Valentine’s Day in St. Neots

I admit, I’m always a little bit behind on the general news from St. Neots as well as my holidays. Just a week or so ago, we took down the Christmas shrub.

Lest there be any doubt exactly where the Christmas shrub rested.

And after an entire year, I finally got around to finding a dentist. With the full knowledge that I have about four fillings that need work, I dragged myself down in fear and trepidation, but they were extremely nice to me and it made me want to be a better person, the kind who flosses.

The doorway to better dental health

I also wound up at the doctor’s for some routine bloodwork, but while I was there they had me fill out a little survey regarding the general services. one question in particular made me laugh.

(I’ve never seen a dragon.)

Other interesting things happened around town and in the shire this week, some sad and some just funny. At the sad end of the spectrum, someone jumped from the bridge in St. Neots by Priory Lane on Monday night and is presumed drowned.  A local teenager has been missing since about 30 minutes before the jumper was reported. What gave me some faith in humanity though was this part of the report from the paper: “…dozens of cars parked up on the river bank and shone their headlights into the water to help the search party.” [Steve Iley of Eaton Ford] said: “Later, lots more cars arrived and parked up — in places you wouldn’t expect — shining their headlights into the river to help the search.”

On the more humorous side of things, 5 caravans (RVs) were set on fire with 5 separate fires. “The fire service is treating the incident as deliberate.” And in the annual Pancake Day races (that’s the English term for Fat Tuesday before Lent where you eat lots of pancakes because…well, who wouldn’t want to do that?), the Mayor of St. Neots took a hard fall during the  Huntingdon races. “He crashed to the ground, ripping his trouser knee, and part of his chain of office fell out of its mount and rolled across the road.” His comment was, “You expect these injuries every so often when you do extreme sports.” Four years ago, the chairman of the Huntingdonshire District Council also fell during the race, suffering a cut to the head and shoulder and rib injuries.

People, all you have to do is run in a straight line while carrying a frying pan with a pancake in it.  This is not rocket science. I love you, but you make me fearful.

These people are upright and ambulatory. Try to be more like them.

I’ve been torn between being concerned for Bear and happy that he’s continuing to lose weight. He’s been very dedicated to his health over the course of our marriage, steadily losing over 50 pounds and improving his workouts and nutrition. He’s always worn his clothes on the baggy side, but lately it’s gotten a little over the top.

He’s in there. Somewhere.

So to try to help ease this in the other direction, I took advantage of a special deal that Waitrose offers for a Valentine’s dinner for two. There were 6 categories to pick from for a total of just 20 pounds: appetizer, side, wine, dessert, main course, and box of chocolates. 20 pounds! We wound up with a vegetarian pasta dish, roasted potatoes, chocolate mousse, Belgian chocolates, an assortment of olives/almonds/manchego cheese, and a bottle of wine for Bear.

Bear poured a glass of wine and I asked him how it was.

“Excellent vinegar,” he said.

“But lousy wine.”

The food itself though was excellent and there are no more pictures as it’s all gone!

Since we were sticking with the dinner and a movie formula, I picked out Warm Bodies, a new zombie, comedy, romance that was really fun, sweet-natured and a cool kind of re-working of Romeo and Juliet (with a happy ending). It was funny, adorable and had some good things to say about the general zombification of American culture. Two severed thumbs up. 🙂

Slipping through South Yorkshire

Having for some reason stayed up half the night, 6 a.m. wake up came a little too early for me, but Juliet was on hand to help encourage me out of bed, to let her out in the garden and provide a handful of treats.

Bear had planned the whole day and mapped out some hard to find spots up around South Yorkshire. Our first stop was at a vanished medieval village, a spot which had fallen out of the historical record around 1700.

Gainsthorp Medieval Village

The village was rediscovered from the air in 1925 and at this page you can see a nice aerial photo of the outline of where some of the buildings were before the village was “eaten up with time, poverty and pasturage”.

Long shadows over the vanished village

Bear had planned everything for the trip, so he had everything dialed up in the GPS and it was sort of an unusual for me to just sit back and be surprised as we went.

Mattersey Priory plaque

Mattersey Abbey walls

Grindstone wheel

Bear had been a little apprehensive about some of the sites as being off the beaten track but he found the next one without any trouble either: Roche Abbey. It technically wasn’t open until April, but the grounds were fenced off with low wire so you could still see everything and get great pictures without needing to enter. I was really surprised and taken with this little place — kind of like a mini Rievaulx Abbey.

Bear in some kind of undercroft at Roche Abbey

The abbey grounds were laid out in the Roche Valley, a really nice little piece of lane nestled in between some low crags with a stream/river running along. There was a public footpath too that seemed pretty popular based on the number of hikers with dogs who went by in the brief time we were there.

