Mont St-Michel

Tuesday, May 7, 2013; Mont St-Michel

This is an astonishing place to visit; the third most visited place in France (after the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre).  It is both a religious building and a fort, built over a span of 500 years, starting in 1017 and ending in 1521.  It was “a political football” in the words of Fodor’s, and to understand it you need to understand the history of England, Normandy, Brittany, and the Franks.  Suffice it to say, it is a most impressive structure.

The countryside here is flat as a pancake, so that as you approach the Mont it rises out of the distance above the farmland:

 

 

 

Currently it is surrounded completely by water only twice a month when the tides are the highest, but the sand of the flats surrounding the mountain are treacherous and, supposedly, tourists have died in quicksand and because of the inrushing tidal bore which is among the highest in the world.  Currently you park in a vast sea of parking on the mainland and take a shuttle over a causeway to the base of the mountain.  There is a small village at the base of the mountain which contains tourist shops, restaurants and a couple of hotels.

 

You then begin to climb and climb and climb.  And climb.  At the top, as you look out, it is easy to see why it was impossible to attack this place.  It was never done successfully.  We were there at low tide, and In the photo below there is a group of tourists on the sand being led on a sand tour (which we did not take).

 

The rooms are amazing.  All of the stone for the construction was brought to the site from a quarry miles away, by boat.  There is a beautiful church, and the bell in the tower is rung by hand using the rope you can see hanging down:

 

While we were there they tolled noon, and went on tolling for about ten minutes.  There has been a Dominican monastery here for almost 1000 years, and the history is fascinating.  They are a contemplative order, and the story of their self-sacrifice and piety is not understandable to me.  Here are the monks and nuns at Mass:

 

The Mont has a wonderful audio guide which we took, and it was about 2 ½ hours to go through the whole thing.  Here’s the cloister:

 

We then had a late lunch and shopped some at the tourist stores on the way down.  Tomorrow on to the Brittany coast.

 

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.

Rouen: Ossuary from the Plague and Ceramics

Saturday, May 4, 2013, Rouen France

Rouen is a walking city, with many pedestrian streets.  Well, today we walked.  We are staying at a hotel with an unpronounceable name: Hotel-Spa de Bougtheroulde, which is in an old mansion. Here is the outside:

 

And here is the courtyard:

 

We went first to the wonderful Eglise St-Maclau, and then to the Aitre St-Maclou, which had been an ossuary used for the victims of the plague.  There is a large central courtyard:

 

Around the courtyard on the face of the building is a vast series of spooky and grotesque artwork, with skeletons, skeleton parts, gravediggers’ tools, and constructions made partly of sculpted bones.  Here are a couple of samples:

 

 

 

Supposedly this ossuary was part of the inspiration Camille Saint-Saens had for his Danse Macabre.

There is a huge number of amazing churches here, sometimes right on top of one another.  It’s easy to get jaded: just another spectacular Gothic church:

 

We had a delicious light lunch, and I had a glass of local wine.  This is a center for hard cider, and there are many brands.  Joyce had a bottle of cider which is as potent as wine, and felt it as we walked off the lunch and went to the phenomenal ceramics museum.  Rouen was a center for the development and manufacture of all sorts of ceramics, especially porcelain, and the museum here is wonderful.  About 2/3 of the pieces on exhibit were made here; the rest are from all over Europe, but mostly from other parts of France.  Here I’m in a gorgeous room in the museum, which used to be a private mansion:

 

Just about all religious art is Christian from the time of Jesus and after, but here is a beautiful, very old representation of Moses bringing down the ten commandments:

 

Here is a close up:

 

Here is a Delft violin, of all things:

 

Here is a magnificent globe on a stand:

 

 

Tomorrow we plan on the Musee des Beaux-Arts (the Fine Arts Museum) which, according to Fodor’s, “is famed for its scintillating collection of paintings and sculptures from the 16^th to the 20^th century…”

Etretat and Rouen

Friday, May 3, 2013, Etretat and Rouen, France

We picked up our car this morning and drove to Etretat, a small seaside village north of Le Havre.  Fodor’s put us to it with “its spectacular stone formations famously immortalized in paint by the Impressionists” and by giving the whole town a “Fodor’s choice” star.  It was warranted!  Monet, Boudin and Corbet are among the artists who painted here.  Here are the cliffs looking first south and then north:

 

 

There are a couple of strategically placed Monet reproductions along the rocky beach:

 

As we drove on the back roads, avoiding the superhighways, we came across vast stretches of canola fields in bloom with yellow flowers:

 

Canola is used not only for cooking oil, but also is a major source of biofuel.  Our Renault is a diesel and is getting astonishing mileage while having plenty of pep.  Wonderful!  After lunch we drove to Rouen and checked into our hotel.  We began walking the town, and immediately came to one of the most famous sights here, the Gros-Horloge, a Renaissance clock with two faces, each of which looks down a pedestrian street from an arch built in 1527 specifically for it:

 

 

 

Perhaps the most famous sight in Rouen is the Notre Dame cathedral, a Gothic spectacle.  Construction began in the 12^th century and it wasn’t completed until the 17^th century, some 500 years later.  It is both quantitatively and qualitatively amazing:

 

Inside, we came across an ensemble preparing for a concert tomorrow with ancient instruments and song.  Here is the lute player and the “serpentine” player. 

