France: Day 2: More Normandy

First off, as promised, the ebrake:
FWOOSH! [Ethan says jetfighters say SHEEOOOOoooooow, not FWOOSH. Shows what he knows]


Moving on: We woke up in Arromanches and had breakfast in the hotel. Orange juice, a croissont, and tea, coffea, or hot chocolate. After switching the car out of Russian and stalling it three times, we went out to see the Bayoux tapestry before the crowds showed up. The Bayoux tapestry was embroidered in the 11th Century to commemorate William the Bastard's 1066 transformation into William the Conqueror. Our favorite scenes were looting the corpses (Brice), the bishop slapping Harold's fiancee' (Ethan), and Harold's death by eye-arrow (Adam). A close second for all of us was another lord's escape via rappel.

After viewing the tapestry, we looked at a few exhibits on life and castle design in the middle ages and then watched an informative film, filling in some of the blanks the audio-tour left us with. For example, the entire tapestry was done with four types of stitching and ten colors. Also, just because you can afford goofy haircuts doesn't mean your actors know how to fight.

While we were in Bayoux we went to the cathedral, with towers on each end, one lacy and airy, the other solid, square, and fortified. The interior of the cathedral was pretty standard, the exception being the small crypt that was filled in and lost for two centuries starting in the 1300s. Afterwards we walked through town and dad veered off for a tapisserie for a doughnut. He had no luck.

We headed back to Arromanches for lunch, which consisted of random items bought from a groceries store and a patisserie (Bakery - dad was only one transposition off) and eaten atop an old machine-gun emplacement above the town. The view and the food were great: I love sea-cliffs and fresh French bread.

Our afternoon's entertainment started with a 20-minute film that one-upped Imax by stretching around all 360 degrees. The film was a mix of period recordings, shown a few at a time, and modern video of the area shot in every direction at once. The best images were those shot via helicopter, ending with a moving shot that swooped up over the cliffs of Omaha to show the cemetery...

...Which just happens to be where we went next, sort of. Actually not at all, but wouldn't that be convenient. Instead we walked down a steep and windy quarter-mile hill that made me wonder how many people in our soap-box club would put it into the wall and made our way to the museum on the beach... which we aborted after getting into line and realizing none of us was super-excited for it. So my father and I took the tourist-train back up top, while the rest of them checked the stock at the military supply store.

[Ethan: We proceeded, "Farrell style," to drive around in our little X-lax to discover the public bathrooms that were mentioned on a signpost. After three minutes of driving around a camper parking lot and narrowly scraping through some gaps with less than an inch of clearance to either side, we finally gave up. When exiting, Brice saw a pair of Siamese-urinals stuck halfway behind a doorway. In France it is apparently acceptable to pull over, walk to the back corner of your car, turn away from the road, and relieve yourself - as we have seen multiple times so far this trip. This, being slightly better, was capitalized on by the males in the family. Mom went for the stall until she discovered it amounted to a pot on the floor with no seat and no tissue (we later found out what happened to the paper, look down to the part on St Mere Eglise).]

Then we headed off in the direction of the cemetery... and stopped early at the shore battery outside of town. There were 4 bunkers each with a 5" gun. The first of them was entirely destroyed. We overheard a tour guide explain how: after the mulberry harbor was set up by the allies they repurposed the bunkers as anti-aircraft platforms. While manning the platform, one British officer was cooking himself a cup of tea and dropped his fire-starter into one of the air-vents, where it fell into the magazine. The resulting explosion cracked the roof, blew the back wall across the street, and spread gun parts forward across the field, some of which still lay where they embedded themselves. The rest of the guns were more intact and explorable, and we even got a stranger to take a picture of our family! There were some other strangers in it, but we'll just photoshop them out. After swinging through a few smaller rooms disconnected from the guns we headed out, past half an ancient church THAT THEY WOULDN'T STOP FOR to the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial - another site my dad has wanted to see for his entire life.

The Cemetary was American soil, contained over 9000 bodies, and had another 1500 names listed for those whose "resting place is known only to God. This is their memorial, the whole world their sepulcher." We wandered the perimeter, admiring the perfectly manicured lawn and the dedication of those who sacrificed so much. We then went to the museum, but as I skipped it since the the museum (like all American museums) had a metal detector which disagreed with our cheese-cutting knife, I'll let Ethan tell that part.

[Ethan: Right, so you come in American style (through a checkpoint/metal detector) and marvel at the uncharacteristic modernity of the building. I guess the French had a good influence on us primitives in some way (although not through military strategy, or we'd be speaking German here). All the displays are free standing/hanging with very fun geometric shapes, glass walls, open-ness, and a sweet infinity pool-into-Atlantic that you couldn't get too close to. After that, we meandered through some well chosen quotes about courage, inspiration, and sacrifice that should be on a poster somewhere, and looked up "FARRELL" in the WWII KIA directory. (5 names, one of them one June 6). Continuing downstairs, you walk into an informative video about certain brave people and their stories about how they sacrificed for us (prominent theme, if you couldn't guess). Then we took the quick "Mom's-done-learning-about-war" tour through the weapons - all of which, I'm proud to say, I can name - and walked out next to a solemn M1-Garand stuck point down in the ground with a helmet on top (so close to accidentally getting an amazing pic with my face reflected in the glass in front of the helmet).]


After the cemetery we went to our hotel, in St Mere Eglise, where we would spend our night. We checked into our hotel, watched some stupid internet videos on french tv, (If you're not in the USA, this link should work) and walked out to dinner. The restaurant we intended to eat at was closed, so we headed out to buy sandwiches elsewhere, which is quickly becoming SOP. I grabbed a local sausage sandwich from the market, and the rest stopped by a bakery. After dinner we wandered through the market (bought some more cider) and visited the chapel that made the town famous.









The same time that paratroopers were taking Pegasus Bridge, John Steele was parachuting into St-Mere-Eglise when air currents from a burning house diverted his course and stranded him on the church steeple, where he survived by playing dead. They now commemorate the event by hanging a mock paratrooper off the bell tower all summer long, and with some very unorthodox stained glass windows showing an angel, the Virgin Mary holding Jesus, and paratroopers in full gear descending upon the town. [Ethan: Best church ever.]










As we exited the square past some of Mom's favorite public restrooms, we saw a minivan that, well, have you ever left the bathroom with paper stuck to your foot? Me neither, but it's a comic trope suddenly come to life. We continued the long way home past some sheep [Ethan: only a block from the town square] and a spring that was started Moses-style when a thirsty monk tapped his staff on the ground. Then we crashed for the night to journal, drink, and watch epic meal time.