The vegetation around the cliffs is protected as a Special Scientific Site of Interest.

A little stream flows directly through the abbey grounds and foundations

Bear was so taken with the little river that he made a video with a news report on everything we’d seen that day:

Panorama of the Roche Abbey grounds (click to see enlargement)

By the path leading around the back edge of the abbey, there was a gate dedicated to a member of the local running club who had obviously passed away fairly recently.

Bear was getting hungry so we headed to Monk Bretton Priory next which was on the way to lunch at Nando’s.

Some of the walls were still in pretty good shape.

According to the documentation, Monk Bretton Priory was originally a Cluniac priory and the site has some of the best preserved monastic drainage in England. Since I was suffering from an oncoming sinus infection/cold attack at the time, I pointed out that I was in fact a very well preserved example of munk-tastic drainage. (I did not get a laugh.)

Monastic drainage–not to be confused with munk-tastic drainage

I sort of expected some crows to start flapping and giving portents of the end of the world.

The Nando’s…well, my beanie burger was excellent, Bear’s chicken was burned and when he asked for another thigh, they were really, really nice about it…andbrought him a breast. But they were so nice about it that he didn’t say anything.

We had tried to see Conisburgh Castle once before, but I made the mistake of trying to have lunch in Sheffield (the wrong part of Sheffield) and it took nearly an hour just to get there and we had to miss the castle. I’d promised we would get back and so we did.

The keep of Conisburgh Castle–unusual in that it’s a Norman castle and round, which they’re always square otherwise

The keep as it overlooks the town from the high hill–imagine looking up at this every day

The power was out at the keep and we couldn’t go inside, but this is what it looked like back in the day, with the full curtain wall intact

We met two really nice workers there and chatted with them for a while about their favorite properties (the girl said she really liked Richmond Castle which we’ve been to) and the guy told us a very interesting story about how not only was the castle featured in Ivanhoe, but when King Harald (before the Battle of Hastings) had to go up to York to repel an invading Viking force and then race back down south to fight the Norman invasion, had stopped to rest his men here at Conisbrough. Following the battle, William the Conqueror (who could call himself that finally), sent his man William de Warrene to oversee the area, given that the area was sympathetic and supportive to the now dead Saxon king and they feared a Northern revolt could be organized there — hence, Conisbrough was built to keep an eye on things.

St. Peter’s Church, circa 740 AD (a wooden church had been on the site from 540 AD)

There was one last stop for the day, back in Gainsborough, but we were a little late for the winter closing times (no entry after 3:30). Apparently, English people are like the opposite of trolls. It’s darkness that turns them into stone–must be under cover before dark! But the exterior of the hall was really interesting, as were some of the surrounding buildings, so I counted it as a win for the photos if nothing else.

Gainsborough Old Hall

The other side of the hall…really, nothing like the first side

The public library across the street

Because of Bear’s efficiency at navigating (didn’t get lost once!), we actually made it home in time for Juliet to have a little time outside in the garden, which makes a perfect day.

Lion King for a Day

Because I am married to a fairly tolerant man, when Bear saw me feeling a little overwhelmed earlier this year he suggested that we go down to London for the day and see a show. This apparently is a big sacrifice for a lot of guys and bears alike.Before the offer could be retracted, I pounced and planned a full day.

We stopped first at the British Library to see one of their new exhibits on the A to Z of detective fiction.

New free exhibit at the British Library: A – Z Murder in the Library

Handwritten manuscript page from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes short story “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman”

Signed photo with the cast of the televised adaptation of the Inspector Morse series.

We hopped the Picadilly tube line down to the British Museum to spend some time in the Enlightenment Gallery and the Sutton Hoo exhibit, which I like to see whenever we go. They’re building a new gallery for those items and it should be ready next year so it’ll be nice to see them in their new home as well.

But first we had to stop for a coffee at the Starbucks across from the museum, which is where I had waited with Bear’s brother and my sister-in-law two years ago while Bear was making his way to meet us. A lot fewer tourists in February!

Bear in the Starbucks across from the British Museum

They have these cute little guide/docents who hang out in various areas with some objects that you’re allowed to handle and they’ll give you a walk through which is always fun.

Cuneiform tablet (2500 BCE)

The inscription was meant to be read by the gods and not men, so it was laid on the inside and the inscription wasn’t exposed.

There were other objects I got to examine including a hand axe which was over 30,000 year sold and found somewhere in Suffolk, a small cosmetics pot travel-sized for the Egyptian afterlife, a ceramic tile from Iran/Persian empire, and a little one-handled jar from Italy that poured olive oil.

Over in the Sutton Hoo room, we found another hands on exhibit and learned about purse clasps and then walked around the regular exhibits.

Horse teeth that have been shaped into gaming pieces.

