ABCs of Caen: Abbeys, Beaches, Cider

The ABCs according to me at least. I have so much to write about and so many pictures to put up!

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!

Caen - I can't pronounce this word

I wanted to write a real post with pictures and everything but the internet stopped being friendly and got slow. I'll write tomorrow, possibly in the morning (if I have enough time). Here's what's on the docket:

The pronunciation of "Caen."
William the Conqueror
How to ask the Pope for forgiveness when you marry your cousin against his wishes
Lots of old buildings

Also, tomorrow we're doing an all-day D-Day trip. We are getting up and going to the Caen Memorial Museum for the morning (which tells the story of the War and is also greatly dedicated to promoting peace) and then we're going on a guided tour of the beaches. So I'll have lots to tell tomorrow!

The city that hated Joan of Arc

I would call today in Rouen a success. Karen and I saw pretty much all of the old city and hit all the major landmarks. For those of you who don't know, this is why Rouen is an important/interesting city:

It's the site of Joan of Arc's death (by being burned alive).
It's the home of the tallest cathedral in France (which was also the cathedral that Monet painted at all different hours in all different types of weather).
Most of the houses are made with wood timbers.
It was a large/wealthy city during the Middle Ages.

So first, that cathedral.

This cathedral is so immense that I have photos from all different sides. It's impossible to get it all into one frame.

I believe this is the side Monet used to paint.

This has got to be one of the unluckiest cathedrals in France. The building of the cathedral started in the 1100s, and the church got hit by lightning early on. Then in 1200 it burned down. Then it got hit by lightning again. Around 1350 the spire blew over. Then they did okay for about 150 years...and then the tower caught fire again. The 16th century brought the Wars of Religion, which majorly damaged the cathedral; the church pulled itself together in time to get hit by lightning again in 1625 and 1642 and then got badly damaged in a hurricane about four decades later. (What? There are hurricanes in France?) There was another fire before the French Revolution, during which the rebels came in and chopped statues heads off. Bear with me here, I'm almost done. The high spire was completely destroyed by yet another lightning strike in the 1800s and then the church was badly hurt during Allied bombings of France in the 1940s (much of the stained glass is gone). Finally, in the 1990s, there was a tornado that caused much of the roof to fall into the cathedral.

Whew.

For all I know, most enormous 900-year-old cathedrals have lots of bad luck as well, but this seems extreme. Anyway, there's a lot of construction going on at it at the moment - it's been almost constantly under construction for its entire existence. But it was still striking in its size and ornateness.

More shots of various sides of the cathedral. 

Elaborate figures (which have been restored) over one of the entrances.

Some shots of the interior. The second is the ceiling under the tallest spire. SO HIGH.

In this photo you can clearly see up top that there is no more stained glass - it all got blown out by the seven bombs that hit the cathedral during the Allied bombings. Some of the lower stained glass (some of which is from the 1400s) has survived.

A model of the cathedral - the only way to show what it really looks like!

Go here to see some of Monet's paintings of the cathedral: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouen_Cathedral_(Monet). We saw one of the paintings in the museum in Rouen.

Unsurprisingly, the cathedral dominates much of Rouen. There are several churches, but one of the other old and historical ones was completely under construction and impossible to access. So here are some of the other sites we saw:

Typical Rouen buildings - pretty! And very different than the buildings in Périgueux.

More typical buildings. Look at the old, fancy glass on the first building!

And, as the blog post title says, Rouen is also well-known because it is the site of the death of Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431 (and then about 25 years later people basically said, "Oops. We messed up. She's okay." And they "rehabilitated" her - though she was still very dead.) The site of Joan of Arc's death is marked with a plaque, a cross, a statue, and a church.

The area where she was burned (le bûcher means the stake) and a sign commemorating the place.

And a sign on the old palais de justice explaining that it was the site of the trial that determined that Joan of Arc would be burned the next day at the market square. Quick turn around. There was a also a sign saying that in the same building a couple decades later they decided she wasn't a witch after all, but that one was less interesting.

And here are a few other things:

The "big clock." Very fancy, very pretty.

This is a courtyard on top of an old plague "cemetery" - which is really more of a mass grave. Some of the buildings around it are a school now! Creepy place for a school.

