Day 7: Thursday, June 8 – Caen It is a fun drive from Falaise to Caen, more cute villages nestled around their church and town’s square. Churches’ towers and steeples, I think that is what I miss the most from my birth country. As you go through France, each village and little town follows pretty
Day 7: Thursday, June 8 – Caen
It is a fun drive from Falaise to Caen, more cute villages nestled around their church and town’s square.
Churches’ towers and steeples, I think that is what I miss the most from my birth country. As you go through France, each village and little town follows pretty much the same pattern: you have the church, the town’s square in the middle of town and the streets radiate from there.
Of course, none of that in America, simply because we have so many church denominations. Our large cities may have a distinct downtown, but their suburbs and most villages and small towns are largely non-distinct, to me anyway. Remember that France is profoundly Catholic (although most French do not practice their religion anymore) and although you will see a few mosques and synagogues in large cities, they are substantially non-existent in the countryside, hence the traditional layouts of the villages.
The girls have noticed that similarity in the layout of villages, and they find something very comforting about it. I think they are falling in love with France and starting to appreciate the diversity of its terrain, its people, its accents. Indeed, France is slightly smaller than my home state of Texas, and yet, each region brings you a different landscape. People speak with a different accent (or sometimes their own dialect), and the food is different if you care to discover les produits du terroir (the local food products). And of course, one of the many advantages of visiting in June is the sheer amount of flowers in full bloom everywhere! As Kimberley says, there are flowers in every nook and cranny. The roses are particularly abundant and magnificent, many 6 inches across!
Caen was heavily bombarded during WWII, less than a quarter of the town’s buildings were still standing after two months of fighting after D-Day and two-thirds of the population was homeless. I remember a friend from Caen tell me that extreme care had been used to rebuild the town and restore the city’s medieval monuments, and that it had taken a long time! Well, they all did a very good job, because the town exults a definite harmony today.
I have enjoyed the city before, what I am interested in now is the Mémorial de Caen which did not exist on my last visit. This is much more than a war museum. It has some traditional footage from D-Day, of course, and the required artillery and battery bits, but it shows a lot of the life under the German occupation through photographs, newspaper articles, propaganda posters and the like. It also continues past WWII and looks at the world since then – with my sad conclusion that we haven’t learned that much! It is one of the most modern museums you will ever see, divided into seven spaces flowing beautifully from one to the other. This is my first museum in Normandy and I am already all choked up! The girls can’t quite understand why I go around with misty eyes and they stay away from me the whole time! Until you get there, take a virtual tour.
Your ticket will be attached to a list of all war museums in Normandy. After paying this (or any other first museum) ticket full price (FF72) you will be able to pay a much reduced rate in all future war museums along the coast in the next 30 days. So don’t lose these documents!
Now, if I didn’t have two teens in tow, I would go back and visit the remnants of William’s castle (yes, there is another castle in Caen, although this one is mostly ruins), and see the Abbaye aux Hommes and the Abbaye aux Dames – the men church and the ladies church – so called because the Conqueror and his wife Mathilda had married without papal consent and that was their way of saying, “we are sorry…“.
But I do have teens in tow who can smell the ocean. So, after a wonderful lunch downtown and pâtisseries, we are off to the coast. Checking out the map, I see that Sword Beach is the most eastern D-day beach, right next to Cabourg which seems to be a very nice seaside resort. That is also near Pegasus Bridge, I remember from The Longest Day how the British landed in their gliders during the night just prior to the invasion and had to secure that bridge and hold until relieved.
Next stop: the beach!