Journal Entry 4-Saturday, Oct. 18, 2014--Caen and Bayeux

 

     4. We gathered gradually into the top-floor dining room for breakfast. Everything was laid out for us including bacon. There was plenty of cereal, fruit, cheese, and yogurt. White tablecloths set of formal place settings with large, low coffee cups; coffee was very good.  We ate and drank heartily from the buffet, after I learned to get coffee from the machine.  Water came from a large bottle where it sat on ice in a large, metal bowl alongside the orange juice. 
   After a brief time back in our rooms, we gathered in the lobby, and our group of twenty walked to the bus--a beautiful, new, brown thing. It was roomy and comfortable.  Hervé, middle-aged, was our driver.  Today, I sat up front, and we drove to the Caen Memorial Museum, which commemorated WW II.  There was a long walk uphill from the bus to a park-like entrance.  A huge plastic statue recalled the famous photo of the American sailor kissing the girl on news of the War's end.  The grounds which surrounded the building were extensive and immaculate.

Standing in front of the Caen Memorial Museum

 



      Caen Memorial Museum took the morning to go through, and it was very impressive. One of the things I was amazed to see was a display of Enigma Machines--both the boxy sending device and the smaller decoding machine.  We watched a film, took a guided tour, and then had lunch at a restaurant at the back of the museum; I ate with Louis and Jack  This all took place in a  glass-walled dining room which looked down upon a large, landscaped park at the rear. 


                             

German Enigma Machines--both sending and receiving.



 





  

 

 

 

 

    After we exited and before going to the bus, Susan Hian and I walked the front grounds for exercise, and she asked me what my area of concentration was as an English major. I told her about my research and thesis on Larry McMurtry, and she responded enthusiastically.  She had read and loved Lonesome Dove, and she wanted recommendations of more of his books to

read, which I was only too glad to give.

 

 

 



Lobby of Caen Memorial Museum

  

     We then walked downhill a long distance and boarded the coffee-colored bus.  Next,  we drove to neighboring Bayeux.  On the way, I noticed many farm fields lying fallow.  The Norman countryside was pleasantly rural and undeveloped, devoid of urban sprawl.  Bayeux was beautiful.  It was captured early by the Allies in 1944, and it totally escaped war damage.  It was a beautiful old town with small  houses and yards. All buildings were of limestone.  We stopped and walked over a bridge near an old water wheel which was still turning.  This must have once been a mill.

Mill stream in Bayeux

 



    Next, we approached the back of Bayeux Cathedral which I loved, although by then I was desperately looking for "les toilettes," which I finally located after run-through of the interior.  Following the Norman Conquest, the famous Tapestry used to be hung on occasion at the back of the Cathedral. Now it is located in a room built especially for it in a nearby  museum, which we would visit next.  This was my first Gothic cathedral of the tour, and I loved the soaring stone architecture and the large stained glass windows. This cathedral is the headquarters for the Diocese of Bayeux, which incudes Caen and the surrounding Calvados Region.

We approach Bayeux Cathedral from the rear.

 

 

 
 

 

 Notice the contemporary picture added to the ceiling.
 

Detail of the Bayeux Cathedral

 



     Next, we walked to the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux.  The museum hall and "toilettes" were to the left and at the opposite side of the building from the entrance to the enormous, u-shaped tapestry room.  After my time à gauche, I found Louis patiently waiting for his lone stray tourist, and he handed me a separate ticket for the entrance to the Tapestry.  He saw me inside but remained in the lobby. 

 

 



Museum of the Tapestry

  

    

    From the moment I walked into the Tapestry Room, I was a goner!   For the next 1 1/2 hours, and long after others had exited to see a film, I stayed inside with my listening device and heard descriptions of most of the fifty-nine frames of the tapestry which stretched for over seventy yards through the long U-shaped, climate-and-light-controlled-building.  We were allowed to shoot pictures without flash, so I did (Pics of this will not all be in order).  I marveled at the amazing rendition in cloth of William I's feud with Harold the Saxon and invasion of England and Battle of Hastings in 1066.  I had seen William's enormous fortress overlooking Caen and his tomb in the Abbaye aux Hommes only the day before!  Fortunately, enough of Miss Liddell's Latin came back that I could translate many of the inscriptions.

 



 I enter the tapestry room.

