We (Mathilde, Camille and I) went into Caen on a day trip, they live only 10 or 15 minutes out by car. It was an awesome city; I liked it, I liked it indeed.

It was an interesting place to walk through. Though most of the blackened streets seem old, Caen was so heavily bombed during the war and much was destroyed in the Battle of Normandy, that all that is left from the original city is the church St Pierre (minus the spire which I think had to be rebuilt after 1944 or something). Other beautiful monuments were Eglise St Etienne which was also known as Abbaye aux Hommes (Men's Abbey), and the Eglise de la St Trinite, or Abbaye aux Dames (Womens Abbey), which was actually so cool inside with its little shrine thing to Mathilda of Flandres (I have no clue who she was but it just sounds cool). I really liked the Chateau de Caen, with all its William the Conquerer stuff and awesome views of the city from up there.

We walked down this one street, they called it Cold street or something like that because it was so shadowy and shivery when you walked through it, full of awesome little antique bookshops and comic stores and the like. Full of those old style houses I became so fond of while in that part of France. It was so beautiful to watch the colours changing at this time, seeing the reds and golds coming through as some leaves fell to the floor and others decided to stay. It made the vines creeping up the old stone houses all the more brilliant.

On windy another afternoon I went to the War Memorial in Caen, which was absolutely amazing. There was stuff from world war one, two and the cold war period, but it had specific exhibitions on World War two and the D Day Landings and the Battle of Normandy. Some of the accounts were amazing, like no others I have ever seen in an War Museum, and the films were very well done, and footage, photographs quite harrowing at times. I was very impressed (and they gave me a student discount despite my lack of student card J )

This part of Normandie is the Calvados region, which has some unique characteristics, most exciting of which is the production of apples and the apple liqueur called Calvados. I tried a bit with dinner on the second night, and it was so nice! I was surprised at my like of it, usually such strong tastes disgust me (like uzo in Greece, couldn't hack the licourice vibes) but this was quite tasty. The Normans usually drink this in the middle of the meal, to cleanse the palette and more importantly, make room for more food. They refer to this genius way of enlarging the stomach as the 'Norman Hole'.

Now these are my kind of people.