Arromanches, D-Day's Gold and Juno Beaches

Arromanches, Normandie, France: The WWII Mulberry Harbor here is still quite visible offshore. There is a new 360-degree cinema at the top of the hill overlooking this site, which has a fantastic movie of actual WWII footage which came from journalists from many different countries that fought in the war. 

On the other side of the road from the ocean, there are wheat fields as far as the eye can see. Normandie provides France with the wheat that makes much of their bread.

Next to the beach, a German bunker that was repurposed. You can see the damage from the D-Day bombing. The beaches are wide and beautiful here. Families spend the day in the sunshine, boating and scooping their nets in the shallows for shrimp (the kids, below, were having a blast catching them, "Maman, crevettes!!!").

It was fun to watch the little tractors hauling boats into and out of the water to the parking lot.

Here there is a beach, there is a city. A city where I live: Courseulles sur Mer

I loved this: a small library right on the boardwalk of the beach at Courseulles Sur Mer -- and people (even kids) were actually using it! The library provided both books and games. We decided to have a seafood lunch at a nice restaurant right on the boardwalk. Mark is always game to try the local delicacies (even when they are scary)! He ordered bulots for a first course -- a large turban-shelled sea snail, which is steamed and served with mayonnaise for dipping. Here he is, conquering the monsters from the briny deep:

After lunch, we visited Pegasus Bridge, which crosses the Caen Canal between the cities of Caen and Ouistreham in Normandie. The is the site where British Gliders successfully landed on the night of D-Day. The original bridge now sits on the grounds of a WWII museum dedicated to these brave troops. The new bridge is still in the original location, just about a block away (and pretty-much looks the same  as the original). The gliders (dozens of them) came-in silently in the dark and hit their targets remarkably well. This museum is full of soldiers' personal effects, uniforms, a diorama and movie which shows how the mission succeeded that night. They also have a full-scale replica of a glider, as well as parts of the Bailey Bridges (bridge panels that could be placed quickly by the Allies where there were no bridges).

Glider (above) and Bailey Bridge (below)

From here, we left WWII history behind for a drive out to le Mont-Saint-Michel.

Camembert, Calvados, a Conqueror. . . and frozen peas

Today, a little driving in the French countryside. Ok, a lot of driving -- plenty of barely-two-lane country roads, bordered by fields of wheat or cows, centuries-old stone buildings and thick, green hedgerows. Plenty of roundabouts to navigate, so we were thankful (most of the time) for our Garmin GPS. We'd decided to search-out some of the products this Normandie countryside is famous for: Camembert cheese and calvados (apple brandy). Our first stop was a tiny family farm, which has windows in its cheese-processing building so that you can view the cheese-making process. Here, Monsieur Durand is ladling curds and whey into molds. We have seen firmer cheese being made previously, and it is striking how loose/soft these curds are. With firm (cheddar-type) cheese, the curds are like little chunks. With camembert, you can barely discern the curds from the whey at this stage -- it almost looks like custard.

Later, when the curds have drained from the cheeses, they are unmolded and placed on racks to age. They spend several weeks aging while they are salted, ripened and matured. Fromagerie Durand is the last small family-owned-and-operated raw-milk (non-pasteurised) camembert Fromagerie et Ferme (farms) in in the village of Camembert. Big factories are taking-over here, just like back at home in the U.S., and have changed the process by using pasteurised milk (big factories cannot ensure the safety of their products when they use unpasteurised milk -- they like the control of uniformity). This means that the big firms are not allowed to use the prized label, AOC (Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée) or controlled designation of origin. This is a label used in France to specify exactly where products come from, where their ingredients are sourced and how exactly they are produced. There are strict quality controls and rules for anyone who wishes to use the label. It is used for many agricultural products, such as cheese, wine and calvados.

We purchased a small round of camembert and a bottle of local apple cider (the non-alcohol kind) for our picnic today. We had bread from a boulangerie, and stopped to pick-up some fruit along the way. All around the French  countryside, you can find areas to pull-off of the road and have a picnic (usually a sign will alert you to small picnic areas with two or three picnic tables and some trees).

After lunch, we ventured out to another of Normandie's important producers, the pommeau and calvados distillery, Château de Breuil, which is still located on the land owned (and lived-on) by the Breuil family. The château and grounds are amazing  (looks like a fairy-tale), and the tour of the distillery was fascinating.

 

Below: part of the family estate which is still lived-in (and cannot be toured). Just a little country place.

The calvados (apple brandy) is produced from apples grown on the estate as well as in local Normandie orchards. In order for the calvados to carry the prestigious "AOC Pays d'Auge" (even more prestigious than an AOC label), it must be made of local cider apples and distilled twice under very strict rules.  After pressing and distillation, the calvados (a digestive) is moved to oak barrels for aging. Its alcohol content is carefully monitored, and the barrels are blended to maintain a uniform taste. 