 

 

 
 



 

 
 

Coming around the far turn

 









 

 

 

 

 











    

 

  

 









    We returned to the bus on foot via the same route by the big wooden water wheel and drove back to Caen.  After dispersal to our hotel rooms for some time to ourselves and the Schullers and my excursion to church, we gathered in the lobby and walked just across the street from the Hotel Moderne to the Au Bureau restaurant for dinner.  Wine was not included with the meal this time, but I bought a glass anyway, and it was expensive.  Later, on such occasions, I would get by with un carafe d'eau. The food was good, but music later from a really loud band irritated most of us, so we did not linger but headed back to the hotel to rest up for a long day of touring D-Day sites tomorrow.



    Something I consider important happened between down-time at the hotel and going to the restaurant, and I don't want to leave it out.  After returning from Bayeux that Saturday, I cleaned up and met Paul and Johanna Schuller in the lobby, and we headed out to messe anticipée (vigil mass) at a church several blocks away.  We thought we would have time to do this and be back for dinner before 7:00, and that worked fine.
    It was a pleasant walk, and Johanna and I conversed part of the time in French.  She would translate for Paul.  She had taught French in Catholic schools in Virginia and also spoke English, Italian, and her native German.  She had come to the US as a child right after the War.  She asked me where I had studied French, and I answered, "A l'Université de Texas il y a cinquante ans," which she translated for Paul. My answer was "At the University of Texas fifty years ago."

Eglise St. Jean-Caen--It had not been completely restored from war damage.

 



     We sat several rows from the front, and I was on the aisle.  When the priest walked by greeting people and shaking hands, I told him in French that we were from the United States--that I was from Texas and my friends were from Virginia. He was very friendly to us, and before he began mass, he announced to the congregation that they had guests "des Etats-Unis--de Texas et de Virginie."  That really surprised us.  The woman who sang and served as lector used the clearest, most beautiful French imaginable.  The Norman version is  lovely to listen to.  When mass ended, Pere Laurent shook our hands as  we exited the church and told Johanna he hoped the French people would welcome us wherever we went.


 

 

 

Fin

 

Journal Entries 2 and 3--Flight to France and Arrival in Caen--Thursday and Friday, Oct. 16 & 17, 2014

Journal Entries 2 and 3--Flight to France and Arrival in Caen--Thursday and Friday, Oct. 16 & 17, 2014

     Hotel de Ville and Abbaye aux Hommes--Caen, Normandy (Church [now attached to city hall] was built by William the Conqueror who is entombed in the floor in front of the altar.)

                           

     Ben drove me to the DFW Airport in the morning in my truck.  We arrived, and he let me out.  I got my large, dark blue, wheeled suitcase, my flight-bag carry-on, and a black, laptop-sized shoulder tote.  I  went in to the Delta area and with the assistance of a Delta man nearby, I put in my "Booking Reservation Number" at the top of flight information; that was all I needed to type in, along with putting my open passport into the scanner at the same time.  I was then issued a boarding pass, and Delta took my  check-in bag.  The attendant put on bar-coded tags, and gave me a copy.
    He told me to go to "express security check-in," which was a long walk away.  Once there, I put carry-ons  through the conveyor and went easily through security.  I did not have to remove my shoes, nor were they picky about my camera or watch. 
    Then I went to the gate and waited for boarding to begin.  I was flying "economy" to Atlanta, so I waited for passengers to board and went to my assigned seat.  I found space right above my seat for the flight bag, but others coming in had trouble finding room for their things in the overhead bins.  The flight was crowded and not extremely comfortable, but it was over in two hours.  We landed in Atlanta at the beginning of rush hour, and I observed heavy highway traffic from the plane as we came in for a landing.  Leaving the plane went smoothly, and since Delta would put my checked bag on the Air France flight, I had to bring only my flight bag and tote.  I soon longed for a wheeled flight bag, because carrying both items almost the length of the huge terminal at Hartsfield was hard.
     I boarded an airport "people mover" train and went a very long distance to the international terminal.  I found my gate and waited for about an hour before boarding began.  Since I was already through security, there was no repeat of that.
     After showing my passport and boarding pass, I entered the Boeing 777 and proceeded back to a middle, four-seat row in the midsection of the plane. I sat in the second seat from the aisle, not right on the aisle as my ticket had shown.  The lady on the aisle was nice and had requested that location.  The seat to my right was unoccupied, with a woman in the seat beyond.  The arrangement was two aisles with three-seat rows by windows and a four-seat row down the middle.  We were near the front of our section of the plane with a clear view of the computer video-screen, behind which were bathrooms.  Air France attendants were very nice and brought us drinks, served a good dinner with wine, and even fed us breakfast just before we landed in Paris.



I was in this middle section four rows back from the screen.

    I wanted to sleep but could not because of the sound of the plane.  I watched parts of movies, etc.  When I needed to get up and walk around or go to the toilet, I did so easily, and sometimes I would just walk around the plane for movement and exercise.  On this flight, announcements were in French and then English, and they were pretty clear and easy to understand.



