Our first chance to blog from France. Collections from the past week …

Dec 18th, 2006

Greetings from France! Bonjour de la France! We are happily exploring Normandie together, and particularly the region just surrounding Caen. Caen was completely destroyed by the WWII Allied bombings shortly after the D-Day invasion.

On Monday, we drove along the Normandie coast where the British, Canadian and American forces had attacked on June 6th 1944. We began at Juno Beach, the site of the Canadian landing and toured the fairly new Canadian museum erected there. It was an interesting perspective (non-US nor French) and a good way to start the day. We were struck by what was similar by what was similar and what was different between the US and Canadian war experiences. We also wondered about how nowadays we can be so distant from the wars our countries have engaged in. It is easy to forget that the US is currently engaged in TWO war theatres just as in WWII.

Our visit to the American Cemetery that overlooked Omaha Beach added to our reflections. It was a simply laid out memorial, but it was very powerful. Many of you have probably seen the cemetery in the movie “Saving Private Ryan”. The white marble crosses and stars of David are perfectly aligned and the lawns are immaculately kept. When one looks out to the beach and the Channel, one can only try to imagine the scene on D-Day – the blood that must have flowed and the terrible noise of bombings and screams. The Normandie coast is not particularly accessible from the sea because of the cliffs and angles. It is remarkable that the Allies succeeded given the fact that along most of the coast they were basically sitting ducks for the Germans. Fortunately, the Germans had put most of their forces elsewhere, still a substantial proportion of the Allied troops lost their lives. The best view of the coast could be had at Gold Beach, where one British battalion made its landing. The British had used destroyed carriers and concrete to build a semi-circle around the beach head once it was secured. This acted as a temporary port to bring more supplies and munitions.

After a quick picnic lunch, we headed to Bayeux for a change of pace. This charming town was mostly spared the destruction of WWII and still has many old buildings as well as a resplendent Cathedral. Interestingly enough, it was first designed in the Romanesque style with rounded arches and a simple structure. However, in the 13th siecle (century), a Gothic exterior with pointed arches and flying buttresses was superimposed on this Roman structure. Somehow it all works. Shuwen was a bit disturbed by the crypt (this is the ‘secret’ room in the basement) because of the tombs that Marc was walking on so lackadaisically. There were also some interesting frescos down there.

Probably the neatest thing we saw in Bayeux was a 70m long tapestry sewn in the 11th century depicting William the Conqueror’s (previously William the Bastard) invasion of England and defeat of Harold who had usurped the throne of England after King Edward’s death. Harold was William’s cousin who was given the task of passing the message that William was to be king. Harold did so and swore allegiance to William in Normandie. However, upon Harold’s return to England, he promptly betrayed William and took the empty throne. Thus William’s attack in 1066 is portrayed as justified in this tapestry. In the end, Harold was killed by an arrow in the eye and William, well, we know how that ended. So, kudos to the guy who brought us words like “wine”, “chocolate” and “peach” -- they taste good too! Talking about food, we are loading up on yummy French pastries and pains (bread).


Dec 19th, 2006

We just realized that we have neglected to write about our 2 days in Paris, so this is a back-tracking account. The Bruckers had kindly housed us while we were there. They are truly a wonderful family! We arrived in Paris on Friday AM and took the RER after a confusing transfer from the oldest CDG terminal. The only way out of Terminal 1 was via elevators (i.e., there were no stairs or escalators in sight0, which resulted in a huge backup of people & luggages waiting to take the elevators. Marc was wondering why the French can be both inefficient and impatient.

We spent most of Friday trying to stay awake by walking around Paris. Shuwen dozed off a number of times from simply sitting down while Marc kept trying to keep her awake. We walked from Alesia across Jardins de Luxembourg into Quartier Latin where we had gyros baguette for lunch (of course – for those of you who have been to Paris you will understand this strange phenomenon). Then we walked along the Seine to the Louvre and the Tuileries, down towards Place de la Concorde, then up Les Champs Elysees towards l’Arc de Triomphe. It was a gorgeous day by Parisian standards, but still a little cold. We were pretty pooped by then and so decided to take the Metro back to near Alesia where we got some hot café and thé. Back at the Bruckers, Marc worked on finalizing some travel plans for Caen while Shuwen crashed and took a 2 hour long nap! Dinner with the Bruckers was lovely and homey. We finally went to bed around 10pm. Shuwen managed to sleep through the night and Marc was dead to the world until 10 the next morning. We have been taking the whole no alarms while on vacation thing quite seriously.

