notes from normandy

Omaha Beach:

The park and cemetery have been donated to the US by France, so it’s actually part of American soil and in that sense I was in America over the weekend. It’s peaceful and beautiful and it’s almost impossible to take in how many people died on just the sixth of June alone, and equally impossible, when you’re standing on the beach looking back up inland, to see how they managed to successfully retake the villages. If you’ve seen ‘The Longest Day,’ that’s where we were. Drove past the church where the parachutists got stuck in the steeple. Antony kept talking about a thing that clicked that people had to show they were on the Allies’s side…like in that movie “Le Plus Long Jour.” I wonder what Robert Mitchum sounds like dubbed.

Cow Pasture near Isnigy sur-Mer:

The typical French village is alive and well! They’re everywhere, actually, consisting of a boulangerie, a bucherie, a mayor’s office, a church, a post office, a school, and a decrepit bar/tabac. And several cows. Apparently the grass in Normadie is famous for being lush, that’s why the cows are happy and the cheese is so good. Experienced a pasture firsthand, we went to the butcher’s and picked out a small feast of local specialties including, among many other things, a pâté de campagne and some cider. Unfortunately places to buy plastic cutlery aren’t part of the typical French village, so we used our baguettes to scoop and spread. There’s a French term for eating like that, where you get your hands dirty and eat without refinement or planning. Of course there’s a French term for all kinds of eating…they are a nation obsessed…one of these days it will stop surprising me (and one of these days I’ll write down my French quasi-fancy dinner trial-by-fire story, highlights including: 1. you never cut föie gras with a knife, 2. eating a leafy salad continental style is extremely difficult, and 3. a different wine with every course plus champagne before the meal can be dangerous, I am learning the fine art of keeping just enough in my glass to not get a refill but not so much that I have to chug it as the rest of the table waits so we can all move on to the next course. Not very ladylike, that.)

Le Mont St-Michel:

Call me cynical, but I’m getting a bad attitude towards European tourism that goes something like this: You’ve seen one old building, you’ve seen them all. Same thing for Cathedrals. So I was extremely pleasantly surprised by the Mont St-Michel. I’ve heard it can be a super tourist trap (second most visited monument in France, can you guess the first?) but on an early February afternoon it wasn’t busy at all. It’s just a strange place, I haven’t seen anything like it…it reminded me at once of a fort city like in the beginning of Pirates of the Caribbean because it had these impossibly thick fortress walls and cannons, and winding little streets inside, but the abbey itself was more like a fairy tale castle. I’ll refrain from any LOTR references, but they did spring to mind. It was extremely peaceful just walking through the refectory and cloister and scriptorium, whoever built it knew exactly what they were doing because it was full of light and everywhere you turned you’d catch a glimpse of the sea. Wonder what pilgrims thought of it back in the day before there were clusters of tour buses and budget hotels and campgrounds, just the sea and this huge fortresses rising from or floating on top of it.

Rouen:

Got there late at night but it still was charming from the get go, we went to a pizzeria with his older sister and unlike Amiens, where most everything was destroyed in WWI or WWII and rebuilt, Rouen is mostly like it was in the middle ages. Or maybe I mean mediaeval. Either way think lots of woodwork and crooked buildings, and very upscale compared to Amiens, with lots of cute boutiques and cafes and I saw at least TWO MEXICAN RESTURANTS! Too bad they were closed but beginning to realize that life in France is a lot better outside of dear old Picardie. The next day his dad stopped by and we all went to the Sunday market, which, not to overly bash Amiens, is a whole lot cooler than Amiens’s market. I think the addition of fresh seafood was part of the charm, but the colors and sounds and smells were amazing, and his dad made sure that I didn’t miss a thing…Catherine should try that! No, get that cheese she should try it! But Catherine doesn’t know about that, stop, we should get some… It was basically great. Then we all got drinks at a sidewalk café and watched the punky homeless guys drinking beers from cans at 10 in the morning. I guess it’s all over France that “badness” is measured by the amount of mangy stray dogs you have following you.

Drive back to Amiens:

Not much to say here except the moment we hit the border between Normandie and Picardie there was tons of fog and the sun disappeared, leading Antony to quip that Picardie (or Amiens) is the Mordor of France. Et en fait, that’s pretty much true. Fortunately there are plans for future trips out to la France profonde, probably via train because the tolls are the motorways here are ridiculous! But as the French say, it did me well, to get out of the city and breathe some fresh air. Il me fait très, très bien.