    Our flight path was north to Newfoundland and then across the Atlantic slightly south of Iceland and Greenland.  We did not fly directly over them.  As we neared the Irish Coast, we turned gradually south towards Paris.  This was shown continuously on the large video screen, and we could see it on our individual monitors if we selected that. Like the flight from Dallas to Atlanta, this one was on time.

2.  Friday, October 17.  We landed at Charles DeGaulle Airport in Paris on Friday morning at 8:10.  We exited the plane and proceeded to "passport check," which was slow;  we had to form lines.  I had a very pleasant visit with two American ladies who wrote down names of some of the books I had read, e.g., The Food of France and The Most Beautiful Walk in the World.  
    Once through passport check, we simply talked briefly to a man in customs who waved me through.  Then we went to baggage claim, and our bags were already coming down the chute. Mine seemed never to appear.  Then I noticed the dark blue suitcase circling; with my GBS in masking tape on the big side facing up and not on the edges which showed;  I had simply failed to spot it early. 
     Very relieved now to have all three items of luggage, I wheeled everything out into a large arrival area, and along a wall stood a Franco-African fellow, Louis Gabriel Bideau, holding a Road Scholar sign.  He noticed my own Road Scholar name tag and collected me and another guy from my flight, "Rip" Baker from Alabama.
    Rip and I waited near some seats in the terminal and talked to Louis.  He showed us where restrooms were located and where we could buy drinks and snacks.  He was younger than we were--in his 40's and physically fit.  His reddish-black-brown hair seemed flattened and styled.  Soon two couples joined us--the Andrews and Kratovils from New York.  We cooled our heels for about three hours.  Two or three times, a three-man patrol of young French soldiers armed with assault rifles walked past us as they slowly examined the terminal.  Finally, our group boarded a van and headed for Caen about 1:00 pm.  The remaining  arrivals would come in a different van later in the afternoon.
         There were about twelve of us in the van.  Len and Helen Andrew and I visited on the way.  Paris suburban traffic was pretty heavy, and the atmosphere was cloudy and gray.  As we worked our way north, Len and I discussed the afternoon ahead, and he agreed to join me for a walk around Caen during our unscheduled afternoon time before the group meeting at 6:00.  We both wanted to find the tomb of William the Conqueror.
      Normandy had many fields that were simply plowed and lying fallow.  Most highway intersections were traffic circles.  The weather was cool, clear, and comfortable.  Caen looked pretty and interesting.  Our van approached the hotel, which was in an area of pedestrian streets.  The Hotel Moderne was a Best Western; it was old (1910) and interesting, with a good, roomy lobby.

 Our base in Caen



    My room was on the second floor--down a quirky, poorly-lit hallway.  I settled in, opened bags, washed up, and headed back down the lobby.  Len was already there and said Helen was tired and wanted to rest in their room.
     The receptionist gave us a good map of Caen, and we started our circuitous walk around the city center.  After reversing direction and approaching the Hotel de Ville in the distance, I asked an elderly woman passing by, "Bonjour Madame, nous cherchons le tombeau de Guillaume le Conquerant.  Où est-ce qu'il se trouve, s'il vous plaît?"  She immediately pointed beyond the city hall and directed us up a narrow street next to it.  She told us to go to the back of the hall and turn completely around, and we would be facing the entrance to the Abbaye aux Hommes where William was. We understood each other's French.  Len and I thanked her cordially and headed across the circular intersection around to the narrow street.  After trying in vain to enter the building from the rear, we went on around, pushed through two sets of enormous oak doors, and found ourselves inside the medieval  abbey.
    Toward the front, we found William's tomb in floor before the high altar.  We were impressed by the stonework of the floor and tomb and the Latin inscription, and we both shot pictures of it with our cell phones.  We then exited the Abbey and took a long stroll around the perimeter of William's Castle--on a huge rise overlooking the city;  it still dominated the town, as it almost always had.  Both it and the Abbey seemed to have had little or no war damage.  We walked around to the front approach to the castle up the hill and observed the city tram moving through the opposite square.  It ran on electricity.

The story of the placement of William's ripe, overweight body in this space is not pleasant.



Here lies William the Conqueror!



    Then Len and I turned toward the hotel and passed by the Eglise St. Pierre.  We went inside, and I shot a few pictures.  I admired the lifesize statue of St. Peter.  A lady was looking it over and told me (in English) that the original was in Rome.  We left, and I shot pics of gargoyles on the roof--which covered drain spouts.

