Unexcused Absences Spring 2012 - Week9 Recap (he said)

Spring 2012 – Week9 Recap (he said)

by Kent 25 Jul 2012

After parking Après Ski for the summer in northern Burgundy, we entered a more modern era of transport by renting a small Renault car and taking a one-week loop through northwest France. Neither of us had visited this area before, and we were very much looking forward to the châteaux of the lower Loire valley, the sights and food of Brittany, and the beaches of Normandy. Like the rest of our travels in the land of cheese, wine, and wonderful people, this week wildly exceeded our expectations.

Ornate church somewhere in Burgundy

Our first day with the car (Tuesday) included a quick trip through the area between the Burgundy and Nivernais canals, ending at Corbigny for our required semi-annual lunch at Il Barolino restaurant, where people come from kilometers (miles) around to enjoy their wood-fired pizza and delicious lunch salads. Lunch was followed by a visit to the always enjoyable Ted Johnson and his son who run Marine Diesel, the top supplier of boat parts in all of France. Ted and a friend were some of the first people to use the Nivernais Canal for a pleasure boat trip back in the 1960’s. Since the canal had fallen into disuse, they had to hack their way through clumps of weeds both in the water and around the locks. If I got the story right, Ted soon after convinced the VNF (French waterways authority) to fix up the canal and started a small boat charter operation, becoming one of the first self-drive tour-boat operators in France.

Orleans

Wednesday we finished putting the boat to bed and set out for the Loire valley, arriving in Orléans a little after noon. Street parking in the city center is free between noon and 2pm to encourage people to visit the restaurant district, so that’s exactly what we did. We found our favorite street food, but this time the kebab place was run by Sri Lankans instead of the usual Turks or Moroccans. They had an interesting take on the standard kebab; they added a bit of curry and coriander, and instead of pita bread they used nan stuffed with cheese. I think we prefer the traditional Turkish-style kebab, but this one was still pretty good. Orléans looks like a fun place to spend more time, we only had a couple hours but would like to return. It reminded me some of Toulouse, with a number of universities and a vibrant street scene.

In the afternoon we drove by the famous Château Chambord, way to big to see in only an hour, but the French Renaissance architecture alone was worth the quick visit. The grounds enclosed by the walls are almost the same size as the entire city of Orléans, yet the owner, King François I, used the place only occasionally as a hunting lodge. The building is where both the Louvre and the Compiègne stashed their most important artworks just before World War II. One bit of trivia; during the war, an American B-24 Liberator bomber crashed into the building. A big restoration was carried out in the decades after WW II, and the site is now a major tourist destination.

Château d’Amboise

This whole area of the Loire valley was the favorite stomping grounds of French royalty 400-1000 years ago, and is rich with château and castles. We spent Wednesday night in the small town of Amboise, chosen not for its famous sights (we had no idea when we made the reservation) but merely for its favorable geographic position between Burgundy and Nantes, our stop the following night. Amboise is famous for several reasons, including the big fortified castle owned by multiple kings of France (Charles VII, Louis XI, Francis I, and Henry II), and the final home of Leonardo Davinci (Leonardo died here!). We followed our heavy-on-the-cheese happy hour with a light dinner at a small cafe looking out at the castle from across the Loire river.

Chenonceau

Louis XIV’s drawing room

The next morning we visited the amazing and famous Château de Chenonceau. It’s known as “the ladies’ château” because over the years it’s been owned by Diane de Poitiers, favorite mistress of King Henri II; Catherine de’ Medici, Henri’s widow; Louise of Lorraine, wife of Henri III; Louise Dupin, representative of the Age of Enlightenment; and Simone Menier, heir to the Menier chocolate fortune who set up the château, at her expense, as a hospital during World War I – her hospital treated close to 2,200 wounded. The building and grounds are completely restored to their former glory. If you can only see one château in the area between Orléans and Tours, visit Château de Chenonceau.

Bizarre mechanical elephant in Nantes

Thursday afternoon we arrived in Nantes to visit our friend Sebastien (from our NASA days a long time ago) and his wife Marie and their young son. Nantes is not on many people’s short list of cities to see in France, but it has a lovely walking and dining district as well as an extensive network of live theaters near the old city center. The city was home to the Dukes of Brittany, and their well-fortified castle still stands and visitors can walk the grounds and the ramparts at no charge. The waterfront area, formerly a major shipbuilding site, is currently being redeveloped, and now has a number of attractions. The most bizarre is a giant mechanical elephant that takes about 20 visitors at a time on short “walks” around the block. You really just have to see it in person to believe it.

That evening found us at a small local café/bistrôt with Seb and Marie where we enjoyed a delicious meal in a classic French restaurant setting. It was really nice to catch up with Seb and meet his wife, the last time we saw him was probably 10 years ago. During his time in America he really fell in love with the capitalist / entrepreneurial system, and now owns a small mechanical engineering analysis firm. This is somewhat rare in France; although there are numerous small businesses, they are usually sole proprietorships with maybe one or two extra employees. And of course there are giant French companies (Renault, Airbus, Michelin, etc.), but there are relatively few businesses like his.

