old harbor wall.
A "close-up" of the harbor structures.
Whew. And that is Normandy. I learned a lot and couldn't possibly put it all in here. I've said enough already! I'm really glad we took the tour today, it was interesting and moving, and it really made me grateful that I live in the time that I do!
No comments:
Post a Comment