Our time in Normandy was coming to an end. Of course, three full days is not enough at all to see even the main parts of this region. It is so beautiful here! So much history, so much of REAL France, if I could describe it like that.
On our last morning, we checked out of our B&B (which was a fantastic choice, you can book it here) and drove to Bayeux, a major tourist town that hasn’t lost its identity with all the crowds flocking to it. The main attraction is the Museum of Bayeux Tapestry—amazing that a whole place is dedicated to this amazing piece of history.
So what IS this Bayeux Tapestry? Well, here is a snapshot of a small part of it.
This tapestry is a 70 m long piece of embroidery that depicts the events leading to and during the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The embroidery was done, we believe, in the 11th century, but the origins are still not 100% certain, although it was probably embroidered near Canterbury, England. The story that is covered in those 70 meters is a well-known one. King Herold’s betrayal of the agreement with William the Conqueror (that’s what he became known as) and how William sailed the sea to Hastings and pretty much destroyed the English army and conquered England.
At the entrance, you are given an audio guide that is about 25 minutes long. As you walk along the tapestry, the guide tells you what is depicted in each scene, by enveloping the events in great historical description.
We also watched a short documentary that went into more depth on the story of the tapestry. In summary, we all thoroughly enjoyed it! It is an amazing sight to see and it feels really cool to be so close to something so old (said in simple kiddie words).
Our time was short in Bayeux. We lingered just a little bit longer in this town-went inside the cathedral, wondered around a few stone streets, found a bakery shops and bought enough bread and croissants to last us a while (and it was a very good thing we did! you’ll find out in our next post).
For lunch, we were determined to find some MUSSELS! So we drove about 15 minutes north towards the coast to Port-en-Bessin, a quaint little town on the coast. It reminded us a lot of Porthleven in Cornwall. We found a café that specialized in mussels, got our pots of mussels…and couldn’t finish them all.
These mussels tasted different than any others we’d ever tried before. Some of the mussels had a crunch to them (inside) because they still had tiny CRABS in them. So it’s kind of gross when you think about it-- you have to be eating a mussel and then spit a tiny crab out so that you don’t feel the crunch as you are chewing them. I actually came home after this trip and had to google about mussels and tiny crabs-haha. And apparently it’s normal! I found this article about tiny crabs (they are called pea crabs) inside mussels.
After a big filling lunch we waddled over to the van…except the kids got ice cream first, and I got this amazing apple strudel thingie that was not German at all, but it was amazingly good.
We were about four hours away from Calais, so we headed towards that direction hoping we’d get on our assigned chunnel train without any delays. HA-HA-HA-HA.
Lyana.
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