At the moment,a number of objects are grouped in Room 2 while their rooms are being renovated, including the oldest object in the entire museum which is another hand axe found in Olduvai Gorge, site of many of the finds by the Leakey family (Louis, Mary and Richard).

Olduvai hand axe

Our main objective though, I admit, was to have lunch at the Great Court Restaurant on the third floor which did not disappoint.

Roasted vegetable polenta

(my choice was the polenta)

Moroccan spice chicken with chickpea stew in spicy red sauce

Bear’s choice, his once a week chicken treat (fish only the rest of the time)

We managed to share the roasted artichokes without an actual fight

While there, we heard the party at the next table debating if they should get the mixed vegetable polenta, so I felt compelled to speak up and say that mine was excellent. We ended up having a really, really nice time talking to them (Mary Barnsdale and Eileen Cohen) and found that they had connections to writing and software as well and were over on a combination of business and vacation. I can’t even remember specifically what we talked about except all my favorite things, like books, travel, technical writing, food, museums, the exhibits, and on and on.

I don’t know why it seems like I keep meeting the nicest people that I feel like I could be friends with and then having to tell them good bye — it kind of reminds me of meeting Janet, Deb and Bella and everyone at Java Mama up in Dillard. I don’t think I ever told them, but when I left at the end of my writing week there when I met them and the rest of their regular cast of characters, I sat out in my car and cried for more than a minute because I knew somehow that I could’ve been very happy there on the mountain, but this was just one strand of life that I was only going to get a glimpse of, but I was still very blessed to have gotten to. (I get greedy like that, wanting to have everything last forever.) Best of luck and safe travels to you, Mary and Eileen!

We broke down and went for dessert, an apple-plum crumble with warm cream, that was guaranteed to send me into a sugar coma within an hour except I was so excited about going to the show that I wasn’t too worried.

Fortunately the Lyceum is hard to miss so when we got off the tube we just cast around a little bit and headed towards the giant gold-orange banners.

(taken from web, not my photo)

Seating arrangements are more important than you think when you’re married to someone as tall as Bear, and also one who is so attuned to his personal comfort. I had found that the Lyceum has some limited boxes available in the balcony area where you can sit with your own chair and move about at will and the price is even better than some of the regular seats. You do sacrifice a little visibility, but not all that much and the tradeoff would be well worth it.

Regular seating

Box seat!

No photos of the show itself out of respect to the requests for no photography, but here’s a link to a performance of the opening number as done for the Tony Awards a few years ago and you can see the reason that the show’s designer/director/big kahuna Julie Taymor made such a sharp impact.

After the show we ran over to find one of the three local Chipotles so Bear could have some real Mexican food because, as we have covered elsewhere, Mexican chain restaurants in England are sadly, woefully, off base in their menu offerings.  Note, if you’re looking for the one on St. Martin’s Lane, be aware that the street numberings are off from what you would expect. It’ll be at 58 on the left side of the road and 89 directly opposite on the right. Excuse me?

Chipotle Bear

For the final stop of the day, we went a few stops further on the Picadilly Line to Harrod’s where John’s family had very generously given us some gift cards for Christmas. Harrod’s being the experience that it is, you sort of have to go there and not just order online, so go we did.

Hard to miss Harrod’s

First stop–women’s shoes where Bear said, “I’ve always heard of Jimmy Choo–oh, that looks pretty!” Three seconds later when he turned the shoe over and looked at the price tag he bleated, “625 pounds…do you get both shoes for that? Here, let’s try Prada instead…”

After poking around the Barbour jackets and riding the Egyptian escalator up and down many times, I found some things I wanted (I’ll spare the world the pictures, it was in what used to be called the foundations department) and then ran down to the Food Hall before it closed to pick up some snacks, particularly some really nice French cheese (a round of Camembert and some Tomme de Chevre).

Up and down, up and down…

We couldn’t have timed it better taking the tube back to King’s Cross and we arrived about 10 minutes before a train back to St. Neots (although admittedly they have several an hour). It’s still pretty mindboggling to live so close to one of the major cities in world history and to be able to be there and back so quickly. Despite the whirlwind day though, the best part was coming home to Juliet.

A (part) Turkish Van on a Turkish rug, waiting faithfully for us to come home.

Lurking about Lincoln

Bear was now healed up and fully ready to hit the road, a mere 27 days after his falling ill while in Paris. He scouted out the English Heritage Map, which hadn’t seen any pins added to it in quite a while, and spotted a gap in the area of Lincolnshire, and that’s where he set his sights.

One of these areas is not like the others

Our first stop was the ruins of Tattershall College, a grammar school for church choristers.

Interior of the school (formerly two storey) which was in use from the 15th century up to 20th century.

