Le fin (in some sun)

After Manuela left, Dale and I did another walk around the Calvados countryside that was very similar to the walk we’d done with Manuela the day before.  I think that the previous day’s walk was more picturesque but there were some very nice views of a large chateau. 

 
There were more cows this time, including quite a number of very fetching white ones but they weren’t quite as friendly as the horses. 

Anyone know why one cow has horns pointing up and the other one's pointing down?

Although we encountered a couple of very friendly and vocal donkeys that I think were a little annoyed that we didn’t feed them

Not to be left out, here's some sheep

We liked many of the older Norman houses that have svelte looking thatched roofs.  There is also very often grass growing out of them. 
 

The rain returned on Saturday in a big way so we used the day to do some more shopping in Trouville and Deauville.  It was actually the only time that we had really wandered around shops in Trouville and we found some gems and had some lovely conversations while spending money and sheltering from the rain. 

Along the way we saw scrabble being used as window dressing in one store.  Dale realised that the words at the bottom were ‘F-ck Marine’ and were obviously a political statement.  Marine refers to Marine Le Pen who is the leader of the French extreme right party Le Front National (the FN).  Marine’s party has been having some big successes in by-elections while we have been here.  A recent opinion poll also suggested that if a French presidential election were held today, she would finish second behind Francois Hollande and ahead of any of the candidates who might run on behalf of the main conservative party, L’Union Movement Populaire (UMP), which is the party that Sarkozy belongs to.  We have been watching the evolution of the FN under Marine Le Pen for a few years now as she has an appealing personality and media presence and has managed to appear to soften the hard image of the party even though their policies haven’t really changed.  Other followers of French politics will know that her father Jean-Marie Le Pen started the FN and also finished in second place in the first round of the presidential election in 2002. 

Enough of the dissertation, Dale suggested I take a picture but I was hesitant as the proprietor was watching, so Dale went in and asked him of it was ok.  As it turned out he was very happy to have his political statement shared and he had a little conversation with Dale about how worried he is about the rise of the FN.  

We also went to see a French movie at the cinema for the first time.  We hadn’t made it to the movies before now because we’d been able to borrow quite a number of DVDs from the language school while we were in Lyon.  We decided to see a movie that we thought might be hard to understand because Danny Boon is in it.  We’ve seen other movies in which he is impossible to understand but he is very very funny.  In fact it was a fairly gentle comedy with quite a lot of slapstick so it turned out to be fairly easy to follow.  We saw a kids’ movie the following ay called TS Spivet, which is an American movie that had been dubbed into French and was much more difficult to follow.  I think the main reason was that there were a lot of scientific words being used.

We had a table reserved at Trouville’s most popular restaurant on Saturday night.  Dale had a final helping of magret de canard and the highlight for me was a crepe that was covered in calvados and set alight.  Our waiter said that in his view the best time to come to Trouville is in June when it’s starting to get warm but all the tourists still haven’t arrived.  So there’s a travel tip for you.

The restaurant was pretty small and it was full but that didn’t stop a couple sitting near us from bringing their very very big dog into the restaurant.  Even in France I haven’t ever seen anyone bring a dog quite as big as this into the restaurant.  It was also very friendly and came over to visit us as well as a number of other tables.

While we had a very relaxed evening we think we upset the couple at the table next to us at the end of the evening.  They were very sweet but spent the whole evening holding hands and kissing across the table.  Finally I looked at Dale and said ‘you know what Dominie would be saying at this point’ (sorry about including you in this Dom) and in unison we both said – a little too loudly – ‘just get a room’.  It turns out that the woman must have understood English because she looked a little unsettled, starting giving explanations to her boyfriend while glancing at us as they promptly paid and left the restaurant.  We decided that it was a good lesson for them about the appropriate behaviour in restaurants.  It’s more likely they think that Australians are rude prudes, although they probably thought we were English.

Before finally leaving on Tuesday morning we visited two charming towns further along the coast from Deauville called Benerville-sur-mer and Blonville.  The Germans built a whole lot of gun batteries in the hill above Benerville-sur-mer as part of their Atlantic defence system. 

