Month: December 2016

This morning began for me the same as every morning in France so far, with a pain chocolate and double espresso.  Over this breakfast at La Pallette we planned our day…return to Deyrolle to get some souvenirs…walk (it was 29 degrees) to and tour the Rodin Museum…and head to Muffetard Street and a restaurant called Papillion. Deyrolle was closed when we arrived between 12 and 2 so we continued on to Rodin.

The setting for this museum is a lovely old mansion and grounds.  Many of Rodin’s large sculptures like these are in the garden.  Allan is thinking with le penseur, and the Gates of Hell and Three Shades are some of our other favorite sculptures.  Inside we saw some of the creative process that Rodin went through to create these bronze behemoths and of course we had some favorites there too.

Next stop on our plan was Muffetard Street and Papillion Restaurant–too far to walk so we ubered.  Papillion, a favorite of Anthony Bourdain, has been shuttered, but, undeterred, we found Le cafe Muffetard  and shared wine and an excellent lunch (or was it dinner?). It was dark when we left the cafe so we moved on to a bar called Little Bastards for a drink.  Muffetard Street is a lively, interesting part of Paris, with plenty of reasonably priced shops, cafes, restaurants, bars and the like.  We bought some more Comte and Brillat cheeses.

The next part of our plan was to begin walking toward the Hemingway Bar in the Ritz Hotel on Place Vendome, stopping for a drink when we needed to get warm.  Google told us it was a 41 minute walk and we only stopped three times for warming and quenching our thirsts  before reaching the Ritz.  Although cold, it was a beautiful night for a walk.  Paris was foggy so the light was soft and we enjoyed both the different and the familiar sights.  The Hemingway Bar had at least an hour wait so we ubered to our apartment and hiked 77 steps up for our final drink of the evening and fruit and cheese.  We said good night and Charlie and Patti hiked 77 steps down to the street, around the corner and 3 more flights up to their apartment. It was a great day wandering the streets of Paris with friends…Bon Nuit.

I enjoyed my mandatory double espresso and pain chocolate (chocolate croissant) at a  cafe around the corner called La Pallette.  While sitting at a table, we watched people come in, greet the barista, stand at the copper bar and order an espresso.  The espresso and a small glass of water were delivered in seconds, the person who ordered drank both the espresso and the water in a few more seconds, and the person paid and left.  We watched it happen over and over while we finished our breakfast.

By the way, the dome in yesterday’s photo from the Luxembourg Garden was not the Sorbonne; it may have been the Pantheon, but my expert is not committing.

We went with Charlie and Patti to a most unusual place called Deyrolle, a 170-year old establishment on rue du Bac, not far from the Musee d’Orsay on the Left Bank.   The ground floor looks like an upscale and interesting garden shop with excellent tools, gardening books, aprons and hats. BUT, upstairs is a completely different world.  The first thing to greet you  at the top of the stairs is a stuffed polar bear and in the next two rooms there are taxidermied birds and animals, seashells, and mounted insects from all over the world. We spent at least an hour enjoying the amazing collection.

From there we went to the D’Orsay Museum and thoroughly enjoyed the post-impressionists and impressionists.  We had lunch in the beautiful chandeliered dining room and continued wandering through the various exhibits.  Our second and last museum for the day was l’Orangerie where we enjoyed more art.  We had a drink at a small bar on Rue Jacob and ubered to Robert et Louise for a meat-lover’s dinner.  It was a most interesting and enjoyable dinner.  Not having a reservation was not a problem, we were ushered downstairs and seated at a large round table with a young couple, Monique and Zennen.  It turns out that Zennen’s extended family is from New Orleans and Monique is from Chattanooga.  Quite a reminder of how small the world is…

Leaving Bayeux and heading to Paris was bittersweet for me this morning.  We love Paris, but small towns are in my DNA.  It has been a relaxing, educational and beautiful 4+ days.  This morning dawned clear and cold (0 degrees Celsius).  The French countryside, clean and well-kept  in Normandy as in other parts of France, was covered in frost anywhere that the sun hadn’t reached.  Allan drove the rental car and we learned a lot about driving in Normandy…roundabouts are a civilized method of controlling traffic…gare de peage is toll booth in French and our credit card works well there…rappel when written under a round speed limit sign means that the speed doesn’t change, this is only a reminder.

Driving into Paris was a bit frightening…the roundabouts here are more like free-for-alls with cars juggling for position and motorcycles speeding between the cars…it took us much longer to get where we were headed than we expected…we were happy to drop off the rental car and get on our feet.  We ubered to 58 Mazarin and brought our belongings up 4 flights (77 steps) to Mister Prince (our apartment for the next few days).

Charlie and Patti  landed this morning and napped for a few hours before we arrived.  We met them at Le H’oevre Gourmand across from our apartment and had a tasty lunch before walking through our neighborhood.  The photos above are the Luxembourg Garden with the dome of the Sorbonne in the background.