Snow plus Bear = watch your back

Tattershall had been built by the same man (Roger, Lord Cromwell) who built the nearby Tattershall Castle (sensing a theme here), which is managed by English Trust, and looked like it had been quite something back in the day.

Church conveniently located next door

On the way to the next stop, we stumbled on Lincoln Cathedral which wasn’t actually in the original plan.

Lincoln Cathedral

Lincoln Cathedral (the other pointy end)

Yes. Yes, that’s Yoda clinging to man’s back.

We then hit something of a snag as we tried to visit the Bishop’s Palace. We had gotten directions from a nice lady in the cathedral and went straight over to it but for some reason no one was home.

Who knows what lurks behind the green door? (Answer: Marilyn Chambers apparently.)

Yep–they said they would be open

So we decided that since we’d come all this way, we would do a little guerrilla touristing and just climbed over the gate and walked around ourselves. (Honestly, they could have put up a sign or a notice on the website. It’s like the country has never seen snow before.)

Escape from the Bishop’s Palace

After working up an appetite climbing over walls and gates, Bear said it was time to look for lunch…

Oh look what was just two miles away!!

We went to Bolingbroke Castle next, which is more accurately “the ruins of what we think was probably at one time Bolingbroke Castle”. Most famous perhaps as the birthplace of Henry IV, they made an unfortunate choice of Spilsby greenstone as the chief building material, which according to Wikipedia is “porous, prone to rapid deterioration when exposed to weather and a substandard building material”. Wow. Not what you want to read in your building report.

It comes complete with a frozen moat that a labrador retriever was romping around on when we got there (leaving scuffy paw prints on the slushy ice)

That would be the Spilsby greenstone

Probably looked more like a castle with a…castle. Back in the day.

There is something of an English fascination with windmills that I’ve never gotten a firm grasp on, so we decided to stop at the Sibsey Trader Mill in Sibsey since we were in the area also.

Sibsey Trader Mill

It was at this point that I extended our sort of dubious guerrilla activities since we hadn’t technically, exactly, precisely yet renewed our English Heritage, which just came up for renewal this week. I have the cards. I in fact had them with me and wanted to do the renewal on site, but none of the places we had been to yet that day had an admissions person. So it was with a little trepidation that I walked up to the windmill and asked the guy if he wanted to see our cards. He did…but as soon as I pulled mine out, he lost interest and didn’t even want to scan it or look at the number, so we went right in. (I swear, I am renewing as soon as they open on Monday. The very second.)

Windmills. Not that interesting to Munk. They’re not bad, but anything that smacks of the mechanical is inevitably going to be less fascinating than another structure where blood was shed. Not that people haven’t probably lost limbs or cut themselves in the gears, but that wasn’t purposeful bloodshed.

There were six storeys of this.

And when you’re done, you get lots of different cool flours.

After we climbed up all six floors and gave everything a good look, and managed to climb back down without killing ourselves, we stopped at the tea room next door which was surprisingly well stocked and doing some local business. We had a very reasonable little scone with two pots of tea for just 4.20 (a figure which seems very appropriate when it comes to stopping to get a munchy snack).

4:20–munchy time!

While we were there, Bear overheard a couple at the next table talking about problems they’d had with their car when it pulls a trailer/caravan and the engine knocked, so he chatted with them about it and gave them a tip to have their mechanic turn up the fuel mix when they knew they would be pulling a load. They seemed to be really grateful and chatted with us some about their travels to Scotland and the Black Isle, which weirdly enough is a spot that I wrote a short novella about when I was in high school (what are the odds?). It led me to understand that the people we have a lot in common with in England are caravan (RV) owners. They just have more of an urge to get out and explore it seems. They gave us some recommendations about a boat trip up around Edinburgh that could take us to an island with some puffins, so we thanked them and made a note to check that out if we can’t find puffins in Ireland this summer.

There was just time to get home before it got dark and the roads started to freeze up again, and we were very fortunate to luck into finding a new road to get home on. By that, I literally mean it was a new road. It had just been build, had sufficiently wide lanes, and even lighting in appropriate areas. It was almost like driving in America. Bear even teared up a little.

Teatime Bear

Winter in St. Neots

We’ve gotten more snow at an earlier point this year, but it’s made everything look really beautiful. While Bear has been sick and hibernating, I’ve been trying to document as much of the winter wonderland as possible while it’s still a novelty.

We started with a nice chill that put a frost on the trees.

Then the snow started (Juliet was not impressed)

And the world woke up magical

Bear built a homemade cat door by stuffing bags in the cracks and leaving a little tunnel for Juliet.

Bear loves Munk

Juliet believes that she is the leading lady in a new Richard Attenborough documentary, “Return of the Snow Leopard”

Juliet by the radiator on her fleecey with the Holy Family nativity set. (She’s always wanted to be in a live nativity)

The path to the park where Bear walks nearly every day.

