Bayeux

The next morning we headed for Bayeux we got to Gare St. Lazare (a train station) and headed for Normandy.  Our hotel was called La Reine Mathilde and it was very nice.  Our room had one wall that was slanted with the roof (which was kind of cool, I always wanted an attic room), and the bathroom was huge compared to Paris.

We went right away to the Bayeux tapestry, a huge scroll that is supposed to have hung around the cathedral of Bayeux to tell the story of William the Conquerer.  The amount of work put into the tapestry is amazing, and a helpful audio guide helps narrate the story (and refers to the numbers above the picture so you can walk along the tapestry in the right place for the story).

Then we went to the cathedral.  Bayeux was the first town liberated after D-Day, on D-day plus one.  It was one of the only places not destroyed by bombs or fighting in the Normandy area.  The cathedral is very pretty and the stained glass was painting beautiful pictures on the ground as the sun shown through.

The nave

See the ground?

Like a disco ball

Underground in the cathedral, really creepy

Then we went to the D-Day Museum.  It’s smaller than the Caen museum that is more well known, but has a lot of information.  There were lots of small artifacts, dummies set up with the uniforms of the different countries, and lots of lots of displays with information.

The museum

We had dinner at the brasserie of our hotel, which was nice because it was right downstairs.  Normandy is known not for its wine, but for its cider.  Or cidre :-).  It was actually pretty good, too.  A lot of restaurants have fixed price menus where you get either two or three courses which you choose from a list, and this was one of them.  My appetizer was a mix of cooked and raw fish (most was okay....some I didn’t eat).  But the rest was good.