A new semester brings new adventures and our last group trip offered one last hurrah before we all dive into our classes and busy schedules. We had much luck in that it never rained on us, but it did remain much colder than expected especially with the strong coastal winds.
Our first stop was in the small town of Honfleur which proved quite charming and nearly void of tourists at this time of year. It was known for its artist community in the 1800s and drew writers, painters, musicians, and great minds such as Corot, Baudelaire, Eugene Boudin, Daubigny, Courbet, and Monet to name a few.
This is the Sainte-Catherine church which is famous for being the largest church in France built with wood. It seemed quite small from the outside, but inside it had a vast double nave and was surprisingly well lit with rows of stained glass. The ceiling looked identical to two upside down ships with with the ribbed, skeletal shaped vaults. Quite cool in my opinion.
As it was a Saturday morning, the open air market was open and the street and courtyard by the church was filled with humble looking farmers, white clad butchers, and an odd assortment of food vendors. All of the stacks of fresh, dirt ingrained winter vegetables made me think of working at the farm and made me want to go back to the simple tasks of harvesting, washing, and culling. What surprised me the most was the sheer number of varieties of the same vegetable. There was one lady who had at least fifteen varieties of beets in all shapes and colors ranging from clementine-size black ones, to red, carrot looking ones, to huge white and pink ones easily the size of a small cantaloupe.
This lady was selling olives and dried fruits which the locals were buying in unprecedented quantities. I seriously don't know how they can eat that many olives in a week. Behind the table she had even bigger vats of each that she used to keep refilling each of these bowls.
We were just walking towards this creperie when the lady came out and closed it up for the day. I guess in small towns you are allowed to close your restaurant at 12:30 on a weekend.
We ended up returning to the market and bought fresh quiches which we ate standing on the sidewalk in a little patch of sun trying to avoid getting too many crumbs in our scarves and avoid the wind. Just after lunch we all grouped back together and made the trek up this little hill; although, I shouldn't say "little" because it felt like a mountain. We started off at sea level and ended up here by way of a rather steep little series of switchbacks and the view was incredible.
After loading up we headed to Deauville to walk on les planches along the beach. It was very cold and extremely windy, but with the sun finally shining we didn't really mind. Apparently in the summer, this place is very popular to visit and known for the film festival which draws many American actors and directors.
Jon in the barrel room of sorts.
As with most trips we've had so far, there was the obligatory tasting. The Calvados region where we were visiting is famous, well, for it's Calvados which is a brandy derived from apples. We ended up tasting cidre (cider), Calvados and Pommeau with varying degrees of alcohol, age, apple varieties, and pears. Due to the very low alcohol content of the cidre, the tasting went on for a while. In the end I think we tried about eight or nine different types ranging from mild apple juice tasting to super strong, burn your throat, straight up hard brandy. It was actually quite good and we were each given a little gift of a miniature bottle of Pommeau.
The barrels to age the Calvados are very important and this distillery in particular had a collection of barrels in use that were of all wood varieties, thicknesses, size, and age. There was one barrel that we saw containing a particularly well aged Calvados that was almost eighty years old! Each barrel has it's own age, variety, and alcohol content, so instead of mass producing bottles, they wait for an order to come in and then individually fill out the order one bottle at a time. Pretty cool.
The tasting room was filled with a plethora of different types, and what I loved most was the variety of colors. The older the Calvados, the darker the color so it is impossible to cheat and say that one is older than it really is. The lady who runs the place and gave us the tasting, knew her product so well that she could tell us which was which out of rows of bottles just based on the color.
I failed to get a more proper photo than this, but my favorite part was seeing all of the pomme prisonnières as seen here. They grow the apple inside the bottle, and when it is big enough, remove it from the tree and fill the bottle with either the type of Calvados made with that variety of apple or with a complementary one. Stacked in rows, the bottles of pomme prisonnières looked almost like organs in jars and had an oddly alluring creepiness to them.
Some of the apple trees
I just liked the shape of the roof :)
Our first day complete, we feasted on salmon, roasted vegetables, cheeses, wine, apple tarts, and way too much bread as usual. The accommodations were quite nice, and the two other girls and I in our room ended up staying up till 1:30 talking even though we had to be up by 6:30 the next morning! We had to be up early so that we could get to the Normandy American Cemetery in time to assist with the flag raising ceremony.
Omaha Beach
After the cemetery, we headed a bit further down the coast to the Point du Hoc in between Omaha and Utah Beach where the Rangers climbed the cliff under German fire and suffered great losses despite the eventual victory.
The actual point of the Point du Hoc
After Point du Hoc, we visited the Tapisserie de Bayeux which was a 230ft. long hand embroidered ribbon of cloth detailing the Norman invasion of England and culminating at the Battle of Hastings. Given its age, it is surprisingly well intact and colorful. That was followed by a superb lunch of moist, roast duck, potatoes, fresh salad, more bread, mini quiches, apple crepes with a brandy, honey reduction sauce, and all topped with a piping hot espresso. It was by far our fanciest meal yet, and we feasted happily.
In theme with the day of depression and war, we spent several hours visiting Le Mémorial de Caen- Musée pour la Paix [Peace] which was a fantastic museum about WWII. It was very well done and had a wonderful collection of original artifacts, film footage, and personal accounts that were quite moving. At the end we all couldn't tell if we were happy to have just visited a nice museum, completely and utterly depressed at the atrocities of the war, or inspired to do something to make sure it never happened again. We settled on discussing ice cream, pandas, and Ke$ha the entire way home.
In all it was a very fun trip and a great time to relax and get to know one another better. We only wished it would have lasted longer. Speaking of longer, I think I might have broken a blog record for the longest post yet. As yet another thank you shout out to the parents, please note the incredible difference in photo quality between my previous photos and these. I'm not talking artistically, but no more pixilation! I hope everyone is well and preparing to celebrate the arrival of the Year of the Snake. Here in Chinatown everything has turned red and gold in preparation, so be expecting to see some photos of the celebrations of next weekend. All the best...
-Kate Alice
1 comment:
Long blog post? Never long enough . . . Your commentaries and images are a beautiful interlude in an otherwise busy and messy day on the ambulance. Thanks, Hubert.
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