Bayeux is a Great Place for Textile Nerds

A weekend away from Paris is never a bad idea.

I had wanted to go to Bayeux for ages. It's one of the only towns that didn't get demolished in that part of Normandy during WWII, leaving a quaint medieval village to wander around. Nearby cities like Caen were almost completely reduced to rubble, leaving a blank slate to be rebuilt into sprawling industrial and port cities in cold post-war architecture. It's kind of a tourist town, but it wasn't so busy where you felt mobbed or like you couldn't get a dinner reservation.

The city is crowned with an enormous thousand year old gothic Cathedral.

They don't grow grapes here, so cider becomes the Champagne drink of choice. It's usually very cheap- $3-$4 euros for a bottle, and it's very drinkable. It goes nicely with the fresh oysters and the savory buckwheat crepes called galettes that you can get pretty much everywhere.

I badly wanted to visit the Bayeux Tapestry. It's a very unique work of art from the 11th century. It's not a tapestry at all, but a long linen cloth stitched together and embroidered with great detail and embellishment.

(All tapestry images courtesy Wikipedia since photos were not allowed and I tend to take the preservation of these things seriously. It annoys me to no end that some vistors decided to perserve their memories via their Iphones despite getting yelled at by security.)

It used to hang in the nearby cathedral, but it was moved into a special museum where it could be in climate controlled perfection.

It's basically a comic book for the illiterate, which, in the 11th century, chances are you weren't spending too much time learning how to read.

It tells the story of William the Conquer. Well, he was actually known as William the Bastard when the story starts, and ends up becoming William the Conquer. He was the Duke of Normandy, and he decided he was the rightful heir of the throne of England as well and went off with his troops to give the usurper Harold a royal ass kicking. The battle of Hastings is portrayed with much violence and detailed stitching- blood and severed body parts and gore.

It's basically a propaganda piece to convince the British populace that William was the good guy in all this, and despite the fact that the dying heirless King Edward said the crown should be passed to Harold.

The museum itself is fantastic. The whole tapestry is laid out in a long, unbroken arched hallway. You are given an audio guide that explains in detail what is going on, scene by scene. It was so amazing, when we were done, we went back and did it again. The boats, the battles, the quicksand in front of Mont Saint Michel, the laughing horses...it deserved a lot of your attention. Upstairs, there is a museum explaining the techniques used in the tapestry and the history of the events, and a film that shows a really convincing reenactment.

Yes, natural dye was used. Three kinds: Woad for blues, Madder for reds, and Weld for yellows, all used at different saturations to get the various shades. Here's a great website talking about the dyes and techniques used.

My favorite scene:

Hayley's comet, appearing ominously in the sky to fortel the demise of Harold, ages before people knew what a comet might really be. It's the same comet I saw in 1986 and caused me so much childhood angst about the kind of world we would live in the next time it paid us a visit.

Here, in a rather old-school web page, is the entire thing, scene-by-scene.

Jim Morrison?

I keep forgetting how close I am living to Pere Lachaise cemetery.  I went there once the first time I visited Paris.  It had been autumn, the weather had been lovely, and I fell hard for the city.



Now that I'm a kilometer away I ignored the cemetery completely.



I did start to run again in ernest.  Gyms aren't really a huge feature of daily life here so I have to make it on my own.  Also...a lot of fitness clubs are just places to relax in the sauna naked and have casual gay affairs.  I haven't figured out how to tell the difference between a gym to work out and a gym to get worked out.  For now, I will run in the great outdoors.  

I planned a route on quiet and wide streets around the neighborhood that will take me a total of 4 or 5 miles.  And lo, it leads me right around the edge of Pere Lachaise.  Running here is pretty hilarious.  People look alarmed...what am I running from?  They look around nervously.  What am I running towards?  They look around with anticipation.  There aren't a whole lot of runners here.

So after one of these runs, I decided to check it out again.

It's still a lovely and peaceful place.






You can buy a map at the entrance of mimeographed paper to show you the location of the famous graves.  I know there is one in the Rough Guide book I have, that I couldn't be bothered with carrying around.  I prefer to just wander.  I've found Edith Piaf's grave twice, and Modigliani's once, and that's about it.  I'm sure one day I'll get motivated and hit all the famous spots.

There is a pretty big hill you can climb.  It has a nice view of the Eiffel Tower and parts of the city.  We found a bench to rest our feet.

"Jim Morrison?"  An American tourist approached us, gesticulated wildly.  I shrugged.

"Geeem Morrison?"  A couple of French men asked us, smoking and drinking from cans of beer.

"Jiiim Morris-son?"  An Indian couple intrepidly questioned.

I still have no idea where his grave is.  It amused me to hear everyone ask for his location though.  All the nationalities and accents and different ages of people wanting to pay their respects to an American permanently in Paris.

St. Denis

Oh, the rain in Paris!

The sky will be gray and drizzly for hours, with maybe a bright promise of sunshine breaking through to get you to let your guard down, and the next thing you know, you are soaked through.

I've stopped bothering with nice shoes altogether. I save those for the sunniest, brightest days only.

On one of these fantastically wet days, we took the metro to the north suburbs of the city to St. Denis. It's still on the Metro line, but it took about 45 minutes to get there. We walked around a bit in the bustling town when there was a slight break in the drizzle. Ironically, what used to be a very Christian area is now very Middle Eastern, so there's lots of places to get Kebabs and falafel.

The Basilica of St Denis is where all of the French Kings and royal families since the 10th century are buried- some by choice and some were dug up and entombed here. Or parts of them were, anyway.

Even on a gray day, the stained glass looked brilliant.

