I didn't actually know anything about Belgium before this trip aside from the fact that they make good beer and chocolates. So when we started planning this trip, I assumed that we'd be heading straight for the capital of Brussels. That was before we met the president of the Newtown Jets on King Street one sunny Saturday afternoon. He very quickly filled our head with stories of the small town of Brugge. Apparently it wasn't worth our time going to the Capital, Brugge was were it's at. A few google searches and a browse of the Lonely Planet website seemed to backup his theory that if we were only spending a short time in Belgium, Brugge is where we needed to be!
Although it was very pretty, Brugge was nothing like I was expecting. While we walked down one of the canals I commented to Alice that it felt a little like Amsterdam. However, after finally making it to the main street, it very quickly became clear that it was WAY smaller than Amsterdam. There also seemed to be a much higher tourist / local ratio. In fact, it's become so overcrowd with tourists that the locals have grown to despise us. At least that's what the map from the Tourist Information office said. Also unlike Amsterdam, there actually isn't much to do in Brugge. A few days there and you would be bored out of your brain!
Regardless of all that, it was a very beautiful place. The city is lined with cobbled stones, they have a small canal system running around the city centre, the old buildings were in immaculate condition and the shops were pretty cool too.
On our walk through the centre of town we past quite a few chocolatiers but one in particular caught tour eye with their amazing window display.
In the afternoon we decided to sample some of the local beers at a really nice pub on the water. What really drew us in was their "wall of beer" which is exactly what it sounds like. Around 700 different bottles of beer displayed in a glass cabinet that spanning about 10 metres in length.
We spent a few hours there relaxing in the sun, eating chocolates we'd bought earlier, sipping on some delicious cherry beer and watching the bored tourist go past on their canal cruises haha. An awesome way to spend an afternoon.
On our last day in Paris we went out to La Defense to pick up our new car. A brand new Peugeot 308 with only nine kilometres on the clock. We were hoping for a sexy racing red paint job but lucked out with a plain-jane beige. Wah.
The only concern (aside from the obvious fact that I'd never driven a left-hand drive) was the car had no spare tire and the manual was in French. I turned the wipers on instead of the indicators for the first few corners but after that it was smooth sailing. Well, pretty much :P
The drive from Paris to Normandy was good but we started to notice very quickly that we would be handing over a LOT of our Euros in tolls. On this drive alone we were stopped 4 times and paid an average of about 4 Euros each time. Another thing we noticed on this drive is that in Europe, the speed limits are a lot better than in Australia. Although not the Autobahn we were still able to go 130Km/h and this seemed to more of a guideline than an actual rule. The other thing we really liked were the village signs which had illustrated pictures of that particular place's main tourist attractions like this one for Elbeuf.
When we arrived at our campsite, we were pleasantly surprised. In Paris we had the equivalent of Sydney's Eastern Distributor right behind us (a wire fence was all that separated us from the main road) so you could imagine our excitement when we saw our spot. It was right near a really cool old building they used as a bar, and the view from our tent was awesome. Rolling hills as far as the eye could see … and no traffic!!!
The town we stayed in was a sea-side village with an awesome country-side backdrop. We had nothing planned for the first day so we decided to just walk around for a while taking in the scenery and meeting some locals.
After overdosing on museums and palaces in Paris we decided to take a break for a while. As we were in the home of Camembert and other soft cheeses, our first priority was to do a tour of a cheese factory. As usual we took a little too long getting organised in the morning and so we missed the part where you actually watch them making the cheese. It was still a pretty interesting tour.They showed us a heap of videos, as well as the factory (although they were cleaning up by this time) and the storage rooms. Mmmm, they looked particularly good! After the tour we went to their shop and sampled some pretty interesting varieties of cheese. Some were more palatable than others but we really liked one in particular. It was a soft cheese, kind of like Camembert but with a creamy centre that tasted a bit like feta. I guess it's hard to explain but it was tasty.
Next stop was a genuine cider house. Had the weather been better, we would have loved to do a full on tour of the 40 Km 'Route du Cider' (about 20 small cider houses all within 40 Kms of each other). But on this particular day it was cold and raining heavily. This meant that not only would I have to play chicken with the crazy locals on their cobbled stone two-lane (read: one-lane) roads, I would have to do it in the wet. For this reason, we decided to play it safe and just do a tour of the first one we could find. We found Calvados Boulard. As soon as we got out of the car a sweet smokey apple aroma hit us. It smelt delicious! We passed on a guided tour and instead just showed ourselves around with the help of their information booklet. Their main product is actually an apple brandy called Calvados which is very strong. Cider seems more like an off-shoot in this region, like their Pommeau which is a mixture of the strong Calvados and unfermented apple juice. We walked away from this tour with 2 x bottles of apple cider, 1 x bottle of pear cider and 1 x bottle of Pommeau.
