Caen, France

This past Friday the 26th, I made my first outing to mainland Europe. I got up at 8 and prepared to take the train from Brighton Station to Portsmouth around 10. Everything went smoothly, and I was in Portsmouth by 11:30 or so. I got a cab to the Ferry, and the driver asked me where I was going. I told him, Caen in France, and he said, "Well why the hell are you taking the ferry, you should have gotten a plane out of Southampton, it would have been a lot faster!" Anyways, when we got to the station I opened my door and the wind blew it heavily against its hinges and he got pretty annoyed. I then paid him with a 20 pound bill which he wasn't pleased about either. I may be vindictive, but I was satisfied by the time we parted ways. My ferry wasn't until 2:30 and I couldn't check in until 12:30 so I walked around outside and took a picture of the port building:

I then waited for a couple hours and had a very non-gluten free lunch of three sandwiches. This was only the beginning of my food consumption trespasses. Eventually everyone boarded the boat, but first we had to go through security, just like the airports, and had to take a shuttle bus to the boat itself. Once on, I found a table and started doing some work. The rest of the 5 hours was spent alternating between reading and going out onto the deck for fresh air. I snapped this seagull right above me:

I finally got in to the port of Ouistreham around 10 and got a taxi to the Hotel Astrid. This is the outside of the joint:

Here's what my room looked like:

So, I checked in and then attempted to go straight to bed. Despite my tiredness, the bed was so uncomfortable it took me hours to fall asleep. I got up at 8 and the husband who owns the hotel with his wife brought breakfast to my room at 8:30. It consisted of a croissant, loaf of bread, and cheese. Not ideal, but I ate it. After that I set straight out for my first destination which was the Abbaye-aux-Hommes. William the Conqueror had it built, and it looked a little something like this from the outside:

Unfortunately, the tours were only in French, so I didn't understand anything the guide said, but I took pictures of anything she pointed at. The interior was alright, didn't exactly knock me off my feet. However, once we reached the church/cathedral part itself, I was more impressed. The only sunlight of the day must have come out during the one and a half hours of the tour. On the bright side, the light shining through the windows really inspired a sense of awe and holiness about everything. I particularly like the light in this picture:

So, there was some cool stained glass windows, and paintings, and bones. Actually, in what is supposed to be William the Conqueror's tomb, the church only has one of his thigh bones. During the Religious Wars, his body was dug up and dragged through the streets and everyone grabbed whichever bone they could get their hands on. 205 bones are unaccounted for which I find quite remarkable. I feel like the only reason to steal the bones, besides to disrespect his memory and what he stood for, would be to sell them. However, no one knows where the others are located. Anyways, I finished taking some primo photos in the church and then took the exit onto a side street and started walking in what I thought was the direction of the Chateau Ducal, also known as William the Conqueror's Castle. I was also feeling quite hungry at the time so I stopped into a little bakery and grabbed a baguette with chicken, egg, and lettuce. At this point I resigned myself to the fact that I would be eating nothing but gluten products for the rest of my time in France. When I finished, I looked for a bathroom, and found a sign that said toilettes pointing in a certain direction, but I searched high and low and couldn't find the toilettes. I did find this stray dog though:

When he sneezed he fell over which was pretty adorable. After crossing paths with a fellow vagrant, I decided to just walk into the nearest restaurant and use their bathroom. The Chateau Ducal actually turned out to be a lot less impressive than I expected. The castle walls were cool from the outside, and they got me really hyped and excited about what would be on the inside. Much to my dismay, there was nothing on the inside. They're just walls for the sake of fortification, they aren't really fortifying anything too special. I did get this cool picture though:

I'm not sure what the significance of the church in the background is, but I really liked its architecture. After completing the Chateau, which didn't take long, I went to the tourist office and booked my tour of the D-Day beaches for Sunday. I then went to the Abbaye-aux-Dames which was built by William's wife, Matilda. It was clearly second best and the neglected of the two abbeys:

It was located in a much more secluded part of town, and it didn't have the contemporary reception hall that adjoined the Abbaye-aux-Hommes. I missed the tour which I thought was supposed to start at 4:30, but it started at 4. I wasn't too upset, I just went and got some pizza. As with every other meal, I had to be creative in using hand language to try and get the people to understand what I wanted. Half the time I'm pretty sure they spoke English, but they just liked to watch me struggle. However, I feel like the woman in the pizza shop was genuine. After eating my dinner, I went and got some sweets from a shop that I passed in my travels that day. I got a meringue loaf which was really unspectacular, but the woman gave me a free chocolate/cream croissant which was quite delicious. I went back to my hotel after this and did a good bit of my reading for this coming week. Then I tried to sleep again, but with little success. Nevertheless, the next day I was up at 8 again and ready to go by 9. However, the weather was miserable, cold, windy, and rainy, and there were hardly any shops open to get food from. I ended up finding a bakery and got an apple-pie-ish thing. Not bad, but not nearly enough. I also bought a sandwich to eat on my outing later that day. There was a McDonald's down the street though, so I ventured there and looked for some more substantial food. They had none. But they did have a woman who was not quite right in a the head who was verbally assaulting me in French despite my protestations that I did not understand her. There was one other patron and the cashier and they were having a good laugh from it. I left, and then went to the bus stop which turned out to be the right one, but I had to wait in the rain for at least half an hour. During that time, quite a few characters came out of the woodwork. There were these women that looked like toads, and to be honest were quite frightening, who I didn't see at any other time, but during the rain. I boarded the bus after a long wait and eventually found my way to the National Memorial for Peace which is where the tour was going to leave from. There were some giant worms all over the pavement. I've provided a picture of one with my foot for comparison:

The museum itself was a complete letdown. Everyone kept saying that I would need like 4 hours to get through and see everything. I did it in one. I knew almost everything they had to offer through history classes growing up, so the only way they were going to redeem themselves would be to have some cool artifacts, i.e., guns on display. None were to be found because they were all about peace and non-violence. Lame. About a half hour passed between the time I finished looking at everything and my tour group, which consisted of me, and Jeff and Debbie, an old married couple from California, were ready to go. It took about a half hour to get to the beaches, and we started with Gold. Everything seemed so calm on the water that it was tough to picture the carnage that took place in 1944. In case you were wondering, I asked, and yes, they are still digging up bombs and bodies on and around the beach. Just last year in fact, Caen had to be evacuated because a farmer stumbled across an active bomb in his field. It really gives you a scope of the magnitude of death that occurred. There is a cemetery next to Omaha beach that actually belongs to America, so for about an hour I was on American land. It was pretty humbling seeing the sea of tombstones. Same kind of effect as Arlington, There are only 3 Medal of Honor recipients in the cemetery. The first is Theodore Roosevelt Jr:

He was awarded the medal because he went in with the first wave on D-Day despite his heart condition, and died of a heart-attack. This was deemed particularly courageous. The other two, Montieth, and Peregory were a bit more conventional in that they did something like capturing ten German soldiers single-handedly. Next stop was Omaha beach which we only stayed at for a little bit, but I did get a picture:

Last but not least was the Point du Hoc which is also technically an American territory. At this point, the tour guide and the old couple were exhausted, cold and wet, not that I wasn't, but they really wanted to leave. So, unfortunately, I did not make it all the way onto the Point itself where there is a stone dagger as a memorial, but I did snap a few photos from a distance:

That more or less concluded the sight-seeing of my trip. Of course I still had the ferry trip and train ride the next morning, but those were nothing special aside from the fact that I had a headache and there were several coach buses of French children running around and screaming on the ferry. It was a good, educational experience, if albeit, a bit lonely. I'm switching my Munich flight this Friday because I don't feel like getting up at 4 am or earlier to catch a 6:20 flight. I just need to figure out where and when I will switch it to. Next up though is Dublin not this coming weekend, but the one after for St. Patty's Day!