Saint-Malo

Friday around noon we drove due north through Bretagne (Brittany) and arrived in the medieval seaside town of St-Malo. The old section is completely encircled by ramparts, although they are not the original structures; the town was almost completely flattened by the Allies in WW II. Fortunately the rebuild was extensive, and the town is now a major tourist destination with numerous hotels, restaurants and shops. Heather found us a simple hotel inside the walls and we enjoyed two days and nights exploring the town.

Inside the ramparts of Saint-Malo

Sebastien gave us a local dessert specialty, the kouign-aman (Bretagne for “butter cake”), and we saw vendors selling these dense, caramel soaked pastries all around St-Malo. They were so good (and I’m sure good for us) that we dubbed these “the dessert that must not be named.” Fortunately we had some red wine to counteract the cholesterol.

Mont Saint-Michel

Saturday we drove east to the very famous Mont St-Michel. Even though it’s incredibly touristy (3 million visitors per year), it is an absolute must to go visit if you’re in the area. The town literally clings to the steep hillsides of this little bump of rock perched out in the Baie du Mont Saint-Michel. The area’s 30+ foot tides mean that sometimes Mont St-Michel is an island, and sometimes it’s just a beautiful town poking up from a sand flat. This is one of the few places in Normandy/Brittany that never fell to English invaders; the rest of the area regularly switched back and forth between French and Angleterre ownership. The site features prominently in the famous Bayeux Tapestry which commemorates the Norman conquest of England in 1066.

Cancale

On our way back to St-Malo we made a brief stop at Cancale, a seaside resort famous for its seafood. We popped into a small waterfront restaurant for a sampler plate, and very much enjoyed the bulot (a type of sea snail) and mussels. Saturday night was July 14, the big Fête Nationale (what we in the US call Bastille Day), and St-Malo put on a decent feu d’artifice (fireworks) display, although nothing like we saw in Carcassonne the previous year. Fortunately we were staying in the city, because the traffic jam for folks leaving the show lasted for hours. As it was we had a great vantage point on top of the ramparts and yet were only a three minute walk from our hotel (thank you Heather!)

Fireworks in St-Malo

Sunday morning we drove east to visit the WW II invasion beaches of Normandy. This area alone warrants its own dedicated website, but I’ll just touch on the highlights here. The first thing that hit us was the scale of the place. In books and movies and documentaries we always hear that the invasion was massive, but until you stand on the cliffs and drive along the shore it just doesn’t sink in. The invasion was truly colossal; from the beaches of Utah in the west, to Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword in the east, the invasion happened over a 50 mile front. By the end of the 5th day, the Allies had put ashore close to a third of a million men, 54,000 vehicles and over 100,000 tons of supplies using close to 7,000 ships from eight different navies.

The American Cemetery in Normandy

Graves of the first Allied soldiers killed on D-Day

We are not war buffs by any stretch, but visiting this area, walking on the beaches and through Nazi defenses, touring the museums and cemeteries, we were struck by the immense sacrifice that so many people made not so long ago. At Point du Hoc, where American Army Rangers scaled 100+ foot cliffs to silence the guns that defended Omaha and Utah beaches, the bomb craters are still very distinctive, and look like they were created maybe 10 years ago. Dozens of immense hollow concrete blocks (180′ x 60′ x 60′) used to create a huge artificial harbor are still visible in the water off Arromanches. The tourist office at Longues-sur-Mer maintains a complete Nazi coastal defense battery, including four big fortified guns and the adjacent command post. In Bénouville the actual Pegasus Bridge (a critical bridge needed by the Nazis to send reinforcements to Normandy) sits on land, only 100 yards from its location in 1944 when it was secured by British advance forces just after midnight at the start of D-Day. And at the little church cemetery in nearby Ranville, the first French town to be liberated, we found the gravestone of Den Brotheridge, the first Allied soldier killed on D-Day. We cannot say enough good things about our visit to this amazing area of France.

Evening sky in Caen

That evening we stayed in Caen, a city that was utterly flattened by fierce fighting in the six weeks after the invasion. Once Caen was liberated, though, the Nazi occupation of France fell into disarray, and by the end of August the Allies had pushed through Paris almost to the eastern border with Germany. The buildings are mostly new, obviously, but there are some reminders of the war including a bombed out church that has been stabilized but not reconstructed. It’s a little odd but we could find no sign or plaque anywhere around the church to give its name or tell its story.

Bombed out church in Caen

Monday we drove around Caen and the surrounding area, then spent the night in Senlis, a convenient and pretty town located less than a half hour north of Charles de Gaulle airport. Senlis would be worth a visit in its own right, as it boasts a rich heritage including such figures as Hugh Capet, Louis IX, Anne of Kiev, and the early French dynasties. Parts of the city wall date from the third century. The thousand-year-old castle is also still visible, and the 12th century cathedral is now a national monument of France.

The next day we flew back to temporary reality on the new double-decked Airbus A-380. We’ll be back in France for our fall cruise before we know it, so stay tuned!