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How do we get out of Paris?
After several hours browsing the web for Parisian car rental options, we settled on Hertz who had a location just on the western boundary of the city. Nat wanted to minimize the amount of inner-city driving, since it is just plain chaotic here, and trekking out to the airport to rent a car made little sense. So we were lucky that our Porte Maillot location was open on Sundays since this city (along with every other tiny speck on the map, we would later learn) basically shuts down.
On Thursday we walked to a bookstore to find a map of France. In the basement we were quickly overwhelmed by the hundreds of options. After wandering around for ages and unfolding map after map, we were approached by an English-speaking American living in Paris who was concerned with Nat's cries of "but how do we get OUT of Paris?" - meaning she (or I) didn't understand where the main highways began. This stranger explained everything and even directed us as to which map to purchase. This man saved us countless hours of frustration, I'm sure.
So on Friday morning we headed to the edge of Paris by Metro, waited in an unusually calm French queue, and got in our 2-door Renault Twingo. The only obstacle between us and Normandy was the 100m-wide round-about: 7 "lanes" of traffic weaving in and out as they swerve around the core. Even the attendant at Hertz couldn't explain to us how it worked although she did add a hearty "Ah, now I understand why you got the complete insurance package." Yes the car was ours to destroy, deductible-free, and for only 13E a day. Anyway, Nat was a trooper and she tackled that round-about and we sailed off into the underground tunnel out of the city.
Twingo.
Villa Savoye, Revisited.
First stop on the agenda was a small town called Poissy, famous only for the fact that it is the location of the Savoye family summer home designed by Le Corbusier in the late 1920s. On my first trip to Paris in 2001, our design history professor / chaperone took us on a trip to Villa Savoye. Being his most favourite building on earth, the building was pretty hyped up for us. I remember spending hours and 3 rolls of film (yah, film!) in and around that house. We were all mystified by it back then and I went back home after that trip and painted the villa several times, every angle of the building offering a beautiful collection of lines and contrast.
Remember this one?
Villa Savoye, in the rain.
Central staircase, the masterpiece.
Main patio.
Genuine lounger, not some knockoff.
Pony in a pony chair.
Master bath.
Just about every angle is nice.
The house was no less impressive on this journey, and with my digital camera I could take as many photos as I desired. However Nat and I also spent time in the room containing all the historical documents and it was here that we learned that the house itself was actually a piece of crap. Several letters between Mrs. Savoye and Le Corbusier document an increasing battle where she details the structural problems; simply put, the house leaked just about everywhere. Le Corbusier ignored her requests to solve this problem and instead instructed her to place a guestbook in the foyer and described what type of arrangement of flowers to plant along the main driveway.
From this new perspective I viewed Villa Savoye as a bit of a failure. It was like a flashy advertisement that won all sorts of awards and industry recognition yet never delivered on the metrics set out in the client brief. Sure, it looks amazing, but it never achieved its basic goal: to be a house that people could live in. This made me feel better about my own role in life because although at times I don't feel like I'm designing any Villa Savoyes, my clients also don't call to tell me their websites are leaking.
"Villa Savoye, you're not the man I married."
The gatehouse is a mini replica.
Downtown Poissy.
"Ok so how do we get there?"
Halloween in Caen
With no real plan for the rest of the day we headed towards Caen along the main highway. We started paying increasingly higher tolls about every 15 minutes along this route. But this is the price one pays for a 130km/h speed limit. Not that our little Twingo could go any faster than that anyway. A quick stop for gas outside Rouen and a McDo espresso and we found ourselves in Caen rush hour traffic.
Toll time. Anywhere from 2–7E.
Nat gets a caffeine boost in a very nice looking McDo.
Stuck in traffic. Would you really buy it?
We had no plans for Caen but upon arrival there were 3 issues to deal with: 1. find a place to park; 2. find a place to sleep; and possible the most pressing issue 3. find a place to pee. We pulled out our trusty Let's Go Europe 2008 guidebook and managed to find the recommended hotel. It turned out to be a bit dumpy but was our self-guided tour meant it was also the ideal place to relieve one's self. I felt a bit guilty when we ditched the keys at the unmanned front desk and ran out the door to find a better hotel. But any qualms I had about the "doodie and dash" melted away when the place next door had no holes in the walls.
This was Halloween night and with the belief that the French, or at least Parisians, didn't go in much for the holiday, we were in for quite the shock. For dinner we went to a lovely Greek restaurant where we argued about from which island and which angle the beautiful frescos were painted in. But this place was also elaborately decorated for the holiday with fake web spanning the entire ceiling and the whole staff dressed as Draculas (even the baby that the manager carried around in a snugly).
Greek restaurant.
