Partager au lieu d'acheter: Les vacances, Part II

partager - to share
au lieu de - instead of
acheter - to buy

In France, and in Europe in general, a movement is starting:  Sharing instead of buying.  With the help of several websites, people can post what they have to share and others can choose what they'd like - for example, cars (for ride sharing) with BlaBlaCar or apartments for short stays with Airbnb.com.  Through Airbnb, the four of us found a lovely apartment au centre-ville de Caen.

Caen from the Château Ducal

Caen was a completely new city for me, and it was definitely my favorite of the trip.  It was a bit smaller than Rennes: a little quieter and very liveable.  Though it was almost completely destroyed during the world wars, there are several sites from before the wars that are completely intact.  You can walk down a street of modern buildings and randomly stumble upon a medieval tower that happened to live through the war.

We first went to the Château Ducal, an old castle built around the year 1060 which now houses le Musée de Normandie and le Musée des Beaux-Arts.  We found that much of the ancient history of Normandie is almost the same as the history of Bretagne that we learned about in Rennes, but it was interesting all the same.  Le Musée des Beaux-Arts made me begin to change the way I think about art museums; sometimes, it feels like each art museum is the same here if you try to study and memorize each painting too hard.  For me, it's better to walk through at a quicker pace to get a sense of the ambiance of the museum; in the end, I returned to a small collection of impressionist-style paintings or the region that I thought were unique and beautiful.

Me, Laura, Lisa, and Elyse at the Abbaye aux Hommes

Another morning, we toured the Abbaye aux Hommes, an abbey that functioned in many ways throughout the years.  In addition to the medieval history, we enjoyed seeing the small "graffiti" that past students wrote on the walls of some of the rooms; in some respects, students are exactly the same from generation to generation.  It was also interesting to learn how the church and state waffled over the abbey; it's now a government meeting place.  If you look at an aerial photo of Caen taken just after D-Day, you'll be amazed to see the Abbey aux Hommes and Abbey aux Dames that remained intact in the middle of the rest of the city - a mess of completely-destroyed buildings.

Minnesota plaque in Caen

That afternoon, we hiked about forty minutes to see the WWII memorial and gardens to the north of Caen.  Though we didn't have time for a full museum visit, we walked through the peaceful American and Canadian gardens behind the museum; I found Minnesota!  There's also a lovely, spacious park nearby with flowers, trails, animals, and a panoramic view of Caen.

Our other project, I think most important for Elyse and I, was to see les plages du débarquement -

les plages du débarquement - D-Day Beaches

- so we took a day to travel to Bayeux, a small town, but the first to be liberated after the D-Day invasion of WWII.  We were hoping to go from Bayeux to the Omaha Beach, but because of les vacances, the bus hours were different and it was better for us to go to Arromanches, a small beach town between near Canadian and British beaches.  Arromanches itself was beautiful, quiet, and relaxing.  We only had a couple of hours there; we had a picnic near the water and explored a bit.  When we returned to Bayeux, we visited the journalist memorial, the cemetery, and the Musée du Débarquement, which we thought was extremely well done.

Cemetery in Bayeux

It's also a little strange and foreign to see American-style memorials and gardens here in France, with space, perfectly-mowed lawns, and that particular air of American reverence.

View from the Arc de Triomphe

After four days in Caen, it was time to say goodbye to Lisa; Laura, Elyse, and I continued on to Paris where we were joined by Henry, the Canadian, who was in Paris for the first time.  It was fun to show him around...and to see his face when he realized exactly how large the Louvre is (no, you cannot see it all in an hour).  I did get to take advantage of my shiny new "Pass Éducation" that lets me into all national monuments for free - that means I can explore the Louvre at my leisure this year, as well as climb the Arc de Triomphe as many times as my heart desires.

In addition to exploring several new neighborhoods, I also stood in line for almost three hours at the Grand Palais to see the Niki de Saint Phalle exhibition on a recommendation from Lise and Christophe.  Niki de Saint Phalle is a French artist who grew up in New York; through her art, you can see the many life phases that she experienced.  Her feminist art was particularly progressive during the second half of the twentieth century; she's probably most famous for her Nanas sculptures.  The exhibition was tied together with videos from the '60s in which Niki de Saint Phalle explained her art - she really nailed it.  You could tell that the interviewers were trying to ridicule her and expected her to fall flat on her face...but she always had a solid and witty response.  And today, her sculptures decorate the fountain in the modern and lively Place Pompidou in Paris.