William's Castle

Eglise St. Etienne still shows serious War damage.



 Eglise St. Pierre (close to our hotel)



   At six, we gathered in a meeting room on the second floor, and Louis gave us lists of tour members and our first of three detailed schedule sheets. There were twenty of us, and I was the only one from Texas.  He gave us our  departure  time for tomorrow morning, and I noticed the lady I met at St. Pierre there in the room with us!  She was a member of our tour, too.  Johanna and Paul Schuller were from Virginia.  We visited, and she told me she had already checked on where we could go for messe anticipée at another church nearby tomorrow (Saturday) night. 

    We then broke up and went to our rooms.  Next, we gathered in the lobby to go to dinner.  Louis led us several blocks to a street near an ocean canal, and we entered Le Carlotta for a long, wonderful first meal!  The aperitif was kir, which is white wine reddened by crème de cassis; we had a salad course with bread sliced into round pieces in a basket.  Next, we had an awesome course of prawns!  Each of us received a big bowl of ice with numerous large prawns perched on the edge pointing to the middle--with their heads still on.  They were large, red, and delicious and were probably caught in nearby waters.  Then we had a beef course with wonderfully prepared potatoes, and this was followed by a dessert of crème brulé.  I ate everything and loved every minute of this.  Wine flowed easily, and a wonderful time was had by all.

Le Carlotta--Caen

The prawn appetizer sent us into orbit! Each of us received a bowl like this.
(I ate all the prawns and the seaweed, too.)



 Then the main course was only incroyable, and after that came dessert!

 (Steak covered with morels and potatoes)



 Our group sat at the table by the bejeweled, sunflowered wall and mirror (I was on the bench facing the room).

     To say this first dinner was wonderful is a huge understatement.  What is even more remarkable is that it was the first of many such fine mealtime experiences.  They were included in the tour, and I repeat--the price was reasonable for what we received.  Roadscholar schedules its tours for the off-season and shops around carefully for hotels and restaurants;  the result for us was very good indeed! 

          Then we walked back to the Hotel Moderne and turned in for the night.  Streets in Caen had some foot traffic, but they were not as crowded or active in the evening as they would be later in cities farther south.

   **** LANGUAGE COMMENT--My first use of French on the tour was with Louis, and that was nice, but encountering the lady on the street who gladly told us how to find William I's tomb was exciting.  My French flowed nicely, and I understood her perfectly.  Len Andrew was delighted that he was walking with someone who could communicate easily with the natives.  Then Johanna Schuller turned out to be a French teacher who spoke français fluently.  She and I could carry on
a fine conversation.  This was the beginning of my "busting loose" and speaking French almost without inhibition.  I was getting back in touch with  a higher, less constrained form of the language than teaching  ever allowed.  This harkened back to my UT days fifty years earlier when I learned to read French well and speak it reasonably well. Now, I did not hide my linguistic candle under a bushel but let it shine brightly.

 Fin

Journal Entry 1--INTRODUCTION to Gordon Smith's 2014 Tour de France

  1.     Journal Entry 1--Introduction           

      I started this blog with a run-through of my trip to DFW Airport with Ben, and when I read it, I realized that I was leaving out something very important--the way the idea of this trip came about in the first place.  So here it is.

     The GHS Class of 1964 had its 50th Reunion the first weekend of April 2014 in Gainesville.  We enjoyed it very much.  Friday evening we spent at the State Theater.  Saturday lunch was out at Phil and Ruth Adams's horse ranch, and a Saturday evening dinner was at the Santa Fe Depot.

 50th Reunion of the GHS Class of '64

   During dinner with several classmate couples, I sat near Laron and Jana Robinson, who proceeded to tell me about a Roadscholar tour they had already taken and one of England they were planning for June, which they encouraged me to consider.  That sounded interesting, so later in the week, I looked up the website and was well impressed with the offerings. 

   Since France has always been a major interest of mine, I looked over the tours there and discovered something called Survey of France.  I liked what I read; it lasted three weeks and included stays at many of the major destinations that I had long wished to visit.  After a lifetime of studying, reading, and teaching people about France and the French language, I had a large backlog of pent-up travel dreams, and no other tour I had read about offered more wonderful places at such a reasonable price (set to rise sharply in 2015).

Route of Survey of France



      So I sent e-mails suggesting this tour to several classmate couples and also offered to take Ben with me on it in September.  When no one else showed interest and Ben said he could not be gone that long, I swallowed hard, decided to go by myself, and booked single rate.  I also chose to go in October instead of September, because that would give me more time to prepare and I had heard  many good things about France in the fall.

