Impressionists, Calvados and Camembert

Sunday-Monday, May 5-6, 2013, Impressionists, Calvados and Camembert

We devoted Sunday to the Museum of Fine Arts in Rouen, and, as with all museums when you try to pack the visit into a short time, we couldn’t do it justice.  There were two parts we knew we wanted to see—first, the permanent collection, and second, the temporary exhibit of 100 major impressionist paintings from all over the world.  We spent the morning in the permanent exhibit which has a very large number of painting (and some sculpture) from the 18^th and 19^th centuries as well as a small permanent impressionist exhibit.  Amazingly, there were no objections to non-flash photography!  Witness fabulous Monet and Renoir:

 

 

 

After lunch at the museum we went to the spectacular temporary impressionist exhibit and lingered there.  Wandered Rouen, had a great dinner, and left this morning for Mont St. Michel.  We eschewed highways, and drove small roads, aiming first for a visit to a Calvados making facility.

Calvados is an apple cider based brandy.  The production is very much like wine-making with two distillations thrown in.  The process goes back centuries, and the buildings at the plant do too:

 

 

 

Just as with wine, some Calvados is aged many years in barrels, and the older it is the more valuable. Some distillers create vintages (but not all). 

 

 

 The distillery itself looks like a Willie Wonka creation:

 

 

They have some non-PC barrel taps:

 

The Calvados darkens as it ages:

 

After a tour of the production facility we had a tasting which was delightful, but boy, that stuff is powerful—70% alcohol!  We had lunch at the restaurant at the Calvados distillery and then left for the tiny town of Camembert, to visit the Maison du Camembert which is a museum dedicated to that one cheese.

 

More than anyone wants to know about Camembert cheese, and after the museum and the videos, a cheese tasting of multiple different Camemberts.  There is a difference!

We then drove (again avoiding the superhighways, winding through beautiful small Norman towns) to the small town of Ducey and we’ll stay here two nights, devoting the day tomorrow to a visit to Mont St. Michel.

 More when there’s more to say.