Toussaints Holiday

The past week and a half was a school holiday called Toussaints, or All Saints'. My vacation was pretty travel/action packed, so I'll keep the writing brief and let my photos do most of the 'splainin. Tabea took a bus back to Germany to stay with her boyfriend early on the 21st of October, so I was alone in the apartment for several days before I left for Bayeux. I occupied myself with re-learning how to knit, (there's an awesome store right around the corner from our apartment that sells a hodgepodge of goods, like fake flower arrangements in the shape of crosses right next to prescription eye glasses next to kitchen ware next to picture frames and makeup and bedside lamps. They had some yarn on sale for 0,50euro/skein!) listening to podcasts and watching a lot of 'How I Met Your Mother'.

Besides all that fun stuff, I also went to Paris for a day! The assistants from Chauny (Kathryn from England, Maxi from Agentina, and Theresa from Germany,) invited me along with them. A Spanish teacher who works with Maxi had offered to show them around, and she brought her sister and a friend, so we were a big group. Sandra, the teacher from Chauny, was very nice and knew her way around the city, which meant we saw a lot more in a day than we would have been able to navigating the métro by ourselves. We started of in Montmartre, where we visited Sacre Coeur, the famous basilica built in 1873, when French Catholics expected invasion from Germany and set out to make sure their German conquerors knew just how Catholic they were.

The crew - Theresa on the steps of Sacre Coeur.

Next we walked through la Pigalle, a quartier (neighborhood) chock full of sex shops, cabarets, and even a Museum of Eroticism. We saw the Moulin Rouge, then hopped on the métro and got off on the Champs-Elysée! We climbed the Arc de Triomphe, and had a good look around from the top.


The sign says, "This national monument is under the protection of its visitors. It is recommended that all inscription and degradation of the walls be avoided." lol

Next we had lunch at a really great restaurant called Chartier- my guidebook recommended the sheep's head, but I stuck with the chicken- I did enjoy my accidental encounter with sheep's head in Senegal, but I couldn't bring myself to order it. Next time! After lunch we took the métro to la Tour Eiffel! It's much bigger in real life than I had imagined, which was exciting.

Some break dancers performing with la Tour in the background!

From la Tour we walked across the Seine and saw Notre Dame. We didn't go inside because the line was ridiculously long- another thing I'll have to go back for.

The last thing on our agenda was shopping, of course; or, in my case, longingly stroking clothes I can't afford while looking thoroughly unfashionable in a crowd of extremely beautiful and well dressed Parisians. A humbling experience, for sure. After our epic day, we took a train back North and I slept for about 16 hours.

On Tuesday, I took a train to Bayeux, which is in Normandy (I think I said I was going to Brittany in my last post, but that was faux). My cousin Hannah's college roommate from UVM, Hilary, lives there with her French husband and their 12 year old son in a beautiful 16th century barn-turned-house+rentals. (Shameless plug: they are currently working on finishing up a couple of apartments which they'll rent out for vacationers year round. The biggest apartment can sleep 6-7 people and would only be about 700euro/week! So if you want to see some beautiful Atlantic coast and really interesting WWII history, that's the place to stay.) Hilary met me at the train station in Bayeux and drove me to Saint-Pierre-du-Mont, the small town where her family lives. They are about a 10 minute walk from cliffs that overlook the Atlantic, and about a 10 minute drive to Omaha Beach, one of 5 spots where Allied troops landed on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Hilary's husband was out of town on business, but Hilary was a very gracious hostess, taking me around to see some of the most important WWII sites and war memorials, as well as some cool medieval history in nearby Caen and Bayeux.

My first day we went into Grand Camp to a fish market. The Norman coast is big time fishing country, and it was amazing to see so much delicious fresh fish for sale. Hilary bought some ray, and the woman at the stand actually told her to let it sit for a couple days because it was TOO fresh. Never heard that before.


Later that day we went to Caen, where Hilary dropped me off at the ruins of a castle built by William the Conqueror around 1060! (old!!!) The castles was used as barracks by German soldiers during WWII, and was bombed by the Allies in 1944. A lot of it was destroyed, but the foundation and some of the ramparts remain, which you can walk around on. Many towns in Normandy were heavily bombed when the Allies landed after D-Day, and a lot of old buildings and cathedrals were destroyed. Sad but necessary, I suppose.


View of a café through a window in the ramparts

An art museum was built within the ramparts, and these are some interesting statues in front of one of the castle walls.

View of a church steeple in Caen with wind turbines in the background :)

Later that same day, we went to Bayeux and Hilary dropped me off at a museum to see the Bayeux Tapestry. The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered cloth 70 meters long (!!!really long!!!) that was commissioned in the 1070s (!!!!really old!!!!!) by Bishop Odo, William the Conqueror's half brother. It tells the Norman perspective on the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings: according to the tapestry, King Edward (I'm 80% sure that's his name), who was the king of England at the time, decided that William the Bastard of Normandy would be the next king of England after he died. William sent Harold, Edward's brother-in-law, to England to tell Edward that he had received the news that he would be the next King. Harold arrived just after Edward had died, and decided to claim the throne for himself. William & the Normans met Harold & the English at the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066, and after Edward got an arrow to the eye, William became the king of England as well as the Duke of Normandy.

Harold getting poked in the eye!
(Done with the medieval history bit, for those who skimmed through that :)

Bayeux cathedral

The next day, I biked from Hilary's place to Pointe du Hoc, which is a narrow spit of land that sticks out into the Atlantic between Omaha and Utah beaches. The Germans kept some heavy artillery there during WWII, because Pointe du Hoc is protected from the beaches by steep cliffs, and from that point the Germans could fire on any enemies that landed on Omaha or Utah beach. On D-Day, American troops landed close to Pointe du Hoc and managed to scale the cliffs, drive the Germans back and capture their artillery after 2 days of fighting. More than half of the American troops died on the mission. Pointe du Hoc is now a war memorial, dotted with damaged remains of bunkers and craters where grenades exploded. It's a sobering spot.


Hilary also took me to a German military cemetery, and the American WWII cemetery.

The German WWII cemetery



The American WWII Cemetery

On Saturday I left Bayeux and took a long ride up to Dunkerque, which is in the very northernmost part of France, right on the Atlantic and about 30 min from the Belgian border. I stayed with Rachel, a girl I studied abroad in Senegal with, who is also an English assistant! While I was in Dunkerque we walked along a beach near her house and checked out the architecture- DK was 99% destroyed during WWII, so it's missing the old Gothic/medieval architecture of other French towns, but has an interesting look all its own.


We ate fresh mussels at a great restaurant by the beach!

We also visited sand dunes on the Belgian border, where we walked along the beach and probably crossed the border- now I've (probably) been in 7 countries!



Dunkerque has a lot of language assistants from all over the world, and Rachel took me out to meet some of them on Halloween- ours was the only costumed group, but it was great to celebrate.

On Tuesday, Rachel, her roommate, and two other Dunkerque assistants took a train into Lille to see the YELLE concert! My friend Zac from college also joined us, which was great fun. I got to dance and jump around, an activity I've missed since being here. Yelle was a great performer, and also really nice! Zac and I scavenged a couple of posters, and she signed them and chatted with us for a couple minutes! Very exciting stuff, that was certainly one of the most fun nights since I arrived. :)
Sorry this post wasn't as brief as I promised! I made it back to Tergnier Wednesday, and have been resting since then. Tonight I have a basketball game in St. Quentin, and I'm leading my first French "class"- I'll be teaching a girl on the basketball team and several of her friends, who are all from the Czech Republic, what I know about French. Should be interesting! Bisous xo