ABC Wednesday - Caen

Early morning in the coastal town of Caen, with the rising sun shining on the roofs and spires.  We had stopped briefly after arriving by ferry and as the town was quiet thought it would be nice to have a quick browse around. Thereby hangs a tale. Driving into the town from the port of course the first thing to look for was a car park. "Look there" I shouted, as we swung left and then left again through an entrance.  Only it wasn't an entrance, it was a gap, as we realised after bouncing down the  high curb on the other side. Which would have been fine if it was not one of those car parks where you get a parking ticket when the barrier opens to let cars in. How to get out?  Too tricky to get out the way we had come in.  We had a look at the instructions. Do you know there wasn't anything about accidentally coming into the car park over a pavement,  but there was one if a ticket was lost.  Well it would have to do, oops, it was going to cost 8 Euros.  I always have some small change (sometimes I think its magnetically attracted)  but could only copper up 2 Euro.  We would have to buy something; never a problem to me. We wandered into town.

and admired the rather elegant town hall, its

formal gardens and the Abbaye aux Hommes built by William the Conqueror in the 11th Century, as a penance to the Pope for marrying his cousin Matilda of Flanders, she built a twin church, the Abbaye aux Dames.  William was buried here but the tomb was destroyed by the Huguenots in 1562 during the Wars of Religion. Some of the bones remained but the last of William was scattered in the French Revolution.

Well apart from that gory tale, it was all very pleasant, the streets were being washed but nothing was open. So where was this change going to come from?  Then we turned a corner to a square and there in rows were the stalls of the food market with their produce stacked high, glowing in the sunshine.  After oohing and ahhing at the pile of produce (France is food central) visiting various stalls, stocking up with kilos of juicy tomatoes, fruit, vegetables (I'm putting tomatoes in a special category because I'm never sure what they are) and cheese, we had all the change we needed, and as a bonus almost everything required to arrive at our holiday cottage.  Which we reached after a short diversion to the coast (I thought I would try for a hat-trick of navigation errors) 

where as we saw the signs took a look at Omaha Beach and as I stood on the cliffs looking down, wondered how the troops of the bloodiest battle of the D Day landings in 1944 ever made it off the beach.  The Battle of Normandy apart from the tragedy of loss of life also destroyed much of the centre of Caen.


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