Vacances de Toussaint - Caen

For Toussaint vacation, I left my tiny, lost town of Eu in order to explore some of the bigger cities in Normandy. I left here at 6h18 on Monday morning to meet my friend Lucy in Caen. Lucy is from Corvallis, OR, and current living and working in Domfront, Lower Normandy, in the Académie de Caen. We spend 3 nights in Caen, then 4 (couch surfing!) in Rouen. I've decided to break up blogging about the break into 2 posts, because otherwise I'd practically have to write a novel of a post.
(NOTE: waking up at 5h45 is something that should be avoided at all costs. I had the idea in my head that I would make 2 cups of coffee and put them both in my to-go coffee up, in order to have some coffee on the train. Unfortunately, Caroline at 5h50 didn't remember to PUT THE COFFEE IN THE COFFEE MAKER. It was a sad, sad moment for coffee drinkers everywhere...)



At any rate, I made it to the train station in time, and made it to Caen with no touble at all.
Voila, the Cathedral in Caen, l'Église St Étienne. Actually, I'm not quite sure if it's a cathedral, or just a church of cathedral-like proportions. At any rate, it's directly across from the Château Ducal, which houses the Musée des Beaux Arts and the Musée de Normandie de Caen.
We met up at the train station in Caen around noon and found where we were staying, then stumbled, famished, into the first restaurant we could find. After eating and catching up we found the Office de Tourisme, grabbed a couple of maps, and were on our way, off to explore the big city.




Here's a vien of the flag of Normandy, flying over the ramparts of the château. It didn't rain on us while we were in Caen, but the weather was super overcast, as is evident in my photos. After visiting the Musée de Normandie de Caen, Lucy and I wandered around the pedestrian zone, where we ran into one of her students, who invited us to have coffee with him. Perhaps an hour later Ashley and Eren, two assistants from the Académie de Caen who actually live in Caen, came and met up with us. We got kebabs for dinner, but then I was super tired, and needed to retire for the evening (it was close to midnight at this point...).


Day 2 in Caen, we woke, had breakfast, then decided to set off to find the Abbaye aux Dames and Abbaye aux Hommes, and the gardens/park that're in the area. Here we are, sitting in a window of some ruins across from the Abbaye aux Dames. I didn't take any photos of the Abbaye aux Hommes, because it was too overcast, and there was construction obstructing the view.



At any rate, here is a photo of the Abbaye aux Dames. After visiting the Abbaye, we wandered back into town, skirting the pedestrian Zone. Lucy and I happened upon a couple of really uniaue bookstores, one of which had French translations of the Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging books. WIN. Man did I LOVE those books when I was younger. I remember laughing so hard, almost in tears when I read them. And now I have them in French! At this point I don't know a lot of the slang vocabulary, but context clues are helping me figure it out, and the first book of the series is just as hilarious as I remember it.




After bookstores, we met with Ashley and Eren again and got galettes, or savory crêpes. My favorite. Also, for you gluten-free freaks out there who're convinced they'd never make it in France, galettes are GLUTEN FREE! They're made with "farine de sarrasin", or buckwheat flour. People get really upset when you ask for sweet crêpe trappings on a galette, but they'll do it, which is epic. I think we spent the afternoon wandering around and drinking coffee, then had a baguette/cider/cheese pic-nic for dinner.




On our third day in Caen we went to Le Musée pour la Paix, a WWI and WWII memorial. I went a couple of years ago with my folks, and Lucy went when she was in high school. We didn't have time to get out to the D-Day beaches, but the museum was hallowing enough. I didn't take many photos, but the one thing that did catch my eye was this "BOMB TOKYO" game. (I can dig pohotos out of the archives, if anyone is particularly interested in seeing other parts of the museum...)

After the museum, we wandered to the Jardin des Plantes, where there is a magnificent greenhouse, with things like coffee, papyrus, cotton, and various carniverous plants. Loads of walking, because the sun was out, and it was almost hot. What an indian summer!

On our final night in Caen, Lucy convinced me to go salsa dancing, which I'd never done before. It was great, though the salsa club itself was sort of bizarre. The floor was covered with sand, which resulted in me slipping and sliding a lot, and almost falling down on my way to the bathroom.

After salsa dancing we found frites at a kebab stand. It was the only place we could find that was open at 1:30am on a Wednesday night. The fries themselves were good, and the drunk boys at the table next to us were cute. BUT FOR SOME REASON THEY PUT PAPRIKA AND MINT LEAVES ON THE FRIES! WHAT? It was incredibly bizarre. Frites, a "sauce samurai" that would make even the feebles of warriors perform seppuku, emmental râpé, paprika, and mint leaves.

The next day we wandered around town, said our good-byes, and caught an afternoon train to Rouen. I'll post about that part of our trip in the next few days, I promise.

Bisouxxx!