All around the walls there are carvings of skulls, bones, shovels, picks, etc. Very creepy.

I didn't take any pictures at it, but as I mentioned, we also went to the art museum and saw a lot of Impressionist paintings (the Impressionists really liked Rouen) and a bunch of other paintings. It was free for those under 25 - so totally worth it. But it was really quite cool to see the Monet paintings!

I liked Rouen. It was an interesting place, though I'm glad we only decided on one day here. We wouldn't have needed more time! Tomorrow morning we're off to Caen!

Didn't I post this ages ago?

I thought I posted this more than a week ago but it is showing up as a "draft" in my post list, so I'm just adding it now. Additional reading for tonight!

I wrote most of this blog post a few days ago but forgot about it and never posted it. Now I need to change some of what it said because some of it is no longer relevant...

I've been proud of myself this week because I've gotten back into running, and I've actually been running longer distances than I've done in a long time. It's really nice to go running along the river, and I've been running with Eve, so that keeps me motivated. My goal is to keep it up until it's time to go home so I'm in shape to keep running this summer. Except today it got super cold again, so I definitely skipped the run.

Until today, one of my tutoring students was a girl named Léa. She's about my age she wants to join the French Navy. Léa called me today to let me know she'd been accepted into the next round of interviews for the post she is applying to. She wants to stop our classes since she doesn't have a whole lot of time before the interviews and needs to focus completely on what she wants to talk about (in English) during them; she'll just be studying constantly on her own now. We'd gone through all the major things she needs to talk about in her lessons, so I really hope it all helps her get the position she wants! I'll miss seeing her twice a week though!

Léa was also been super helpful in teaching me slang and other useful things about French. Last week she actually taught me some slang native to Bordeaux. For those of you who actually know a bit of French, I'll write it below. If you don't know French...I'm sorry! I'll translate - but some of this slang is only used in Bordeaux, so I'd have to translate it for French people as well.

Excuse the vulgarity here, it's purely for learning purposes:

This all started because Léa said, "Je suis parêt" which meant nothing to me. When I asked, she told me it essentially means "Je suis prête" which is "I'm ready" but parêt is a word native to this area.

Furthermore, in French, a popular curse word is putain, which can mean just about any English curse word you want it to - goddamn, shit, fuck, you name it. You can also make is particularly vulgar by saying putain de merde (basically double the vulgarity; the closest equivalent in vulgarity is probably motherfucker). In the Bordeaux region, they often substitute putain with punaise. Punaise works well because it sounds fairly similar to putain - but in reality it means "stink bug."

You can also use the word anki (or anqui) which also stands in - and is apparently used only in this region of France.

There's also the word gavé which can be used in place of super, so instead of saying something is "super bon!" (really good) you can say it's "gavé bon!" Gavé can also double as a verb, gaver, which can replace énerver, or "to annoy." No idea why gavé can be used in such different circumstances.

But to bring that all together, in Bordeaux you could say, "Anki, ça me gave!" (Putain, ça m'énerve! for my French-speakers) and only people from Bordeaux would unerstand you. Léa told me that she once said that in the north of France and no one had any idea what she was talking about.

So there's your lesson about slang from the southeast of France.

New things in Paris

Unless you're in Paris, guess what. Sunday evenings are no fun in France. Karen and I arrived in Rouen, a town of about 100,000 in lower Normandy, around 7pm this evening...and, oof, it is quiet and dark. We're close to the center of town, but it wasn't so appealing this evening. Hopefully tomorrow morning will bring sunshine and a better impression. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Saturday morning I left Périgueux to head to Paris to meet up with Karen; we also ate lunch with Katie because she stopped in Paris before getting on the bus to go to Belgium. I always love being in Paris. I've said this to a few people recently, but if I were to live in France again, I wouldn't want to be in Paris. Part of that is because I just feel so much more comfortable and at east in big cities, and part of that is because I just love Paris. I can even get over the stereotype of rude Parisians. Usually. But it just doesn't get old wandering around Paris because it's so beautiful and everything is so interesting and so old!

Karen hadn't been to Paris in years, so I pretty much told her we should do whatever she wanted to do, though I did request that we go to Père Lachaise cemetery, the biggest cemetery in Paris. I'd never been there before and it's well known as the burial site of people like Balzac, Jim Morrison, Molière, Oscar Wilde, Chopin, and Proust. It was really interesting actually.