Patti had yet to see the Seine so we walked over the Pont de Art and through the Louvre grounds and the Tuileries before crossing back over the Seine for an early dinner-like snack at La Fregate.  An industrious young man named Charles de Batz, seigneur d’Artagnan who inspired Alexander Dumas to write the Three Musketeers once lived in this spot.  There is a story on every corner in this interesting city.

This morning dawned clear and cold, 29 degrees Fahrenheit, so our warm comforter-covered beds were very attractive…we got a late start so our visit to Mont St. Michel (2 1/2 hours) has been postponed until another trip to the area.  Instead we visited the American Cemetery in Normandy.  We entered the museum through the usual security, learned interesting facts about the mission and watched several short films about the Normandy mission and some biographical information about several young soldiers.  New Orleans-based Andrew Higgins was prominently discussed because of the boats the company built for the war.   The soldiers were all so young and none looked scared.  These soldiers were well prepared for their mission and supported by everyone in the world who believed in freedom.

Leaving the museum, we walked through the beautifully manicured cemetery grounds to the perfect rows of white crosses and stars of David.  One of our friends from home told Allan that his uncle had been killed in hand-to-hand combat shortly after D-Day.  Using the provided computer, we found that our friend’s uncle was in plot H, row 7, grave 27 so we made our way there and found his name etched in a perfect white cross.  Walking through this cemetery, I was sadly reminded of the almost 10,000 American men and women who died in this fight for freedom.

We continued our drive along the beach and lunched in Port-en-Bessin-Huppain at a small brasserie called Brasserie Les pieds dans l’eau.  I think it refers to legs dancing in the water.  It was a good choice–we loved our lunch.  Huppain is a fishing port and we discovered that one of their main catches is the coquille for coquille St. Jacques.  The fishing boats dump all of the shells on the shore here and the numerous gulls are hopeful that something remains in the shells.

Further down the beach road we stopped in Arromanches les bains where the artificial port, Port Winston, was created by the British to feed weapons and supplies to the invasion.  It is considered the heart of the Normandy invasion.  There remain concrete structures in the channel that were dragged from Britain.  We watched a film at the circular cinema that was a conglomeration of clips from the British, Americans, and others.  In addition to all the other emotions I experienced earlier today, I was reminded of the pictures we see today of war in the Middle East…so much destruction, sad men, women, and children walking in the rubble-strewn streets, and innocent people forever changed.  But, this new one is a different kind of war–we are not fighting an out of control government, there may not be a successful military strategy for the free world to get behind, and the threat we feel is difficult, if not impossible, to track and thwart.  There must be a way to help the many suffering people in the world…and because of sights like the cotton candy clouds in this sunset, I still have hope…

Our short ride back to Bayeux was uneventful…we got dressed for our Noel dinner at a fine-dining restaurant in Caen.  Before leaving I checked my confirmation for the address only to read:

Bonsoir Madame,

Malheureusement notre restaurant est fermé le Dimanche 25 Décembre au soir, mais bien ouvert le midi.
Merci de votre compréhension.

Cordialement,
Diana

…which we interpreted to indicate they were actually closed…and so was everything in Bayeux.  We wandered the streets again and a lady at the Tobacco Bar (who was not selling food) pointed out the only restaurant open…La Maison Blanche.  We had a lovely prefixe Noel menu with a glass of champagne, a bottle of wine and a taste of Calvados (the local and strong apple brandy) and a tasty apple liquor.  Needless to say, we went to sleep quite sated.

Joyeuse Noel!

Exhausted, we fell asleep on Christmas Eve listening to the Notre Dame Cathedral of Bayeux bells ringing and ringing and ringing.  We can see the spires on the right from our window.  We slept well and woke to the happy sounds of children playing. After breakfast, we wandered the empty streets of Bayeux toward the Cathedral–a big, beautiful romanesque/gothic building of weathered stone with stained glass windows everywhere.  Although it has been modified over time, it was originally consecrated in 1077.  Along the way we walked through a park which was at one time the center of town.  We saw the hospital and the Aure River flowing next to it.  The river has a water wheel that powered mills and electricity for the hospital back in the day.  We went up one and down another cobblestone street with lovely stone buildings that were all closed. We spent the rest of Christmas Day seeing the D-Day sights at Omaha Beach.  We were one of very few cars leaving Bayeux, in fact we were one of very few cars anywhere!  It made driving easy and our trip to the Atlantic uneventful.  The countryside reminded me of the Cotswolds (maybe because it was cold, damp and dreary) with big fields separated by wooded areas and large stone houses and barns.  Our first sight on Omaha Beach was a monument called Les Braves designed to memorialize the brave American men who fought to liberate France.  It is beautiful.  We walked the beach for a little while (it was cold!), drove to some other sights in the area and then on to Point Du Hoc where the Americans landed on a tiny beach at the base of huge cliffs and surprised the Germans who did not expect an assault from the water.

They shot grappling hooks up to the tops of the cliffs, climbed up, and attacked the surprised Germans. We are still wondering how any Americans survived to free the French.  Seeing these sights and putting ourselves in the soldiers footsteps was quite sobering.

I’ll finish today in the next post…