We also re-visited Honfleur and discovered a whole quartier, that we hadn’t seen the week before, that was full of all types of artisanale shops and galleries.  There are always little shopping surprises to be found aren’t there?  However the most amazing discovery was this timber cathedral, built in the Norman architectural style.  It had a much warmer and open ambience than most of the cold, dark stone churches that we have been into.

On our last afternoon we decided to visit the very small art museum in Trouville.  They don’t have many paintings so it was a very quick visit but the building itself is impressive and has good views across the beach.  A lot of significant impressionist painters have painted scenes at Deauville, Trouville and Honfleur but they are mostly in museums in Paris, London and New York.

The tidal river leaves the fishing fleet high and dry at low tide

 
When we came out of the museum the weather had improved markedly and it had become very sunny.  We decided that we had to have one last walk along the beach in the beautiful sunshine.  This turned out to be a great decision as Trouville had been transformed and we hadn’t noticed.  It was also the first day of October school holidays in France so everyone was on the beach.  There was some very small kids rides being operated, and there were children everywhere building sand castles, having pony rides and generally being nuisances.  Suddenly all the cafes along the shore front were open and people were sitting around with their faces in the sun drinking beers, coffees and whatever else took their fancy.  We decided that we just had to join in by finding a sunny spot at a café.  Then we spied an aperitif that we’d never tried before – the Kir Normande (a kir + cidre).  It was a lovely refreshing drink that also struck us as an excellent mix of southern and northern French culture.  It was a truly lovely way to have ended our latest 3 months of francophilia.  Adieu nos amis, jusqu’a la prochaine fois.

Norman Conquest

After finishing our week of cooking classes we flew out of Bordeaux to see Dale’s great uncle and aunt in Highcliffe in Dorset.   While in England we caught up with Wolff and Janice (who we had met on the Star Flyer).  They live very nearby to John and Vera and so we had dinner with them at a local pub when we arrived on the Friday night. 

We spent a lovely couple of days with John and Vera and on Sunday went out to their favourite restaurant, called The Cloud.  We have been there before and it is great to see how wonderfully the staff treat them.

 

(Great) Aunty Vera and Uncle John

The weather was beautiful on the Sunday so we went out for a morning run and ended up following a public track through a golf course, then following the cliffs above the beach before running along the beach.  Everything was bathed in early morning sun and lots of people were out for their morning walk. Glorious.

On Monday we flew back to Paris and drove to Trouville-sur-mer. 

Trouville is on the Normandy coast and is in the Calvados Department.  It is on the western side of the Touques River and Deauville is on the eastern side.  Deauville is quite well known for its horse races and because it hosts an American Film Festival every year.  Deauville is tres chic, with lots of designer name shops, and is often referred to as the 21^st arrondissement of Paris. 

Canine haute-couture at Benneton Deauville

Trouville is older than Deauville and started to become popular in the 19th century when well to do Parisiens decided that it was healthy to come here and bathe in the sea.

However the primary reason for coming to Trouville was to explore the Calvados.  We wanted to explore a region of France that we hadn’t been to before and when I read that both the Camembert and Pont L’Eveque cheeses come from the Calvados we decided that we had to visit.  In addition, the region is famous for its apples and produces excellent cidre and calvados, which is an apple brandy.

We’ve had a very sociable time here.  Anthony and Dennis stayed 4 nights (they are also on a 3 month holiday), Coby and Rolef stayed for 2 nights and Manuela stayed for 4 nights, overlapping with Coby and Rolef.

We’ve done some wonderful sightseeing and have sampled the local produce.  Yes that means that I’ve been tasting a lot of calvados and we’ve been eating plenty of Pont L’Eveque cheese.  We prefer the Pont L’Eveque to Camembert because although they are similar the Pont L’Eveque is a little stronger.  It also tends to be non-pasteurised which I think means that you get a genuinely more milky taste.  Let’s just hope we don’t get TB.