On Saturday, we met up with Maribeth Gainard for a HUGE lunch at a small family-owned creperie along rue de Commerce. Unfortunately, it was a typical gloomy and rainy Parisian winter day, which meant that the lines were long for museums. As a result we gave the newly re-opened l’Orangerie a pass even though Shuwen was quite keen on seeing the Monet murals.

At any rate, we did manage to make it to see the musée de Picasso. We have come to realize that the French take their closing times very seriously. If they say a place closes at 5:30pm, it means they start kicking people out at 5pm so that the last employee will be out of the building at 5:30pm. We guess they like their 35 hour work week law. Anyway, we along with a good many others got kicked out of the musée de Picasso at 5:15 (we would have liked an extra 15 mins, but oh well!). The neighborhood around musée de Picasso (le Marais, just off of Rue de Rivoli) was quite lively and seemed like a bit of a ritzy shopper’s paradise. As we walked towards Hotel de Ville (the city hall – Shuwen had thought this was just a grand hotel), we enjoyed the view of Paris at night in December with all its Christmas decorations, lights and festivities around us. The commercialization of course was a bit more than we prefer, but the hustle of bustle and liveliness of it all was also nice in a way. We found the tea store (Mariage Frères) we were looking for, which has some of the best tea we have ever had and got some goodies for family & ourselves.

Dinner was at the Bruckers again, as they were having Beatrice’s boyfriend & his parents over for dinner as well. Alex’s family is from Toulouse in the south of France and they all seemed really gentil. Shuwen tried hard to keep up with the French that was buzzing around the table. It was a typical French dinner in many ways, with multiple courses and some 4 hours spent at the table. Shuwen also realized and appreciated (due to her Chinese ancestry) that the French take meals very seriously. The food included stuffed duck roast, red rice with baked chestnuts and abricot-apple compote, a multitude of cheeses, and a Buche de Noel (chocolate mousse with white chocolate and meringue toppings) and raspberries to finish. We tasted sparkling wine, Bordeaux red and Champagne along the way, and collapsed promptly after the meal’s end, only to wake up late again the next morning and hit the road for Caen.


Dec.20th, 2006

We spent the last two days touring around Caen and some of the coastal towns of Normandie. We woke up to a dense fog on Tuesday and thought we had picked a perfect day for the World War II memorial museum in Caen (realizing also that winter in Normandie is often as it was that morning). We visited the museum in relative peace, since this is the off-season. Marc was able to spend a bit more time looking at the exhibits than last time he was here, because time was less of an issue. We were both impressed with the extent of the museum and its creative way of combining stories from the war with the historical details of what happened. We were the only two people in the auditorium for the film, similar to our experience of the show at Juno Beach.

After the memorial, we headed into Caen for a late lunch at a vegetarian restaurant called La Vie Claire. The “Velouté de Saison” (a vegetable soup) was excellent. Then we toured the old sites of Caen which survived the WWII bombings as best they could. It is really a shame that the city was so devastated, as it now shows little of the charm of other towns such as Bayeux and Honfleur (to be described later). Still, the castle and its ruins were interesting, as were the two abbeys, one for men and one for women. Of the two, the men’s abbey looked more impressive, but the two were simple and complementary, and represented the two sides of the royal couple – Guillaume (William the Conqueror) and Mathilde. Another neat aspect of the two monuments is that the women’s abbey now serves largely as the seat of the Departmental government, and the men’s abbey itself holds the City government.

But today was an even better day…the sun was shining and we took the road for Honfleur, a quiet Normand port in the Seine estuary. Honfleur survived WWII with minimal damage, and features many beautiful old buildings and facades, a picturesque port, an active artist community that traces some of its early inspiration from Monet and other impressionists, and one of the largest wooden churches in the world (the Eglise Ste. Catherine). We also enjoyed the Satie museum, which is dedicated to the memory and work of an eccentric composer who lived in Honfleur; the museum is filled with some of his obsessions and imaginations, much of which comes through a headset that comes with the entry ticket. We were a little disappointed that there was not a bit more explanation to go along with some of these eccentricities we saw, but it remained a fun distraction after a day of exploring historical sites and climbing to panoramic views of the town. We finished the day with a run (through parks, gardens and streets for Shu Wen, and into the countryside for Marc), and then came together again to watch the sunset as we walked around a lake in the Jardin des Personalités, containing busts of all the famous people who have lived or worked in Honfleur over the years.

Tomorrow we go to Vitre!


~ Marc et Shuwen