 

I’d never seen a serpentine before, and asked the musician to play it for me.  Here’s what it sounds like:

 

Finally, this is the town where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, and there is a church dedicated to her.  Here’s a statue of Joan with the flames climbing up from her feet:

 

And here’s her very unusual church.  The interior has some wonderful very old windows:

 

 

 

Neither of us cared much for it.  So that’s it for today, a very full day!

Honfleur

Thursday, May 2, 2013, Honfleur, France

This is a picture-perfect small harbor town in lower Normandy, built in the 17^th century, and was a favorite painting spot of a number of old masters.  There are loads of half-timber houses and narrow cobbled streets, along with art galleries and shops.

The ship docked here at 5 AM and the people who were leaving for Paris and early flights left at 5:30.  We were able to leave at 9:00, and took a cab to our lovely hotel just a few steps from the center of town.  We spent the day wandering the city, visiting the art galleries and shops, and taking in the ambience of this town.

As we left our hotel we passed a “lavoir”, a public clothes-washing place:

 

Joyce bought a beret, and now everyone first speaks to us in French.  Note the very tall narrow houses along the harbor front which date from the 1600’s:

 

The one specific attraction in town is the wooden Ste-Catherine church, built in 1453 to commemorate the end of the Hundred Years Was and the departure of the English:

 

 

The belfry is a separate building across a small square:

 

We had a spectacular dinner last night.  Finally!  The food aboard the ship was only good, not very good or great, but now we’re on our own and have decided to treat ourselves to some dinners in special restaurants, and Honfleur has a couple.  Paired with a lovely bottle of Alsacian Pinot Gris, it was just great.

Tomorrow we’ll pick up our car and wind our way to Rouen stopping along the way at the little town of Etretat on the coast north of Le Havre which is supposed to be lovely.

Normandy Beaches, Bayeux Tapestry

Wednesday, May 1, 2013, Caen, France

What a day!  Physically and emotionally trying.

We docked in Caen and left very early for the beaches of Normandy.  On arriving, we stopped first at the cliffs at Point du Hoc.  On the way we had an extensive explanation of the sites we’d be seeing, and this one is famous (or infamous) for being the landing place of the Rangers who were to scale the cliffs and take out the German artillery which could fire on Omaha Beach, immediately adjacent.  The amazing story is full of troubles and is complex; suffice it to say that the Rangers took the site, but with great loss of life.  Here are the 100+ foot cliffs:

 

We then went to Omaha Beach.  This was one of the major invasion points on D-day, and there are innumerable stories about the invasion and the loss of life here.  We were there at low tide (which is when the invasion took place) and the beach is very deep, which led to its choice as an invasion point but also led to many catastrophes as the landing craft couldn’t get very close and the men were forced to come ashore walking through water with heavy wet packs.  The Germans were on a bluff overlooking the beach and the Allied troops were sitting ducks.  The battle was won, but just barely, with great loss of life.  We heard many of the countless stories.

 

We then went to the St. Laurent cemetery where 9387 men and 4 women are buried.  In addition there is a memorial to 1557 troops missing in action.  The burials represent about 40% of the men who died in Normandy, as families were given the choice to have a burial there or to repatriate the remains and bury them at home.  The cemetery is very beautiful, on a bluff overlooking the ocean, and is meticulously kept:

 

 

We had a moving ceremony, with two members of our group who lost relatives there laying a floral wreath at the foot of a memorial statue. We then sang the Star Spangled Banner, stood silently for Taps, and identified and recognized all the veterans in our group (a surprisingly high percentage).  Joyce and I then found one of the 149 Stars of David, placed stones on it, and said Kaddish for Pvt. Efraim Loew of New Jersey.

 

In the afternoon we went to Bayeux, a small village nearby, which houses the incredible Bayeux Tapestry (which isn’t a tapestry but is an embroidery).  This is an enormously long piece of linen, embroidered in the late 11^th century, which tells the story of 1066 when the Duke of Normandy invaded England and won the Battle of Hastings.  It’s amazing to realize that it’s almost 1000 years old!  The embroidery is not very fine, but the story is easily recognized (especially because of the help of headphones which tell the story as you walk along it).  Photos are not allowed; this is from a brochure:

 

The town is very old with a gorgeous gothic cathedral:

 

Some houses date back to the middle ages:

 

Upon return to the ship we had a long (90 minute) lecture followed by a Q and A with David Eisenhower, DDE’s grandson.  He was introduced by Julie Nixon Eisenhower, who helps with writing and editing his books.  He spoke in great detail about Operation Overlord, the code name for the Normandy invasion, and gave many anecdotes and insights into his grandfather.  Interestingly, he said that DDE felt the responsibility for the Normandy invasion was the greatest privilege and responsibility he had in his lifetime; greater than anything which happened in two presidential terms.

So we’re exhausted and packing up, as we leave the ship and the Smithsonian tour tomorrow morning and will then be traveling on our own.  More to come!