We have walked around Deauville and Trouville a couple of times.  Whereas Deauville is very chic and ‘propre’, Trouville is eccentric. There are magnificent 19^th and early 20^th century mansions lining the beach but there is absolutely no uniformity of style.  At that time people were interested in a range of different architectural styles so they built whatever fascinated them. 

Trouville is also quite a fishing town and you can see boats coming into the harbour each evening to unload and sell the day’s catch. There is also a seafood market that runs along the harbour.

At low tide this river drops extremely low and all the boats in port rest fully aground on the mud

The weather has been mixed, which is to be expected at this time of the year (the Normans continually make jokes about their bad weather).  We’ve had some lovely sunshine but also some very heavy rain.

 

On Wednesday last week we drove to Bayeux to visit the tapestry.  We decided that it should be called an embroidery rather than a tapestry but it didn’t disappoint.  You can’t help but admire something that is nearly 1000 years old and which tells the story of the Norman conquest of England in such vivid detail.  Thank you to Helen and Julia for advising us to make sure that we stopped and searched for the rude bits in the margins at the top and bottom. 

After viewing the tapestry we drove to Arromanches which is where an impressive artificial harbour was built for the D-day landings.  They also built one at Omaha Beach but it was destroyed in a bad storm after a couple of days.  This one held and in the days following the initial invasion the Allies unloaded 2.5 million men here. You can still see some of the amazing watertight cement chambers that were sunk on a semi-circle to create a break water. 

We went up to a museum overlooking the harbour to look at these cement chambers that still encircle Arromanches.  Then we watched a 30 minute movie about the D-day landings that is shown around you on 9 screens forming a circle.  The movie managed to convey a lot of information and also emotion in a very short time and without much dialogue.  I’m still thinking about the 37,000 Allied deaths, and presumably a similar number of German deaths, that occurred in only 76 days.  You can also see the impact of the bombings that destroyed so many towns in Normandy.  A lot of very old towns were substantially destroyed.  

I think that in one of the British World War 2 cemeteries there is a nice plaque that links the Bayeux Tapestry and the D-Day landings by saying 'We, once conquered by William, have now set free the Conqueror’s native land'

On Thursday we got up early and went into Paris early for a day of shopping, and what a day it was!  It takes about 2 hours to get into Paris by train from Deauville-Trouville.  Dennis described the Deauville-Trouville Gare as very handsome, which I thought was a wonderful description.

Even though we spent Thursday shopping, the purpose of the visit was actually to visit Penny a former MTC colleague of Dale’s who is living in Paris with her French husband Alex.  We also visited Penny in 2009 when she was living in Alsace.

Before meeting Penny we traipsed all around central Paris including to a number of old ‘Passages Couverts’ that we learnt about from our French teacher, Murielle, in Melbourne.  These are charming shopping arcades that were built in the 19^th century.  We were able to combine sight-seeing with shopping, which is a heavenly experience. 

We also made sure that we picked up falafels from L'As du Falafel in the Marais.  We had learnt about these wonderful falafels from Penny 4 years ago.  After joining the line it started pouring rain but there were still 2 long queues, one for take away and one to dine in.  We stood in the street under the restaurant's umbrella's eating our falafels.  It wasn't very elegant but they tasted great.

Penny and Alex live very near to the Marais so we met Penny at a café in the Marais where we chatted for a couple of hours before dropping all our shopping bags off at their apartment and heading out to meet Alex for dinner.  Alex is a commercial lawyer so we met him nearby his work in the 16^th.  We stayed the night at their apartment.  Have a look at the spectacular views of Paris rooftops from their bathroom. 

And by 'from bathroom' we mean taking a leak, so more for the men than the ladies

On Friday we headed back to Trouville on the train.

On Saturday morning after a lazy start we drove across to Dives-sur-mer to the Saturday market.  Dives-sur-mer is where William the Conqueror sailed from to conquer England but the harbour has since silted up and it is now inland. I had read that the Saturday market is held in a covered medieval hall, so I was interested in seeing it.  The hall is impressive and so is the market. 

