Busy, busy week.
On Wednesday, Pascale took me to Versailles. It was a beautiful day, and it wasn't terribly crowded (except for all the Italians). Unfortunately, the hall of mirrors was being renovated, so it was less than spectacular, but i got some pretty good pictures of other things. You can see all the photos here.
I have made a solemn promise not to tell anyone that Pascale cannot read a map, so i will just say that Marie Antoinette's little fake farm was not well signposted. We were unable to find it in the wilds surrounding Le Grand Trianon. Mostly because it's at Le Petit Trianon. Oh well. We had a nice a walk anyway.
This is going to sound stupid to anyone who knows better, but it had never occurred to me that there might be a rather large town at Versailles. When someone says, "Versailles", i always think of the chateau, but, of course, there's a bustling town that grew up around it.
On Friday, Dominique took Moïseanne and i to Mont-Saint-Michel. That was pretty cool. We got a good parking spot close to the island -- there were signs in the parking lot telling us we needed to reclaim our car by 7:30pm or the sea would claim it for us.
We went through the abbey, which was really interesting, and, as usual, i took quite a few pictures. Unfortunately, the battery in my camera died just after we left the abbey, so i don't have any pictures of the other things we did. You can see all the photos i managed to take here.
After Mont-Saint-Michel, we decided to stop in Avranches on the way back to see their new new museum, Le Scriptorial. All the manuscripts from Mont-Saint-Michel were moved to Avranches after the Revolution, and this museum showcases some of them along with discussing the methods of manuscript production.
The idea of the museum is great, but it was designed with only a small number of patrons in mind. If they ever get popular, they will have problems with their exhibits (labeling too far away from items, only 1 computer terminal for a whole room, stuff like that). Moïseanne loved it, though. We had to practically drag her away from some of the exhibits. She bought calligraphy supplies in the gift shop.
That's all for now. I think my last week here will be pretty quiet, but i'll keep you all updated.
Yesterday i went to Caen with Dominique, Hervé, Pierre-Yves, Moïseanne, and Patric (Mo's godfather). We spent most of the day at the Caen Memorial, a museum that covers political history from 1918 to the present day with a focus on World War II. It's an excellent museum with an amazing array of artifacts; you could easily spend a day and a half to two days in there if you read everything they have available.
I was surprised that it didn't confine itself to the war years, since that was what i had
expected. The Cold War was thoroughly covered with exhibits on propaganda, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and atomic/nuclear testing. One room played an endless loop of those ridiculous 1950s propaganda films that told school children to "duck and cover" or told army personnel that witnessing an atomic blast and exposing oneself to the ensuing radiation was nothing to worry about.
The memorial also includes an exhibit on world peace and currently a temporary exhibit about energy conservation. They have four pieces of the World Trade Center as part of the peace exhibit.
We also spent a little time in the gardens, where Pierre-Yves chased some ducks. At about 4:00, we left the memorial to head to one of the D-Day beaches (Jour-J en Français). Patric's GPS took us 
through every tiny village between Caen and the Channel, but we eventually stopped just up the beach from the Juno Beach Centre. It was a very hazy day, and the tide was out, way out. The kids went all the way out to the water, but the rest of us stayed at various stages further inland (Hervé and Patric barely set foot on the beach, while i walked out part of the way, and Dominique went a little further than me).
After stopping at the home of one of Dominique's friends near Courseulles sur Mer, and stopping at a Pizzeria in Pont L'Eveque for dinner, i finally got home at about 11:30. A long day :)
You can see pictures of the Caen Memorial here: 
and pictures of the beach here: 
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