Downstairs, in the crypt, there is what is thought to be the tomb of St Denis. They have a nifty overhead projector showing you this. He was an early Christian figure in Paris back when it was run by Romans. He was beheaded in Montmartre (the Monte of Martyrs) where Sacré-Cœur now stands, and then he promptly picked up his head and walked all the way to what is now St. Denis, and now this is where this cathedral stands. His image is everywhere, and they had a whole exhibit of his likeness through the ages. No explanation is given as to how he was able to walk for miles without his cerebellum or his primary motor cortex properly attached, but no matter. Cool story, bro. He was probably picked up and moved by Dagobert when he wanted to build the church here and install some relics, and the legend was built on that.

The tombs of Marie and Louis are down here, along with the rest of the Bourbon clan. They were originally thrown into the graveyard near Madeline church, but later were dug up and what may or may not have been their bones were innered here instead.

In a glass case, there is the mummified heart of, uh, one of the Kings by the name of Louis. I can't remember which one. There were just so many of them.

Creepy!

Henry II was originally buried in a cadaver tomb, where you have the statue on top but you could view the rotting corpse below that in a glass case. Either they covered it up at some point or I just didn't see it.

I don't know enough of the history of Kings to get a whole lot out of the visit, but some of the tombs were spectacular in their scope, size and artistry. There weren't too many people visiting either as it's kind of far out of the city center, so even on a weekend it seems like you wouldn't have to battle lines and crowds. If it's not pouring rain, there are lovely gardens around the basilica and some markets and shops to explore.

E. Dehillerin

Chatelet Les Halles has fast become my least favorite metro station to try to navigate. I have yet to be able to make a quick exit to the street. It's enormous, and several lines and trains converge here and spit you out into a banal suburban shopping mall. I've had to jump the turnstile several times here as it never seems to want to let my valid ticket unlock the exit turnstile and the thought of being stuck in that place gives me agita. The shopping mall is even worse: I've yet to find a clearly labeled pathway to get out and end up wandering around a bit panicked, wondering how long it will take for friends and family to file a missing persons report on me. The whole station smells like pee, the panhandlers are ultra agressive, and it's a notoriously good place to get your pocket picked.

Once you emerge into the light, gulping for fresh air: magic.

E. Dehillerin is a Parisian institution of kitchenware. It's been around for almost 200 years. They specialize in copper pots and pans (Julia Child bought hers here) and they have about a million little molds and specialty items used to make all the different French pastries and traditional French cuisine. It's slightly chaotic inside, with staff rattling off prices when you need them. The basement is filled with all shapes and sizes of pots and pans, the isles are stacked so tall with shelves that your neck cramps trying to see what is up there, and there are several close shaves trying to get past people buying knives. And the knives! Impossibly heavy meat cleavers, sharp little filet knives, gleaming bins of stainless steal chef's knives.

I ended up walking out relatively unscathed with a gorgeous cheese knife. Living in a furnished apartment means you are at the whims of whomever decorated and cheaped out on kitchen equipment. I was awfully tired of sawing through cheese with a butter knife, and it's really not something I could live without for another wedge of fromage. The cashier, in perfect English, asked me where I was from.

"J'habite à Paris" I replied.

"Paris, Texas?" He joked.

At least I think it was a joke.

Musée de Cluny

Cluny is the place to go if you are into Medieval art. Personally, I am a victim of Glazed Eyes Syndrome when it comes to a great deal of it. The two really interesting things to check out- the fantastic series of tapestries of La Dame a la Licorne, beautifully restored and kept in a special room with minimal amounts of light and humidity. Not quite so restored but equally interesting is the room of headless biblical figures destroyed by revolutionaries for looking too much like the French monarchy. Victims of circumstance.

Honfleur

A mere two hour train ride out of Gare St Lazare will get you to the Normandy coastline. There are trains that go to La Harve from Paris about every half hour, and the ride follows the Seine through gorgeous farmland and green wet countryside for most of the ride.

La Harve was nothing amazing to see. It's a huge, industrial port city on the mouth of the Seine. There's tons of harbors, container ships, ports, extendable bridges, and a smell of tire fires in the air. There's a giant bridge and a bus that leaves from the train station that will take you over the river to the pretty town of Honfleur.

Honfleur is mobbed with tourist. La Harve is a cruise ship port, so the town is filled with day-trippers from Paris and English tourist. It's not unpleasant though. The gorgeous old buildings that line the harbor gives it a quaint and cheerful feeling, even in a drizzle that turns into a downpour.

There's plenty of cafes and shops to check out, and winding and narrow medieval streets to explore. Normandy is known for cider, crepes, oysters and fragrant cheeses such as camembert and livarot. There are worst places to eat and drink.

Honfleur was a port that sent a great deal explorers and settlers off to the New World. There is a monument to Samuel Champlain right on the waterfront.

This was also a place where Impressionist would come to paint. If the harbor looks familiar, it's probably because you've seen the Monet paintings of its likeness. Much effort has gone into preserving the town into something still recognizable more than 100 years back.

I loved how you could buy a painting of taxi cabs in Times Square here. Let us remember our time in a seaside town in Calvados with a painting of New York! Totally mystifying to me, but it got me thinking that perhaps there is a tourist gallery shop in Times Square with paintings of quaint seaside fishing villages in France.

There was a big hill behind the town that you can hike up to get a really nice view of the harbor. We didn't let the downpouring rain keep us from there despite that we were basically slogging up a stream, but I didn't want to get my camera wetter than it already was...so no picture. On a nice day I'm sure it's a great view, but we basically just saw dark heavy rainclouds. Ah well. Normandy isn't exactly known for sunshine and tropical breezes. It's a really cute place worth the visit though. There are a lot of small inns and B&Bs in the town if you cared to stay and it's location is fairly easy to get to from Paris without a car, and there are plenty of car rental places in La Harve if you wanted one.