The cheese and cider were great but the next day was the main reason for our visit to Normandy, the D-Day landing beaches. Given that this part of the trip was my idea, it was up to me to plan it. Up till this point Ali had always taken responsibility for planning our days. Unfortunately I never got around to doing the research. I really wish I had. If I had I would have realised that there are about 30 different museums dedicated to various aspects of the D-Day landings. I assumed there would only be one or two and that they would all give a pretty good overview of the war in general as well as the landings themselves. How wrong I was! There is the 'Pointe Du Hoc Ranger Memorial' which focuses on 225 US Army Rangers who scaled cliffs 30 metres high to knock off a battery of German artillery guns, Arromanches and the 'Musee de Debarquement' to name but a few. This particular one focuses on the artificial port that the Allies built specifically for the landings, the remains of which you can see below.
To see all the museums would take around 1-2 weeks. We'd only budgeted 1 day so we decided to focus on Omaha Beach, more specifically the 'Normandy American Cemetery & Memorial'. For those of you who have seen Saving Private Ryan, it's the cemetery shown in the opening and closing scenes of the movie, the one with all the perfectly aligned crosses. The visitor's centre was amazing. It had excellent audio / visual presentations and really well done exhibits that give you a good general understanding of the D-Day landings. They were also quite moving. Both Alice and I agree that the way the information was presented here was much better than any of the other museums we'd seen in Paris (including the Louvre!) and if you ever go to the cemetery you should definitely make time to see it.
Once you exit the visitor's centre you walk out onto an amazing view of Omaha Beach.
The only thing that spoiled the view were the large number of people laughing, yelling and taking inappropriate photos but thankfully that didn't last long. We continued to walk along the ocean-side path towards the graves. Looking across the cemetery it's hard to imagine that all those grave stones, perfectly symmetrical whichever way you look, represent someone that died in war. It was actually pretty humbling to see first hand the number of people that gave their lives, and this was only a PORTION of the American soldier's, let alone the countless others from Australia, Germany, Russia etc. We weren't there to see a specific gravestone as neither of us have relatives buried there. This was probably a good thing because you can't find anyone without referring to the records. What I mean is that there is no order what-so-ever in how they have laid out the graves. It wasn't arranged by Name, Rank, Religion or anything else. It was completely random and both Ali and I though that was really cool. I guess in the end we're all equals.
On our last day in Normandy we went to Monet's Garden. We arrived there late (as usual) and were greeted by a MASSIVE queue to get in, far bigger than I was expecting anyway. There was no way that I was going to wait in that line on an empty stomach so we stopped at a nearby hotel for some crepes (a local speciality). They were delicious and I have to give Alice kudos on her decision to order the salad. It was tasty and it'd been a long time since we'd eaten anything that resembled a healthy meal!
Even though I'm no botanist, it was really cool to see Ali in her element and it was also a really good opportunity for me to practice my photography. When we did the tour of the house Monet lived in for the last 40 years of his life I discovered that I actually have pretty similar taste in art. His whole house was filled with Japanese wood-block art that (to me) look absolutely nothing like what he painted himself. Unfortunately you can't take photos from inside the house so I can't really show you what I'm talking about.
Monet`s house.
THE Lilly Ponds.
Ali in front of THE bridge.
We had planned on driving to Belgium that afternoon but once we realised we weren't going to make it, we needed to find a new campsite. In the past, we noticed that the highways were littered with signs pointing to campsites nearby and so we thought we would find something in no time. We took an exit but ended up having to drive 40km to some off-the-map place we can't even remember the name of. After following the camping signs for a while we ended up at what looked like an abandoned oval with a port-a-loo at one end and a lone camper van at the other. I think my initial response to Alice was something along the lines of "they make scary movies that start out like this!". We agreed we'd be best to keep on driving and maybe stay at a cheap hotel. Luckily for us the ACTUAL campsite was a little way down the road and was SO much better than our first option. The guy who ran the place didn't speak english but made us feel right at home and it was pretty good considering it's the cheapest campsite we've stayed at so far (only 8 Euros a night!). Not a bad way to spend our last night in France.