A little snow family popped up down the street.

The river by the lock and bridge has mostly frozen over. Mostly.

Mill Cottage and its boats, slowly freezing in

Bridesmaids comes to St. Neots

The plan had been to sleep late in the morning and take things easy after such a big day over in Normandy. Around 10 a.m., I realized Bear was kind of sick. I let him sleep. By 2:30 p.m. when he had barely woken up to take a drink, much less move or have a coherent conversation, I realized that the day was probably not going to go much of anywhere.

Note the little balled up fists. Only the truly hard sleeper can produce this.

I decided that was fine since we had done so much the day before. It was New Year’s Eve, technically, but it wasn’t like we had any specific plans. I would try to find some food, get stocked up on some things, and then we could just rest up for a big New Year’s Day with lunch at the Eiffel Tower and a river boat cruise.

I don’t know if you have ever tried to shop for food on New Year’s Eve in Paris, but it’s an experience you should just read about if at all possible. I managed to find a food store very close to the hotel but apparently it was the largest one in the entire arrondisement and everyone and their cousins had headed there because everything (and I mean everything) closes down completely for New Year’s.

I spent about 35 minutes in this line to buy some oranges, some bread, a little cheese, some snacks for me, bananas and sundries before I learned something very valuable. That valuable thing is the French phrase for “This line is exclusively reserved for the handicapped and pregnant women”. Awesome.

I then went and stood in another line for about 20-30 minutes before escaping.

The policemen were very helpful and pantomimed how I could find the pharmacy downstairs in the mall area, so I ran there with the last few minutes I had to try to explain what I needed. I am actually making an effort to learn some French but so far I had been focusing on food words, so I could say something like “Do you serve vegetarian dishes?” but not “I think my husband has the flu and he’s incredibly sick, do you have anything for that?”

This led to my second discovery of the day, which was how to say “flu”:  greep. Just let the -eeee trail out and add a slightly disgusted look to your face. “He has the greeeeep.” Say that and people will be very, very nice to you.

I kept the recommended meds going into Bear and he kept asking for Orangina bottles (they had to be cold plastic bottles, not cans), so I kept running down from the 8th floor to the lobby and feeding 3 euros worth of coins into the machine. The hotel desk wasn’t supposed to give me change for bills, but the different desk girls were really nice and kept making exceptions for me.

That machine was fascinating. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

At the beginning of New Year’s Day, I started to realize that Bear was really, really sick. He wasn’t getting any better and he wasn’t waking up. I didn’t actually care about what we were missing since we had the chance to come back and honestly it just felt good to sit still, read, working on a Bible study, and not be running around. Yes, we’d had reservations to each lunch at the Eiffel Tower and had talked about going on a little boat cruise on the Seine, plus we were supposed to meet up with my boss’s family and talk some business and…none of that was going to happen. Bear was incredibly sick.

The major problem though was that I had no idea how we were going to get home if Bear didn’t wake up. I don’t know how to drive in Europe (I really had every intention of learning and I did try…one day) and we had a 3 hour drive just to get to the ferry to come back to England and then another 3 hours back to St. Neots from there. It was time to start praying.

Bear needed at least a little food, which he’d had no interest in so far, so I set out on New Year’s Day to try to find something. Preferably soup. This is not the easiest thing to do because everything–EVERYTHING–shuts down in Paris for New Year’s Day. I have been accused of having too many trivia facts in my head, but the brain is not a book shelf with limited capacity where you have to choose to forget something to “make room” for something else. It was in fact my recollection of the aftermath of the Turkey Theft Scene from A Christmas Story which led me to realize that of all cuisines in the world, I was the most likely to be able to find an open Chinese restaurant on New Year’s Day and then I actually found that restaurant and bought a giant container of hot and sour soup to take back to my hotel room. So thank you A Christmas Story, thank you stupid movie trivia–I will not apologize, fararara-rararara!

Bear managed to eat some soup, his first real food in nearly 48 hours, and seemed to feel a little better. The hotel was nice and agreed that we could stay an extra day if needed, but when Wednesday dawned Bear said we could try to make a break. He was feeling very faint, but we made it to the ferry and he was able to rest on the way over.

Driving back from Dover…not so much fun. We missed the interchange of the M20 and the M25 and had to do a highly illegal U-turn, and Bear wasn’t doing very well by the time we got home, but we did have time to get some more soup at Waitrose and also to pick Juliet up from the cattery so Bear could have her to cuddle with while he rested up.

The rest of the night was…well, did you see Bridesmaids? Did you see the wedding dress fitting scene? No? [Warning: multiple uses of the s-word (in appropriate context) and bathroom humor. Literally, bathroom humor. They invented that phrase for this scene.]

