A Day in Bayeux

After touring the Normandy battlefields and D-Day landing beaches yesterday, we had decided to spend this day in Bayeux. The cathedral is inspiring for photos any time of day, and the town is small and charming. Our B&B was conveniently located in the old town, so we could leave the car and just walk to the places we wanted to see. The two main sites for the day were the museum of the Bayeux Tapestry, actually an embroidered cloth that is 230 feet long,which  tells the story of the Norman conquest of England through the Battle of Hastings. It was thought to have been commissioned and created in 1070, and is an amazing example of Norman Romanesque art, which is still colorful and has been remarkably preserved over the centuries.

Photos are not allowed in the museum, so I found this to share:

When you enter the museum, they give you an audioguide, which is organized according to numbers which have been placed above sections of the cloth. The audioguide tells you which portion of the historical story you are viewing, pointing-out interesting things like chopped-off heads, royal characters, etc. It didn't, however, point-out or explain why there were a few naked people in interesting poses along the border in one part of the cloth  (see below). LOL

We also visited the new Art and History museum in Bayeux, which had one room that featured the finely-detailed lace that Bayeux is famous for. All of this lace is handmade by ladies, who have the silk or linen on spools (bobbins) which they somehow twist and turn (many bobbins in each hand) and create this unbelievably complicated lace (in many different patterns) for shawls, scarves, fans and other clothing and fine homegoods.

In the evening, Mark and I decided to visit the German WWII cemetery. It is a somber place, with a peace garden planted with hundreds of oak trees.

I found this quote at the cemetery: "The German Cemetery at La Cambe: In the Same Soil of France Until 1947, this was an American cemetery. The remains were exhumed and shipped to the United States. It has been German since 1948, and contains over 21,000 graves. With its melancholy rigour, it is a graveyard for soldiers not all of whom had chosen either the cause or the fight. They too have found rest in our soil of France." Actually, many of the American dead who were exhumed from this land were buried at the American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach. It was up to the soldiers' families to decide if they should remain in Normandy or be brought home for their final resting place.