Much as we would have liked to visit the D-Day Beaches on Memorial Day, we knew it would be a madhouse. And if the busses and vans we saw headed out that way were any indication, we were correct. Instead, we chose this day to head out to Mont-St-Michel. And while that, too, was swarming with tourists, it was a bit less insane than on other days.
Mont-Saint-Michel checked off all my boxes: scenery, history, castle and church.
The story is that, in 708 AD, Michael the Archangel appeared to Bishop Aubert in a dream and instructed him to build a church upon this island rock. Aubert dismissed the dream as, just a dream. Michael appeared a second time. Aubert feared it might be demonic possession and did nothing. Michael appeared a third time and poked his head. When Aubert woke up, he had a hole in his skull … where Michael poked him in his dream.
That got his attention.
It was a climb to the top …
… but not as bad as we had been warned.
On the border between Normandy and Brittany, we could … almost … see the original Jersey.
An added attraction: The only thing worse than performance art is performance art … by children.
Our tour guide was appalled by the spectacle.
Jim said it reminded him of Children of the Corn. It reminded me of the ne plus ultra of film musicals, Lost Horizon.
Again, some wonderful stonework.
The complex was built upon building upon building – village at the base, original abbey (10th century) with an expanded abbey on top of that (12th century) and the spire and more ornate churchy stuff (17th century) on top.
Being impregnable, part of the middle level was used as a prison, a sort of French Alcatraz. Because such a vertically aligned required, well, a dumb waiter, to get goods from level to level and the prisoners operated it. However, to make it work they needed a human-scaled hamster wheel to operate it.
There was also a don’t-blink-and-you’ll-miss-it bit of romanesque fresco.
And a cool light fixture.
Being on the coast, we also had to share the space with seagulls. And they don’t share. The day before, we saw one swoop down in an attempt to grab a sandwich out of a tourist’s hand in Etretat. Today, just outside the church who didn’t give a toss to the hordes of people around it. THIS was its spot and it wasn’t moving.
We broke for lunch. There are two local delicacies: 1) high-end omelets (the secret: whisk the whites and yolks separately until beyond fluffy, and cook on a wood-burning stove) and 2) local lamb (the maritime air adds saline to the grass the sheep eat, which, well, salts the lamb internally.) We chose lamb, and sitting across from us in the restaurant we chose was … our guide from the day before. She congratulated us on choosing the best restaurant in town.
At the end of the tour, we were dropped on in Bayeux. Had we been smart, we would have called our driver and rescheduled to have him pick us up at a few hours later. But, since we would be back on Wednesday, kept to our schedule.
Back in Caen, we took another walk.
Some interesting storefronts, like:
I have long prided myself on my ability to read maps. I like walking cities, partly for the exercise, but mostly to get a sense of the geography in my head. Usually, in a day, I understand the layout of the neighborhood and can walk it without a map. Caen flummoxed me. I suspected that some of the problem is that our hotel was on a corner of a semi-pedestrian street. It took me all four days (and help from Jim) to get my bearings.
Caen has one of those gilt statues of Joan of Arc, just like Paris (more on that later) and Philadelphia (the Philly legend is that the statues were mixed up and Philly got the “real” one and Paris the copy.)
Sharing the square with Joan is a sequoia, a gift from California. It seems happy enough there. In 200 years or so, it’ll be really impressive.
Siegfried Connelly's Blog 