Now you know exactly what it’s like to have the flu/norovirus hit your household. (I inadvertently played the witchy Rose Byrne role in our home version as I tried to get Bear to eat different things, which was just about the most inappropriate possible thing to do.) Thank God though we had made it home to England by the time all that happened.

So that was the end of our big trip to Paris. Eight days after we got home, Bear was still sick, still exhausted, and still sleeping massive amounts each day, which actually was pretty perfect as far as I’m concerned–I actually had time to rest!

Now 22 full days after he fell sick, he was just able to go out on the weekend to a movie and today for a brief walk around the neighborhood and is back to his full appetite. (He actually has his twitchy energy back too, which has made me wonder exactly why I was praying for healing?? But I’ve missed him, I really have, so thanks be to God, my husband is well again!)

Paris New Year’s 2012 — Bayeux Tapestry (Day 2)

As interesting as the WW2 sites were, I admit that I was tapping my foot a little and wanting to move on to the big stop for the day for me which was the Bayeux Tapestry museum in the nearby town of Bayeux.

Small water wheel nearby to the tapestry’s museum

If you’ve ever seen a movie with a quasi-early medieval setting, there’s a good chance that some graphics in the credits were taken from the Bayeux Tapestry.

You walk along the whole length of the tapestry

The tapestry tells the story of the two years of political events leading up to the Norman Invasion and William the Conqueror’s victory over the Saxon King Harold. It’s not actually a tapestry in the sense that we think of them now, but a wool embroidered roll of linen that stretches 68 meters long unrolled, telling the whole story in numbered panels.

I had downloaded a lot of podcasts about Mont Saint-Michel and the tapestry also, so we were pretty studied up on it before we arrived. There had been a warning about the long lines, but fortunately when we got there about 90 minutes before closing there was no line whatsoever.

When you enter, you directly see the tapestry in a dim environment, well protected and gently lit. You have an audio guide and someone (not Patrick Stewart or Derek Jacobi, but someone along those lines) tells you exactly what’s going on in each panel and keeps you walking along very briskly so you got the whole story like a narrated movie. Even knowing a lot about the historical period, it was really cool to see it all unfold that way.

Don’t break your oaths! (Harold swearing to uphold Williams’ claim)

The tapestry was kept for a long time at the Bayeux Cathedral and unrolled there and posted along the pillars. The general moral seems to be that if you don’t keep your oaths (like Harold, who had promised to support William’s claim to the throne and then broke his oath), then you might get shot in the eye with an arrow.

If you do, you might get shot in the eye!

There were some very nice exhibits on the second floor, going into the preservation of the tapestry, the materials used, the 4 kinds of stitches used, the plants used to dye the fabrics, and some other exhibits about life at the time.

There was also a nice little film about the same events that the tapestry covers, and that’s when I fell asleep–not exactly my finest moment. (I did stay awake long enough though to know that some of the filmed parts of the recreation of the Battle of Hastings featured some of the same re-enactors we had seen at the Battle in October, particularly the one playing Duke William.)

Norman Cavalry re-enactors from the Battle of Hastings, October 2012

I was so excited to see it all but I simply passed out in sheer exhaustion, but recovered enough to dive into the gift shop. I have a reproduction of part of the tapestry that used to hang in my writing study at home, but I didn’t bring it with me to England and I’ve been missing it to tell the truth.

Bear: Which part of the tapestry did you have?
Me: Panel 49.
Bear: <silent blinking> In English?
Me: It’s the part where Duke William exhorts his cavalry soldiers to brace themselves.
Bear: You could’ve just said that.

My study in our house back in America. After I ran a marathon, I told myself I would buy a panel reproduction of the Bayeux Tapestry to fit the spot over the closet.

I am ludicrously susceptible in these kinds of gift shops and bought a book, some postcards, a foldout of the entire tapestry, and a print. I have nowhere to put them, but it makes me happy.

We went over to the Bayeux Cathedral to wait until the restaurants would open for dinner and got to see it still decked out for the nativity.

Bayeux Cathedral

They had medieval chants and songs piped in which was really nice. (I’ve recently picked up some older albums by Enigma and Delerium, which also feature Gregorian chants remixed with modern trance beats.)

Interior of the nave

We ate at L’Assiette Normande and I think it might have been the best meal I’ve had in years, even beating some of the other ones I’ve had in France before.

They had a fixed menu with an amazing amount of courses for a very reasonable price. I had to read it twice to be sure I wasn’t accidentally ordering the wrong thing, but it really was that cheap for some amazing food. It was also a good place to be a vegetarian who allows for the occasional bivalve mollusk since they had both oysters and scallops on the menu being so close to the coast.

Oysters on the half-shell

Baked scallops in a Normandy sauce (cream based) with rice, mashed yams (OK, that sounds odd but it was really good)

After a cheese course of fresh brie there was a dessert round of coffee and mini-desserts (creme brulee, ice cream puff, eclair, black currant sorbet).