    I let Roadscholar make the airline arrangements, and they put me on a Delta flight to Atlanta out of DFW.  In Georgia, I would board an Air France plane to Paris for an overnight flight and come back the same way.  The departure would be the morning of Oct. 16--with arrival in Paris the morning of the 17th.

     Let me add that Ben and I had taken a two-week trip to Europe in 2012 and that our brief, two-night stay in Paris had only whetted my appetite for more of France.   As I went on into summer and thought about Suvrey's three-night conclusion in Paris, a new idea took hold.  Roadscholar offered something called "back-to-back adventures"--tours that could be combined with others.  I noticed that "Independent Tour of Paris"  lasted one week and could be added at the end of Survey of France. 

     Well, I booked that tour, too.  It added the following week plus a three-day layover in Paris for a total of ten additional days.  That should certainly solve the frustration of too little time in Paris.  I simply did not want to spend three weeks touring the provinces and come into the City of Light for only three nights.  This added to the cost, but it would make my tour complete.

      Then I told the Robinsons what I had done, and they decided to book the same tour of Paris, to fly in from Houston a few days early, and to join me at the Villa Beaumarchais.  I was thrilled! Next, I informed North Central Texas College that I would not be able to teach in the fall but would like to resume work in the spring.  The English Dept. was agreeable, so I cleared my desk for travel planning.  Practically everything would soon fall into place.

 
 Louis Gabriel Bideau

     While I'm winding up this introduction, I want to mention our guides who would make these tours so successful.  For Survey of France, it was Louis Gabriel Bideau, a Frenchman who accompanied us for three weeks from one wonder to another.  He's pictured in the red Mercier Champagne cap at the Chateau-Tierry battlefield. Louis would join up with local docents all along our route to assure us of the most informative, pleasant trip possible. He was a former Legionnaire, as was his father before him, and had gone through the French Military Academy of St. Cyr.

 SURVEY OF FRANCE

Louis took a picture of our group at Chateau Amboise.





       For the "Independent(?)" tour in Paris we had two British guides.  Thomas Randall was the overall Roadscholar expert who stayed with us at the Patio St. Antoine and served as coordinator.  He's pictured in jacket and hat aboard a Paris tour boat.  He was joined by Paris resident Jennifer (Jenny) Burdon, who is pictured in the red beret lecturing on a painting at the Orangerie Museum. These two made a superb team.  Above, I include a picture of a map drawn by Louis of our Survey destinations.

    

 

Thomas Randall and Jenny Burdon

    Of course, the trip itself is a logical extension of earlier learning and teaching.  Not only that, but it would become an invaluable source of reference and information for classes I teach in the future.  The blog of this tour could be made available to former students and would also be a source of learning and sharing for present and future students.  The very skill of blogging would be a type of composition which, as an adjunct professor of English, I could impart to my classes.

     Though this blog will sometimes reflect the informality of most electronic communications, it will be composed as a potential teaching tool. As for the blog itself, I owe its very existence to my son Andy, who taught me how to do it.  As a computer science major, now teacher, with a master's from the Texas A&M Viz Lab, he had the patience and expertise to show me how to start this project. 

Laron et Jana Robinson et moi à Paris 



    Et aussi un petit  DISCLAIMER--Every photograph in the blog shows places we visited on the tour and that I saw, and 96% of the photos were taken by me with either my camera or my cell phone.  However, I did not always take them with me, and I rarely shot pictures inside restaurants or hotels.  My thinking was and is that enjoying an experience and fully taking it in preclude constant photography.  Yet as I progress into the blog, I sometimes fill in with pictures sent to me by others on our tour or from public-domain, online sources. 

     When I began the trip, I brought along a spiral notebook to write in after each day's events.  I gave up on that idea the second day in Caen!  I did not have the time or energy to do notetaking.  For me at least, the events of the tour and the need to pack and prepare to move so frequently left no time or energy for extra activities.  The resources for constructing this blog are a detailed itinerary provided by our guides and my photographs. What the heck, if Proust could remember the past, so can I!

      The word awesome is overused nowadays.  If everything were as "awesome" as some people say, their senses would be worn to a nub--their dendrites to an axon. Nevertheless, to say this month in France was "awesome" is no exaggeration.  The days were not equal, but every one of them WAS awesome, and I intend to give each the attention it deserves.  I will do this experience justice, no matter how long it takes!

 Lunch near Avignon



     Finally, this event was more than just "Gordon's trip France."  It was an unequalled journey of fulfillment. If this diary allows anyone to share in the deep satisfaction I took from it,  the blog will have been worth the effort.

 Fin