My Norman invasion

Ross and I went to Normandy on Tuesday. Ross's already been, but he gracefully went again with me to help fulfill a lifetime dream. I saw the Bayeux Tapestry. It's about the only thing in Bayeux, a small town in Normandy, and they let you know; once off the train, there is no shortage of signs pointing you in the direction of the small museum where it is housed and maintained. I don't have any pictures of me with the tapestry because, for good reason, photos are not allowed inside (I did, however, buy a book that contains high resolution pictures of the entire tapestry at 54% of the original tapestry's size). The tapestry itself, for those who do not know or feel like Wikipedia-ing it, was an 11th century tapestry embroidered sometime after William the Conqueror's invasion of England, explaining several events leading up to and largely commemorating the Battle of Hastings in October, 1066. This was a hugely important event that changed the course of history forever...as per usual. It's also been a favorite period of mine, and finally seeing the actual tapestry was spectacular. I think Ross enjoyed watching my reaction more than the tapestry itself (again, it was also his second time).

This is a cathedral we saw on the way to Normandy, but I don't remember what stop it was where we saw it. The picture is obviously through the window of the train, so it sucks. But the cathedrals in France are all really nice.

This is me drinking Norman cider from Norman pottery, both of which they're known for. I felt a little like a conqueror.

Then I conquered the famous Norman pizza, another speciatly of the region.

This really only makes sense to me. However, I still found it amusing that one of the traffic markings in Normandy looked exactly like a Norman kite-shield. It was too big to get a good picture, but you get the idea (that I have issues).


This is me outside the museum. I forget why the boat's there...
This is me after the tapestry in the museum. The cardboard stand-ups were pretty cool. They had neat models everywhere of different aspects of the battle of Hastings and the events surrounding it.

Kids can color pictures of the tapestry. This was my favorite.
Norman cathedral. I took some pictures of the inside as well, but none of them really came out because it was too dark. You could hear monks chanting and I thought it was really cool until we figured out that it was a recording. Where we ate lunch was actually just to the right of this picture, so we could see the cathedral the entire time. It reminded me of the restaurant in the Jewish Quarter in Rome where we ate right at the foot of the ruined Theater of Marcellus.

After the tapestry, we wandered around the town for a while as we had to wait for our train back to Paris. Bayeux is actually a very interesting town, and has a lot of really cool side streets and things but I spent too much time at the museum to really see too much more of the town. There is a really neat embroidery shop, and probably some good antique stores. The whole town has a very medieval look and feel to it. I liked it a lot. Once back in Paris, we found some dinner (Ross had "steak-frites," steak and fries, another vocabulary word I remembered from my middle school French), and I had fries and a veal thing in mushroom sauce that was really good. That was probably my favorite meal in France.