Alright, so after my slightly deep ramblings on the Battle of Normandy, let’s shift to battles the Normans have been in: the Battle of Hasting, the 1066 invasion of England, and the most recent time England was successfully overtaken by a foreign power. We saw the Bayeux Tapestry, a football-field long tapestry illustrating the lead-up to and the actual battle of Hastings. I hadn’t known much about it before hand, but the audio tours we took while looking at it, piece by piece, really pulled the whole thing together. It was a lot cooler than I thought it would be, and I should also note that it’s not actually a tapestry but rather a hell of a lot of embroidery. We also made a quick stop in a grocery store, to get some drinks for the night, which leads to all sorts of disaster later. But imagine me now walking through a small French city with two bottles of wine in my purse. Not enjoyable.

Okay, back onto the bus! To Arromanches, a shore town closer to the British and Canadian beaches. We saw a pretty cool 360 degree movie, with a lot of still shots and video from the invasion juxtaposed with modern day scenes of the area. We then visited Mulberry harbor, which was created just for the supplies needed after the invasion. By now we were all pretty burnt out, so we got some ice cream and sat on the promenade for a while.

Now to Bayeux again, where we’ll be staying for the next few nights. So, a run-down of this place. It’s kind of shitty—we have a bathroom in our room, but the sink is the only part that works. In fact, the toilet flushes once and then continues to run for the next 3 days, without flushing ever again. There are only 4 toilets we found in the whole place, which complicates things. It’s mostly our group in the hostel, but there are others. We’re eating dinner there in a weird family-style restaurant…thing. There a giant chess board in courtyard. Oh, and the group before us forgot to turn in their keys and are in Germany now, so we can’t have our rooms for a few hours. Say whaaaaat?

Our dinner was pretty good, and we got to drink some of our professor’s wine, which was nice of him to share. Shortly after this, we all wound up in the courtyard for some chess and wine. Followed by a run to a durum shop for some beers. The night went in much the same way, with people wandering in, contributing liquor, playing chess, starting arguments sometimes. We were out there till about 2, and all pretty far gone—I mean a friend walked into a glass door that was closed and I thought we were on a boat. Craaaazy. To some up these bad decisions, one friend has the quote of the weekend from the next day: “Taylor, your gin makes me hate myself.”

The next morning, many of us woke up still under the influence, which led to really badly timed hangovers later. However, we pushed onward and went to Mont St. Michel, a 13^th century abbey on an island; it doesn’t seem like an island, until the tide comes in. It’s this amazing mix of castle and museum and tourist town, and it was wonderful. I don’t think I’m doing it justice…

The tide comes in from 18 km away and you can no longer just walk up to it then; it's pretty crazy.

After our time there, we went to an apple orchard, which might not sound too exciting, except them make a TON of stuff there--cider, alcoholic cider, this liquor called Calvados, native to the region, and a weird apple spread. The tour was fun, and the cider was really good, but I couldn't even stomach the alcohol after the previous night. It was really acidic too, and I didn't enjoy it, but others apparently did since a ton of people bought stuff to take home. We returned to our hostel for dinner and a much calmer night, which for me included some wanderings around town and chitchat.

Our last day in Normandy was a pretty busy one. We left the hostel that morning and drove to Caen, a city in France that was liberated after Normandy. We went to the Peace Memorial, which was pretty incredible--great exhibits on the build-up to World War II, a lot of cultural stuff on the occupation, and the Cold War. We also saw a great film using a lot of old footage, and it was really moving. I also saw a wedding dress made out of a parachute--like I said, a lot of interesting stuff.

We stopped at the Abbaye aux Hommes church, founded by William the Conqueror; he is, in fact, buried there. The tour guide didn't know English, so his basic French tour coupled with our professor's translation was pretty good. It was really interesting, but we were all exhausted by then.

I won't get into the next few hours, as they're just a horrible traffic jam because the French loves tolls yet don't know how to do them right. There were also awful movies, though there was a parking lot picnic which was pretty sweet.

In the end, the trip was amazing and I'm so glad I went! Now to enjoy my final week in Belgium!