The last few days have been both great fun and a great challenge. Caen is lovely, as are it's sights, but the language barrier has been at times extremely difficult.
On our first morning we booked our D-Day tour for Friday and planned our three days with the help of the tourism office. We meandered through the streets and sampled our first pastry in France (pain au chocolat of course!) and got a feel for the city. It is actually quite new as 80% per cent was destroyed, not in WWI, but in the first month after D-Day by Allied bombing. Luckily the striking Abbaye aux Hommes (Men's Abbey) was spared thanks to red crosses placed on the roof indicating it was being used as a civilian hospital. It is suggested that the other reason relates to superstition, but first some history: William the Conqueror married his 5th cousin, Mathilda, against the Pope's wishes (the Church only allowed you to marry 7th cousins and beyond!). As part of a negotiated forgiveness by the Pope, William was ordered to build two abbeys in any place in Normandy of his choice, one each for William and Mathilda. William chose Caen. While Cathedrals take 1-2 centuries to build, the Abbaye aux Hommes was completed in only 17 years! This may have been helped by the fact that Caen possesses great stores of a beautiful limestone know as Caen stone, a stone that was to spread and become famous for it's use once William conquered Britain and was used for such famous buildings as Westminster Abbey. This means that the stone did not need to travel long distances to both Abbeys in Caen. Back to the superstition and WWII: there is a saying that if the two gothic towers of the Abbaye aux Hommes fall, so too will the British Monarchy. It is suggested by some that this is why British bombers did not destroy the Abbaye when so much else was flattened. Indeed when the towers needed repairs a few years ago, the British Royal Family funded much of the repair work.
We enjoyed a great tour of the Men's Abbey, meeting a lovely family from York. The Abbey was a school for over 100 years until the 1960s. It became the Town Hall and apparently they had a big job cleaning the beautiful paintings in the great hall as there was so much food on them: the school used it for their dining hall and the children played a game where you gained points if your food hit one of the faces on the paintings.
William and Mathilda are now buried in their respective Abbeys. Unfortunately there is only a femur bone left of William: when the protestants got hold of the Abbey in the 16th century they hoped to find riches in his tomb. There was none and so they took his skeleton and threw the bones around the streets. The only piece the Monks recovered was a femur bone.
Thankfully they did not touch his wife's Abbey, the Abbaye aux Dames, and her resting place and body remains in tact.
This was where we headed next. Favourites at this Abbaye would have to be the very different stained glass window which was made up of different squares of bright pink, orange an purple at different angles, the Normandy Photography exhibition in the garden, the grand staircase that we waltzed up, the Monet painting we saw in the impressionist exhibition off the Grand Vestibule and the cartoon exhibition that was a great take on French and Norman history.
Yesterday was our WWII day, with the morning spent at the fantastic Peace Memorial Museum and the afternoon on a bus tour of the D-Day beaches. With 80% of Caen destroyed in the efforts for freedom and victory, and with the D-Day beaches so near, the Museum was created as a memorial and also lesson for peace. The Museum documents the biggest conflicts of the Twentieth Century, namely WWI, WWII and the Cold War. The exhibits were fascinating and the amount of historical footage and survivor interviews they have amassed is amazing. We were surprised that we were told by the tourist office that we'd need 4-5 hours to see it all but they were definitely right!
Our D-Day afternoon was equally interesting, with a great tour guide. Highlights were the Pointe du Hoc, the well preserved remains of the German battery that watched over the Omaha and Utah beaches and the American Cemetery. A group of 225 rangers were tasked with scaling the cliff of Pointe du Hoc and disabling the German battery of six guns. Unfortunately they landed one cliff across and so were spotted a they made their way back: by the time they made it to the right cliff there were only 180 men left. They scaled the cliff in a superhuman five minutes and began their assault on the Germans while sending the signal for a second wave of over 500 rangers to join them. Unfortunately, as they had been so delayed, an American officer had already put the second wave to use on one Omaha beach. So the first rangers were left to fight hand to hand combat with large numbers of Germans while waiting. They then had to wait again to receive supplies. These must have been very brave men, for after more than a whole day of fighting they won and took control of the battery. At the end there were only 90 men left able to fight.
The American Cemetery is a very humbling place. There are 9,387 graves marked by a sea of crosses or the Star of David. There is also a very long circular wall with the 1557 names of the missing - there are only 11 names with small bronze flowers next to them meaning their bodies were found in the end. We saw the graves of the two Roosevelt Brothers (Theodore and Quentin) as well as those of the two Niland brothers, inspiration for the movie Saving Private Ryan. Robert and Preston died on D-Day and D-Day+1. at this time one of their other brothers, Edward, was missing in action in the Pacific Theatre, leaving only one more son, Frederick, still alive and fighting. He was on the European front and after his family received the terrible news about three children, they were given permission to have Frederick return home so that one family would not lose all their children, nor have their name die out. In the end thankfully Edward was found too, he had been a POW in a Japanese camp in Burma and survived the war.
We also saw the graves of the only four women buried there, one from the Red Cross who died in a plane crash and three women from the US Army who died in a car crash while doing their duty.
It is such a beautiful spot, overlooking the now clean and picturesque Omaha beach, once the place of so much death and destruction - the whole cemetery is so peaceful and a very fitting tribute to such brave men and women.
Today we caught a train to Bayeux, a very cute little town with a beautiful and huge church that towers over it, that is also now the home of the Bayeux Tapestry. The tapestry is amazing, we had no idea just how long it is! It's 68.5 metres long and depicts the story of how William the Conqueror became "The Conquerer" and King of England. For something nearly 1000 years old it is really fascinating and has been used to gain an insight into the customs and look of things from that time. Plus the stitching, the colours, the detail and the depth achieved is both clever and beautiful.
Unfortunately our time in Caen this afternoon was not so fun or interesting. Chateau de Caen was not a great visit. A palatial castle built by William the Conqueror, it is now in ruins behind the big outer walls. We did not know it was so destroyed and there was no great exhibition to explain what it used to be like. It is more used as a museum and gallery now, though no one at the tourist office told us this. Plus we spent the rest of this afternoon trying to get French pre-paid sim cards and we're not sure who was more confused: us or the staff in each of the three providers we tried!
All in all we have really enjoyed Caen - it's Abbeys, bakeries, walking it's streets and visiting the fascinating historical sights around it. And we have enjoyed the challenge of practicing and learning French, most of the time anyway!
Off to Mont St Michel next!