This shows how raised-up from the street the cemetery is. Probably because there are hundreds of thousands of bodies in the cemetery and lots of them are stacked up.

Walking around. Most of the "graves" are these mini-crypts that serve for entire families. I don't know if that means that people are stacked up underneath or if they've been cremated. 

Molière's grave. It had little theater masks on the side of the coffin (sarcophagus? sepulcher?) to show what he had done during his lifetime.

Jim Morrison's grave which you can't actually get too close to. Apparently parts of the stone have been stolen in the past. Also, I still don't know why he's buried in Paris...

One of the older, more overgrown parts of the cemetery.

Every time I have typed the word "cemetery" in this post, I have spelled it wrong and typed "cemetary." So, moving on:

In the evening we saw the opera building from the outside and, very happily, bought some Starbucks. (We went back there again today.) Fanciest Starbucks I've ever seen:

Leave it to Paris.

Afterward we walked all the way up the Champs-Elysées (long walk) and decided to go up the Arc de Triomphe, something neither of us had done before. Being an assistant came in handy because since we were under the age of 25 and could prove with out passports that we were legal residents of France, we got to go up for free! Which, no surprise, was totally worth it! It was neat to see a totally different view of Paris and to look all the way down the Champs-Elysées.

City of Lights.

And the fanciest light of them all!

An American guy offered to take a picture of us. So now we know we'll have at least one picture together from our trip!

The next morning, today, we did a lot more wandering, which is really the best thing you can in Paris. Our hostel was fairly close to Montmartre, a very nice area of Paris with hills and winding streets - it feels completely different than most of the rest of Paris, actually. It's also topped by Sacré Coeur, a big basilica - which was designed by the same architect who designed the cathedral in Périgueux, a fact I may have mentioned before. I had been to this area before, but since we got up and left the hostel really early, we got to the basilica and the neighborhood before the crowds, which was nice.

Sacré Coeur - definitely a different look than the other famous Paris cathedral, Notre Dame. 

There were a ton of very impressive paintings for sale by the creators in a square by the basilica. I think I want to get nice paintings/drawings of different scenes of Paris when I'm a real adult and start decorating my own apartment/house. I really liked a lot of the paintings that I saw, and a lot of them really were quite impressive.

We wandered for much of the afternoon and had a lunch of bread, cheese, fruit, and chocolate sitting in front of Notre Dame. (Karen said, "Do you ever say to yourself, 'Is this really my life?'") We walked through the Latin Quarter and the Louvre (we really saw a ton of Paris over about 36 hours) area before picking up our luggage and heading to the train station to come to Rouen. Here are a few pictures from the rest of the day:

Sailboat in the fountain at the Luxembourg Gardens. 

I took this purely to show this thought: "Oh my gosh everything is open and people are shopping and we're in France and it's Sunday and I love Paris."

Close to Notre Dame. Such good weather today!

Walking along the Seine on the way to the Louvre.

And the Louvre and the glass pyramid. There was, of course, a monstrous line to get into the Louvre. Though judging by the lines we saw elsewhere, it was probably nothing in comparison to what it was when I was there with my family in December. There were definitely tourists around (of course), but it wasn't too crowded. We didn't even have a line at the Arc de Triomphe!

Tomorrow we'll get up and explore Rouen for the day and also think about what we want to do when we head over the Caen.

Also, it's so nice not to be in a hostel tonight (or for the next five days!)

Oops!

I meant to write a blogpost last night but completely forgot. I'm getting ready to leave the apartment for my two week "winter" vacation - it hardly feels like winter anymore. Today I head to Paris to meet up with Karen. We have one night there, then two in Rouen, and then four in Caen (Normandy) from where we'll take lots of day trips. After that I'm headed to England!

I should be able to post during the trip. Hopefully.

Also, when I did my laundry to get ready yesterday, the dryer (which I always use and which I put on the exact same settings as usual) literally burned my clothes. There was smoke. They're not all ruined, but I did have to throw out some things and I don't know how I'm going to get into my clearly shrunken jeans. Laundromats in France apparently have a real problem with my clothes, as this is the second time some of my things have been ruined - and not because I did something wrong! But now it's train time!