On our way back to Dieter, who had been left parked in a slightly suspect space in front of the hospital, we passed by the cathedral one last time.

Bayeux Cathedral

On the way back to the car, Bear who had already been feeling sick, started to get a really severe chill and his whole body was shaking so hard he nearly fell against the dashboard, so we waited in the car for a long time, letting it get heated up before we started back to Paris. (We’re going to skip over an incident in which I had forgotten to secure the lid of the cooler which, combined with going around a roundabout too fast (IMHO), caused melted ice to go everywhere.)

We made it back safely though with the happy knowledge that we didn’t have to be anywhere early the next day so we didn’t even need to set an alarm. Little did I know exactly how prophetic that would be.

Paris New Year’s 2012 — Normandy Invasion (Day 2)

We headed back in from Mont Saint-Michel and turned north to dodge up to go to Pointe du hoc to see the cliffs where the Rangers scaled up at the start of D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944. It hadn’t been on the original plan really but we realized we were going by it on the way to a later stop.

In the car park, we met a couple walking a cat on a leash. Awesome.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that for all that I know entirely too much about things like the 12th century English Civil War, I don’t know as much as I should about wars in my own century. I didn’t even realize that the Normandy Invasion involved climbing cliffs! The land at Pointe du Hoc has been left nearly untouched since the day of the invasion and you can still see the giant craters left by bombardment.

Craters from bombardment still visible

The concrete casemates and German machine gun positions were still in place and you could see the bases where the guns had been placed and mounted.

You could climb right down into the German defenses

looking out from a German position through barbed wire and out over the cliffs

Just sitting there. No ammunition in sight.

Plaque at Omaha Beach

We drove down to Omaha Beach where the tide was mostly out, seeing the sand stretches where the Allied forces had landed. (The volume on the video below is kind of worthless since the wind was blowing so strongly, but it’s fun to watch.)

Turning up, we stopped briefly at the American Cemetery also, probably most famous to Americans as the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan where the WW2 veteran and his family come to visit the graves and the flashback begins (in a really glaring violation of the POV rule, but it’s too late to explain that to Steven Spielberg). They have a nice museum there now with films and memorabilia.

M1 Garand rifle (which, interestingly enough, is owned by no less than three people I am either related to or work with)

Reflecting on the sacrifice

There’s a continual loop of the names of the dead being read out as you walk between parts of the building so you walk through a passage hearing nothing but the names aloud.

A soldier known only to God

Reflecting pool and memorial at the American Cemetery

Map of the invading forces

The ribbon on the flowers was in English, which made me wonder if it had been brought from America or if the local stores sell in English

Next stop: on to the Bayeux Tapestry

Paris, New Year’s 2012 — Mont Saint-Michel (Day 2)

A somewhat well-known bit of trivia in Tolkien circles is that the visualization of Minas Tirith, the chief city of Gondor, closely parallels the Gothic monastery of Mont Saint-Michel off the Norman coast of France.

(Although, to get technical, Minas Tirth had some basic inspiration from Gondolin, one of the great hidden kingdoms of the First Age)

Stopping simply at the word “Tolkien”, this meant that we had to visit. (The last time we were in Aldeburgh, we found a great coffee table book about France and the cover was a great shot of MSM at low tide.) We were out the door by 6:30 a.m. and on the highway west to the Norman coast, stopping at a rest stop for some pastries and more drinks. (I had packed a cooler with ice and more drinks, never a bad idea.)

The idea was to avoid the hordes of visitors that descend pretty much every day and we pulled that off nicely. You used to be able to drive over the causeway through the muddy tidal flats and park at the base of the city/abbey and walk up from there, but changes are underway and we got the use of a very nice car park and a shuttle bus that whisks you across the gap and drops you right at the base.

Mont Saint-Michel

We walked up through the narrow street, passing little shops and restaurants and even a few rooms for rent, ascending on our way up to the abbey at the top.

Tiny little stone streets, winding upwards

It’s just freakishly like what the art directors/set designers did with the Minas Tirith sets, particularly in The Return of the King, so it was fun to try to decide which was the chicken or the egg in this case.

Inside the abbey church at the highest point of Mont Saint-Michel

Nuns keeping service

We toured the abbey  which has remained in very good shape, primarily because it didn’t suffer what English abbeys did after the dissolution under Henry VIII.

In the cloister

MSM was a major military fortification during the time of the 100 years war and because it held out successfully, resisting all English attacks, it has become a major symbol of French national pride.