Dennis, Anthony and David collecting tarts and quiches

In addition to supplies for cooking (some very tasty chanterelle and cepe mushrooms) we bought quiches for lunch and some tasty tarts and pastries for dessert.  After shopping we drove to Carbourg and wandered around town and along the beach before heading back to Trouville via a cidre and calvados distillery.  We drove along some fascinating back roads, covered by a canopy of trees growing from each side of the roads, that were barely big enough for our Peugeot 208.  Dale, Manuela and I returned to this area for a lovely randonee the following Thursday.

At the distillery we enjoyed sampling the cidre and calvados but also discovered ‘pommeau’ which is like a port but made from apples.

As it is now outside the peak season quite a lot of sites are closed but I discovered a couple of chateaus that are open on Sundays.  The first one we visited is called Chateau de Vendeuvre and was built in the 17^th century so there isn’t anything particularly Norman about it. However we loved it and spent several hours there.  It has fabulous gardens, including little water surprises, as well as a collection of miniature ‘everythings’ including some exquisitely carved wooden models. 

A very fancy high chair

Yes, a dog kennel/stool - they had at least 10 different kinds

Fancy bed pans

Yes, the 'Water Garden of Surprises' was a Benny Hill delight

The family collected minatures, many of which were prototypes built by craftsmen before doing the final piece

Afterwards we drove to Chateau de Crevecouer which is typical of middle ages Norman half-timbered buildings.  There was also a very old pigeonnier (pigeon house or dovecote) and barn.  Although we were very interested in seeing these buildings they were not as interesting as Chateau de Vendeuvre because they were owned and restored by the family of two brothers who invented drilling methods for identifying where oil is located, so the buildings had been turned into museums about them and drilling for oil.  Having said that, there was an interesting documentary about how these half-timbered buildings were constructed.  It was more interesting in theory than practice for me as I slept through most of it but Dale was captivated.  And I did learn the main points: that the walls were constructed with a mix of mud and hay and that the foundations were 4 corner stone blocks, into which the timber frame is placed in order to prevent the timber rotting.   The primary reason for this technique was that Normandy has limited mineral resources.  However, even though Normandy is poor in mineral resources, it has been a very wealthy region for a long time because of its ability to produce so much cattle, dairy products, fruit and cidre.

On Monday we thought that we would try to do an 8km walk in the environs of a pretty village near Pont L'Eveque.  Although it had been raining lightly, it started to rain heavily about 10 minutes into the walk.  Our first mistake was to decide that we’d keep walking for ‘a bit’ in case the rain lightened – it didn’t.  Second mistake was to try to take a short cut back to the start but actually go in the wrong direction (not helped by our paper map disintegrating in the rain).  We eventually arrived back at the car absolutely soaked (even wearing our very good hiking rain jackets) and  beat a hasty retreat home to await the arrival of Coby and Rolef in some warmth.  They arrived about 5 in the afternoon and we had a lovely time catching up and having dinner together.   

Dinner with Coby and Rolef

Coby and Rolef brought us some delicious cheeses and also some ‘appelstroop’, which is like apple molasses, to accompany the cheeses.  Yummm.  Naughty but nice.

Manuela also arrived by train later that evening.  Coby, Manuela, Dale and I met in language classes in Aix-en-Provence 4 years ago.  We have seen Manuela in Argentina in 2011 and Coby and Rolef in Australia, early in 2012, but it was lovely to be together again.  Coby and Rolef have a nephew who runs a hotel and some gites, with his wife’s family, near Bordeaux.  Coby and Rolef were on route there to look after the properties while his nephew and the rest of his wife’s family go on holiday for a couple of weeks.

Tuesday was clear so we took the opportunity to pile into Coby and Rolef’s Renault Grand Scenic to see Honfleur, drive across the Pont de Normandie and visit the cliffs at Etretat.  It was a perfect day of vacation sight-seeing.  Honfleur is a lovely old town with an absolutely beautiful port.  I also think Honfleur is a beautiful sounding name.  It was once one of the main ports in France and it is where the expeditions left from to explore and settle Canada.  After wandering around we stopped to have some coffee by the port and then drove to Etretat via the Pont de Normandie. 