 

The aging building is part of the estate -- and like the estate, it was built in the 16th and 17th centuries. The barrels are used many times, depending on the individual characteristics of that barrel. I think our tour guide said that the oldest one currently in use is about 100 years old.

A special vintage, from 2000, this one will not be blended with the calvados from other years. 

At the end of the tour, we tasted pommeau, an aperitif made on the estate (lower in alcohol than calvados), as well as a 15-year-old calvados (could have peeled paint off of the walls, it was super-strong, at least for a lightweight like myself), and a 25-year-old calvados (which was far smoother). As the calvados sits in the oak barrels, some of the alcohol evaporates through the wood  (this lost amount is called "the angels' share") while the oak flavor imparts a smoothness. We decided to purchase a bottle of the pommeau to bring home.

We ended our day with a visit to William the Conqueror's castle (he lived from 1028-1087), Château de Falaise, in Falaise, Normandie. He was the first Norman king of England, from 1066 until his death. Though the impressive structure, set on a hill overlooking the old town and modern city, is partially ruined, much of the structure remains. Visitors are given tablets, which allow you to scan the room you are in. When you look at the room through the tablet, you can see it as it would have been painted and decorated back during the time it was used by William. Technology brings it to life!

William, himself:

There was a great view of the city from the castle:

Mark enjoyed seeing all of the castle, while I waited on the lower floors. Unfortunately, earlier in the day I had twisted my ankle on a wobbly cobblestone (I like to call it a "wobblestone"), fallen and scraped my leg. While the scrape was my initial concern, it turned-out that the ankle/foot pain  was more of a problem. We stopped at a market on the way back to the B&B, and Mark got some frozen peas to use as a cold compress. It really helped me to feel better.

This photo was taken after I'd cleaned it up and applied neosporine ointment. I'd been so careful during the trip, too. Always being extra-vigillant on stairs, cobblestones and the like. I knew that one wrong step could be  the ruin of my time in France. Fortunately, this happened near the end off the trip, when we had a car, and it wasn't too bad!

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.

First Day in Normandy with Mark, part 2: Various WWII Sites, and Bayeux

Our tour guide, Stephan, standing in one of the hundreds of craters still evident at Pointe du Hoc. He is 6' tall, so you can see how deep the craters are that were created by the bombs. You have to be really careful in this area to stay on the trails, because there are craters like this everywhere, as well as twisted steel cable, bags of petrified cement and other rubble from the bombed gun emplacements.

A small bridge (to the left, out of view) in la Fière was the scene of a battle in WWII. The bridge was a strategic point -- the fields were all flooded at the time, so the bridge was basically the endpoint of a causeway. It was a key objective of the Paratroopers to hold that bridge. They got control of the bridge after three days, but the Germans came in tanks from the other side. Eventually, the Paratroopers (with help from Sherman tanks that had come from Utah Beach) were able to keep the bridge.

A church in Angoville-au-Plein has stained glass windows that commemorate the US 101st Airborne Division. During the invasion of Normandy, two US medics set-up a field hospital in this church (bloodstains from the wounded are still visible on some of the pews). Here, the medics treated both Allied troops AND Germans! They said that they couldn't treat some men and let others die.  This likely saved their lives, as more German troops came through and saw that they were taking care of their soldiers. For a time, there was an agreement that all men would leave their weapons outside, making the church hospital a neutral zone for the wounded.

 

More windows from this tiny, Medieval church. . .

. . . and the altar. 

After our tour, Mark and I walked around Bayeux (where we are staying in a really lovely Bed & Breakfast, Hôtel Particulier Poppa). We looked around a small outdoor market, where we tasted some local cheese, and got some great photos of the town's Merry-Go-Round (Every French town seems to have at least one. They were all over Paris, too.) I love the detail of the animals and how they all seem to be different (and each has its name painted-on).

 

Marguerite. . .

Nemo . . .

. . . and my favorites, Pim, Pam and Poum (the three little pigs).

The market and menagerie (merry-go-round) were in front of Bayeux's Hôtel de Ville. Every town of a decent size has its own Hôtel de Ville, which is not a hotel, but the City Hall.

Below, some of our B&B (which hosts/owners Phillipe and Sophie have told us used to be a place where porcelain was made).

Mark, in the reception room, which is open to guests for relaxing. They have plenty of maps, books and information about the area for guests to use.

The view from the front door and stairs up to the rooms. This house is comfortable, pretty and has lots of historic charm (including wonky stairs and slanting floors).

Mark, making friends with their big tomcat in the garden. :)