I was slow getting up this morning. Antoine had said he had work to do so I was on my own for breakfast. I walked out and found a nearby supermarket to buy some yogurt and fruit. By the time I had eaten and showered, Antoine was stirring. After a while, we walked out to see the city and visit the Friday market.
Right next to Antoine's place is a church. Here is a picture of both.
Not surprisingly, there is a huge fort that is right next to the port.
Caen was heavily bombed in World War II and much of it has been rebuilt. However, I couldn't tell if some building that looked old was left standing after the war or had been rebuilt. This view under a bridge that connects the fort with a tower shows an older building in front of a new one, a typical Caen vista.
Antione insisted that I take a picture of the oldest post office in France.
We meandered over to and through the large market. There were stalls everywhere in the older part of the city and we bought food to make a salad for lunch, some bread, a cucumber, avocado, and tomatoes, while talking with various vendors and others in the market. Antoine would occasionally see someone he knew and introduce me.
We stopped at a cafe on the way back to his place so he could smoke and have a coffee (his breakfast). While we were there, a friend of his pulled up a seat and joined us. I don't recall his name, but he was a filmmaker who was a delight to talk with. His English wasn't as good as Antoine's but since I had done a fair amount of video work, I could understand much of what he said. His main project was 30 ten-minute shorts about a science fiction writer whose dreams are like his stories. thefilmmaker borrows equipment from a film co-op and is always on the look-out for interesting filming locations and people to fill them.
One of his episodes needed a character named Captain Roger and he drafted Antoine for the 1 minute part. Antoine's presence was so strong and popular that the filmmaker was thinking of making another set of shorts based on Captain Roger. Antoine and I joked about "the Captain" for the rest of the day. I not only enjoyed talking with the filmmaker, but I liked getting a bit of insight into my host's life, too.
After we finished up at the cafe, we went back to the flat and Antoine made a very nice salad by adding feta cheese to the stuff we bought at the market. His roommate joined us for the meal on their small balcony overlooking the street.
I had origonally planned to take two days, a one-day loop back to Caen and a second day on my way out of Caen, to visit the D-Day beaches. But, Antoine graciously offered to drive me around to see them. I really appreciated the rest but was a bit antsy about going as it was getting into the early afternoon and I didn't want to miss anything.
It took about an hour and a half to get out of the city and down to Pointe du Hoc, the site of a famous D-Day assault and the furthest point I'd planned on riding to that day. According to the posted signs, nothing has been changed here since the invasion. It is on the top of coastal cliffs and it is hard to imagine trying to climb them under heavy gun fire.
The site was quite large and had lots of grass-filled craters.
The reason the allies expended so much effort to take Pointe du Hoc was that the Germans has placed very large guns on there. However, by D-Day, the Germans had moved them inland and there was nothing here to capture. What was left was cement gun-emplacements that tooks lots gun file and were slowly eroding away.
It is easy to see where the big guns were sited.
It didn't take much imagination to feel what duty here must have been like.
I found this fascinating. Antione had seen it all before and was a bit bored.
We got back in the car and drove to Omaha Beach, one of the US invasion beaches. It was here that the worst of the D-Day fighting took place as allied air attacks missed their targets and the invaders went up against the undamaged German defenses. On this day, it looked like many other beaches at high tide.
Yet, there were reminders everywhere of what had happened here.
I wondered if I could have done what those soldiers did. The hills behind the beach gave me some idea of what they were facing.
There is a driving route along the coast with signs every so often that tells a bit of the D-Day story. We stopped at several of them and looked around. At one of them I took a picture of Antoine against the coastal cliffs.
I then asked to get a picture of Captain Roger. Antoine obliged.
This pillbox, holding an anti-aircraft gun,
guarded a road off the beach.
Here is a close-up of what's left of the gun.
Not surprisingly, this area was full of D-Day and military museums. They always had some rusted weapon in front. I have no idea if this artillery piece was part of D-Day, but it looked good, anyway.
The same goes for this tank.
We stopped at one of the museums and I looked around the free part of it a bit. I asked Antoine if he wanted to go in and he said that he didn't like going into museums. I didn't want to leave him out in the parking lot while I went in so I skipped the museum.
As we drove north, we were constantly passing invasion artifacts.
We stopped to see the Longues Battery, a set of German guns left in place after the war. This was one of the most impressive artifacts that I saw all day. It was a bit scary to see what the allies were up against.
These guns were placed on flat land above a steep cliff.
This is the view looking northeast toward Arromanches and the mulberry harbors still there.
Captain Roger strikes again!
This looked like quite a defensive redoubt.
In order to create a better harbor than nature provided at Arromanches, the allies set-up an artifical harbor.
We ended our D-Day tour by sitting at an oceanside cafe. While I was seeking D-Day experiences, many people were looking for a day at the beach. The pinkish building across the way is the Arromanches D-Day museum, another one I didn't go into. Then, again, I didn't ride on the carousel, either!
We drove back and stopped at the nearby supermarket for some food, both for dinner and the next day. I made a nice macaroni and cheese dinner while Antoine played some on-line poker. We watched a movie (in French with English sub-titles), The Thin Red Line, from the extensive collection in the flat. As the movie wore on (and on) it got late and I lost interest. I went to bed about midnight.