Perhaps we were caught in some (small)city-wide competition but the Irish pub down the street was even more impressive. The whole floor was covered in dried leaves; the doorways were covered in medieval archway facades; the walls were lined with creates of skulls and other nasty objects; the DJ booth was a large cemetery; and they even had steaming cauldrons of dry ice (some customers were fooling around with it and I was waiting for one of them to freeze off their fingers, but no such luck).
Irish pub. It was really dark in there.
Skulls on tap.
The next morning we got up early and visited the Chateau, a castle built by William the Conqueror in 1060.
So this is where Link brought the Triforce. Who knew?
How original.
Then we headed to Caen Memorial, a museum dedicated to both World Wars and specifically to D-Day. The first thing we did at the museum was watch a short movie with actual footage from D-Day contrasting battle preparations on both sides. We also visited the Nobel Prize gallery which was eerily empty and quiet and completely freaked out Nat. I read on the way out that it was actually a functioning bunker during World War II.
Caen Memorial.
Elevator/staircase to Nobel Prize gallery.
Pretty creepy. I couldn't even tell there was a ceiling in this room.
Giant pineapple? (And yes Iris, I saw that you made the same joke about a palm in Lisbon)
Storming the D-Day Beaches
The first stop on the coast was Juno Beach, the site where the Canadian troops landed. The brief trip ended when Nat tripped in the sand and smashed the camera, lens-first, directly into the beach. We sat in the museum foyer brushing sand out of the mechanisms and waiting for the lens to de-fog to determine how bad the damage would be. Happily the camera made it.
Canadian museum at Juno. Supposed to look like a maple leaf but it's a stretch.
"Did you drop the camera yet?"
We continued along the coast through Gold Beach and the German batteries at Longues-sur-Mer to the US cemetery in Omaha Beach.
Smurf house?
You can see pieces that remain of the temporary harbour.
German battery. This is over half a kilometre from the coast.
This one was blown up, it seems.
This bunker was on the coastal cliff.
The front.
From inside.
Monument at the US Cemetery.
D-Day map.
Just under 10,000 soldiers are buried here.
The landscaping was impressive. But of course this is France after all.
The sun finally came out, only to quickly set, as we drove 2 hours south to reach our hostel outside of Pontorson by Le Mont St. Michel.
Between Sea and Sky
or
Free Museum Day, Episode 3
After the lovely breakfast served at our hostel, we were back on the road toward our final destination, Le Mont St. Michel: a castle built upon a mountain at the end of peninsula that actually becomes an island (our used to before the modern causeway was built) if the tide is high.
Our hostel (read: the entire town).
Approaching the castle. How awesome does that look?
This castle-town was the real deal - a miniature version of Gondor straight out of Lord of the Rings. We circled round and round, higher and higher, passing over-priced restaurants, tourist shops, and museums boasting tours of hidden prisons. Eventually we made it to the castle entrance and I was delighted to discover that Free Musuem Day spanned all the way across Normandy (although technically we may have been within Bretagne borders here).
Round and round past all the junk.
Celebrate good times! Don't worry, we got there early enough to avoid the free-museum-day jerks.
A pulley system. This was too high up for me.
When we were at the top of the castle, it became clear why 10th century monks would want to build a church in the middle of nowhere: because at 350 feet with nothing but sea in (almost) all directions, it genuinely felt a bit heavenly up there.
The drive back to Paris was a mild adventure in that we decide to avoid the main highway and take some of the smaller national routes in what appeared to be a more direct path. We stopped in a small town called Villers Bocage, only because we found the name funny, to discover that all the blinds were drawn and nothing was open for business, it being a Sunday of course. Hoping that the more "major" (read: not a spec on the map) city of Lisieux would have some options we trekked on, only to be laughed at in a brasserie as the bartender found it funny we were looking for food at 2:30. And despite the numerous signs along the highway, the pizza & pasta place supposed to be open 7 days a week was nowhere to be found. Frustrated, we stormed out of another one-pony town and eventually came across the Buffalo Grill, a burger-serving haven in the middle of nowhere and the perfect place to eat when French food just wasn't going to cut it that day.
You suck Villers Bocage! Why did we even let you in the blog?
Yikes!
Eventually after sitting in gridlocked traffic, and watching motorcycles zoom by between the cars - with their 4-ways flashing, mind you - we made it back into Paris. And once again, Nat conquered the massive round-about, this time even more confusing and chaotic in the dark. So with 900km and around 100 round-abouts - the French equivalent of a 4-way stop - under her belt, Nat is now a bona fide French chauffeur.
Hooray, an open restaurant!
This is what a "well done" hamburger looks like. But it was delicious anyway.
Week 10 photos on Flickr
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