A solemn Monk ‘Munk

Knight’s Hall

The human hamster wheel used by the monks to pull up supplies and items

The tides at Mont Saint-Michel come in at an unusually fast pace

Back in 1991, one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Jeff Johnson, released an album called Great Romantics that contained songs all about different European sites or themes, like Hadrian’s Wall, the Chartres Bells, the great square in Prague; the final song was about Johnson’s afternoon at Mont Saint-Michel when he was caught in a rainstorm outside the chapel. With unusually good foresight I had actually loaded up the song on my mp3 so I could listen to it at the site from high up on the rock looking over the tidal plain.

Saint-Michel I have returned to you:

A battered soul, a wind-swept heart.

A mass of pilgrims has besieged you,

Despite the dark clouds overhead.

The water pours out of the heavens,

And you have caught me unaware.

But let the rain fall down, let it wash away my sin,

Let it soak my heart with life.

Let it flow from Thee, let it flow into the sea,

Let the rain fall down on me.

The gold top of the steeple is a statue of St. Michael, the angel who first appeared to the founder of Mont Saint-Michel and commanded him to found the abbey.

The abbey was used as a prison after the French revolution and was eventually turned into a historic monument and it’s a really distinctive symbol.

We headed back down the narrow medieval street and stopped at a creperie for a quick lunch.

Chocolate-hazelnut crepe

While we were finishing, I noticed that the restaurant had an evacuation plan posted, a legal requirement no doubt. The irony though was that all of the shops and restaurants were just big open squares without even a real door, just dumping out onto the street. Hence, I present the world’s simplest evacuation plan:

Go straight ahead, do not pass Go, do not collect $200

Next stop, Pointe du Hoc, the Omaha Beach D-Day landing site and the American Cemetery

Paris, New Year’s 2012 — Abyssinia (Day 1)

In what was probably not the smartest move ever, we waited a long time to book details of the New Year’s trip to Paris, partially because we were dependent on other people for some of the plans. The train was too expensive by then and we wound up driving and taking the ferry over on Saturday, getting in to Paris before dark.

Bear decided to pull out all the stops and found an Ethiopian restaurant nearby and surprised me by suggesting we head over to that. I’ve had a growing love for African food over the last 8 years or so, and I’d like to think that it started back in the mid-90s when my friend Kristina first introduced me to really good vegetarian food. She also mentioned to me once that she had gone to visit her sister up in the Washington D.C. area and they had gone to an Ethiopian restaurant. I made some bad joke at the time about not thinking that they had any food to spare for a restaurant and later felt bad about it. Sometimes when people don’t know what to say they make a joke that, at best, is something a junior high kid would say and it just falls flat and stupid. Somehow I still do that sometimes despite my best efforts. For some reason the Ethiopian restaurant remark stuck with me and highlighted that stupid tendency so I tried to instead say things like “Oh, I don’t know anything about that” or “Why did you choose that, it sounds unusual” and things like that instead of making fun.

Flash forward about 17 years and here I was, having a chance to eat in an Ethiopian restaurant. We took the Metro over one stop and found Abyssinia tucked away on a side street.

Abyssinia

We fumbled around with the menu but did a lot better because of the food words I’ve been studying, so I managed to avoid the dishes with meat and ordered some assorted legume stews.

Appetizers (which actually tasted a lot better than they looked)

Ethiopian food is traditionally served on a flat pancake-like bread round which is sort of like a soft, unbaked pita which is called injera. You also get some spare injera on the side which you use to scoop up the food (no utensils) with your right hand and eventually you eat the underlying injera also which serves as plate and napkin.

Platter with my vegetables and on the other side Bear’s chicken stew (wot)

Afterward, I had to go for the coffee since Ethiopia is considered by some as the birthplace of coffee (I’d also heard Kenya, Indonesia and Hawaii). It was surprisingly smooth, but I was glad for the sugar packet. Chopped fresh mango was the dessert and I think I understand why people like mango now. I must never have had decent mango before.

Getting the bill was a little more complicated than usual, even for a European restaurant. I finally realized that our waiter had actually sat down at a corner table with friends (maybe family) and was eating dinner — he was done! So I cleverly wandered over and everyone assumed I was looking for the bathroom (never pass up a chance to use the bathroom in a foreign country) and afterwards I just hung around the table until he realized I really did want to pay him.

We were all very friendly at this point and the waiter (owner? founder?) asked how we had found the restaurant and taught us how to say Happy New Year in French. Everyone shook hands and we left feeling that sort of happy glow you get when you have a successful cross-cultural exchange.

15+ years was a long time to wait, but I really enjoyed the food and would definitely go to another Ethiopian restaurant again in a heartbeat. And hopefully if I hear about something else unusual in the mean time, that I’ll think about with an open mind and maybe not have to wait so many years before I try it for myself.

Tomorrow: Giant road trip day to see Mont Saint-Michel, the Normandy beaches, and the Bayeux Tapestry