GLASSWARE AND TAPESTRIES, CASTLES AND ABBEYS
June 22-27, 2005
Aujourd’hui nous faison les velos…oops! I am starting to think in French! Sometimes I don’t even realize if I am speaking in French or English. My French may not be very good, but I am definitely improving. My vocabulaire is growing and I can understand about 65% of what I hear now. On the TV I can understand less, because they speak so fast, and sometimes speak about things out of context.
For the last several days we have been selecting some obscure point of interest and doing a bike ride around it and stopping in at the museum or chateau or fortress or church or abbey.
One day we went to the town of Saussey, where we visited a small museum of glass. Their collection includes glassware from the first century. Some of the fragile and elaborate glasses from the 15th and 16th and 17th centuries were amazing. I can’t imagine how these items survived all of those centuries. There were wine goblets with very fancy, filigree ornamentation on the stems, and lots of etched designs. One goblet had an image, like a hologram, of one of the French medieval kings. It was not even noticeable at first, but if one got at the right angle with the light the image was as clear as day. Also at this museum was a large collection of crèches from all over the world. There were glass crèches, paper crèches, and wooden crèches. One of the displays was extremely elaborate and had many characters. The display took up the entire end of one room.
Another day we went to the Pirou Chateau. This Chateau has been nicely restored and has a great parapet walk. A stone fortress replaced the early wooden fortress in the 12th century. There were 5 gates to pass through in order to get into the castle grounds. The legend that goes with the fortress is that when the Vikings came to raid they found only one old man there. The old man told the raiders that the family had turned themselves into geese and flew away. However, the geese could only turn themselves back into humans by following the instructions in the magic book they left at the castle. Alas! The Vikings burned the castle to the ground and even though the geese return there every year the books have been destroyed and so they continue to live their lives as geese rather than humans.
Also at this castle is another embroidery. This embroidery is being hand sewn by one person, who has been working on it since 1977. It is quite large and goes all the way around a very large room. It tells the story of the Norman conquest of Sicily and is done in the style of the Bayeux tapestry. The work is quite faithful to the style and is quite entertaining to read/view.
Our last day of bike riding we went to the east into the hills and did a nice, hilly ride to the Abbey of Hambye. Much of our riding has been fairly flat, so it was fun to do a few hills for a change.
When we arrived in France two months ago the fields of grains were just about a foot high, sill looking like grass without the heads being formed yet. The fields were the very rich, lush green of spring. Now the wheat fields are rich golden brown. The heads of plump grains are heavy and hanging down, too much for the think stalks to hold up. The fat, green heads of lettuce we saw in the fields have all been harvested and now in their place we see shoots of corn coming up. Over the last week it has grown a foot. Passing time is most noticeable to me in the changes in the crops.
Last night we enjoyed a very nice meal with our hosts, Damien and Lydie. We went to Granville and ate at a nice restaurant overlooking the bay. As we enjoyed our aperitif we watched the tide come in, the boats rise from the sandy harbor bottom and begin to float again. The ferry from Jersey arrived and also an ancient fishing boat with a square sail.
The presentation of our meals was very nice. I had shrimp for my appetizer and Don had salmon. Our main courses were also salmon. The star of the evening, though, was at the next table. The people ordered fruits de mer. When it came it was an enormous platter of every kind of shellfish. It was quite impressive and we asked if we could take a photo of it. They were good sports and grinned as Don snapped away.
Today is our last day in Breville. We will clean and pack and pack up the bikes today. This afternoon we will go to Granville to pick up a rental car and stop at the internet café one more time to upload our reports. For the next 4 days we will travel east across Normandy and back to Paris.