David, Rolef, Coby and Manuela

The Pont de Normandie runs across the mouth of the River Seine and links Honfleur to the much bigger industrial port of Le Havre and at the time it was opened in 1995 it was the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world.  In 1998 a Japanese bridge was opened that is even longer (fame is indeed fleeting).

Thanks to the panoramic sunroof in the Scenic, I got a series of shots as we passed under the arches

I had never heard of Etretat but Alex (Penny’s husband in Paris) and our proprieteur here in Trouville independently recommended that we should go there to see the cliffs.  It was well worth the visit and we all really enjoyed wandering along the beach and up the cliffs. 

We stopped and had lunch by the beach.  Coby, Rolef and Manuela enjoyed that most Norman of dishes, ‘moules et frites’ (mussels and French fries) washed down with cidre.

In the afternoon we drove back to Deauville and wandered along the beach front in glorious sunlight.  As Deauville holds an annual American film festival, all the permanent beach boxes are (largely) named after Hollywood glitterati.

Cheeky sparrows play hide and seek in the hedges

Unfortunately it poured for much of the following day but this didn’t stop Manuela, Dale and I wandering around the Trouville market after Coby and Rolef left.  Then we drove down to Lisieux and decided that we would take refuge in the Cathedral devoted to Saint Therese in order to avoid the pouring rain.  Saint Therese is the co-patron saint of France with Joan of Arc and Lisieux is a major Catholic pilgrim site.  The church is massive and can apparently cater for 4000 people.  It is very new (relatively speaking) and was only finished in 1954.  Most of Lisieux is new because it was bombed to smithereens during the D-day invasion.  It was unusual to see mosaics, art work and stained glass in a new building and I thought it worked pretty well.  I was intrigued to read that St Therese is the patron saint of florists (?), the missions and people with AIDS.  An interesting mix.

I like cows too

Not sure that this is very culturally sensitive

 

There were lots of St Therese souvenir shops around the cathedral but rest assured we won’t be inflicting any of their wares on anyone.  We found a good creperie nearby for lunch and enjoyed our Euro 14.50, 3 course meals with cidre.  When Dale said to the owner that it might be more sensible if he just drank soft drink because he was driving, the owner responded that cidre is only 5% alcohol and we could have a bottle between 3 of us – so we did as we were told.

 

After lunch the weather started to clear in time for us to have a most informative tour (in French) of the Chateau de Saint-Germaine-de-Livet.  This is a charming chateau that consists of one wing which was built in the Norman half -timbered style in the 15^th century and another that was built in the renaissance style in the 16^th century.  Somehow the two worked well together, perhaps because of the mix of the local green and rust coloured bricks that were used in the newer building. It is surrounded by a moat and although it is smaller it reminded us of a chateau we saw in the Loire called Azay-le-rideau. 

 

 

 

In the evening we wandered along the beach at Trouville as the sun set, enjoying the colours of the sand and the buildings on the beach front.

 

 

  

 

Returning with the day's catch

On Manuela’s last day we decided to take advantage of another nice day to do a 3 hour randonee around the little villagette of Glanville.  This is real horse country and Manuela spent much of the 3 hours whispering to the horses that came to say hello as we walked along the tiny country roads and paths that passed by their pastures.  Dale and I were somewhat surprised when, about half way through the walk, Manuela revealed that she doesn’t really like horses. And yet she continued to ‘coo’ them in Swiss German, which we decided must be the language that all horses speak. 



Someone mixed up the horses and donkeys when this fellow on the (far) left was conceived

This was a really relaxing way to spend a few hours.  There were some nice views of the surrounding countryside, which is very green.  We also marvelled at the farm houses and gites that were very well maintained and were either built in the Norman half-timbered style or built to resemble that style.

Even now this traditional style of house is being restored

 

We got up early on Friday morning (that was a shock to the system) to walk down to the beach at Trouville to catch the sunrise. 

It wasn’t particularly exciting and was very cold but I was fascinated by the extraordinary number of jet streams, pointed out by Manuela, which seemed to be stretching between London and Paris.

Next time: The last time!