One of the challenges of traveling this long is to keep up the energy to go out and do things and not simply lay on a house exchange couch reading trashy novels and refusing to tackle one more travel challenge in one more foreign language in one more unfamiliar country. Thankfully, we are a high-energy group. And since I spent more than a year planning this trip, I am highly motivated to get out and see the things that made me want to travel in the first place. Plus there is something intoxicating about this part of France that encourages you to go out, and rewards you when you do. There is a quality of air that takes me back to southern Oregon summers. The air is glitteringly clear and even in the heat of the day, it retains undertones of coolness that linger from the night before. The day’s shimmering air also has a preternaturally long life: it is light outside until 10:30 at night so people dine late, the outdoor cafes crowded with folks young and old lingering over meals, chatting over drinks, enjoying the profusion of light. How can you not be beckoned outside with this air and light calling you?
So Rennes called and we answered, spending a few days exploring the city by foot, particularly the old part with its streets of half-timbered buildings; its huge public park with an old-fashioned carousel, a painter’s palette of flower gardens, and an aviary filled with twittering exotic birds.
Then there are the markets of Rennes displaying food like artistic masterpieces, especially the bakeries with concoctions that make me – a person who has made baking an avocation and who appreciates a well-presented dessert the way a musician appreciates a perfectly executed solo – almost weep from a combination of joy and envy at the baking skill displayed. Crusts composed of fragile layers of paper-thin pastry, custard-filled rounds that manage to be simultaneously creamy and light, and tarts embossed with slices of apple, scatterings of chocolate, pockets of jam. I stood outside of one patisserie window and offered a quiet round of applause for the anonymous baker who had created the beauties before me and displayed them as the tiny pieces of art they are. The Picassos of pastries, the Monets of muffins, the Cezannes of crusts: I doff my baker’s hat to you all!
The commitment to food that is well-prepared and beautifully displayed is evident at every level, including – brace yourselves – at highway rest stops. These are not the drab and dispiriting assemblages of smelly toilets and microwave burritos that dot the American highways. We discovered French rest stops on our way up to Normandy, which lies along the northern French coast and is a little more than a 2-hour drive from Rennes. Motoring along the highway, we saw a sign bearing the tell-tale emblem of a fork and spoon. The sign was noticeable since a sign of any kind is a rarity: there are no billboards on this long highway between Brittany and Normandy. Nothing to distract the viewing eye from the corn-laden farm fields, the bales of cut hay shaped like cake rolls lying in the fields, the black and white spotted cows. Appearing periodically along the road are large brown posters with stylized drawings that advertise the next town’s castle, or apple orchards, or creameries, or whatever the historical, gastronomical, agricultural or cultural attraction might be. But no billboards with the dreaded golden arches or pictures of cut-rate hotels or any of the other commercial schlock that clutters both the highway and the eye-way of America.
So the fork-and-spoon poster got our attention. We headed into the rest stop’s complex of buildings. As is the case with American rest stops, the first thing we encountered was a museum. Comfortable chairs were grouped around informational videos on the culture and attributes of Brittany. Literature was laid out for the interested visitor. It was as if people actually cared about the countryside they were passing through and didn’t just view it as a speedway to their destination. We moved from the museum into the restaurant/café area. Two big vending machines stood side by side. Ah, I thought, the usual chips/candy/soda dispensaries. No. The machines were entirely devoted to different kinds of coffee you could purchase: espresso – one or two shots, with or without sugar; cappacinos – short or tall, with milk or without, sugared or not. Dozens of caffeine options presented themselves.
While I lingered, nose pressed against the glass of the vending machines, Jeff forged ahead into the restaurant. He returned with fantastic tales, like the traveling sailors of yore. There were no microwaves stained with the remnants of exploding burritos; no lingering aroma of microwaved popcorn; no aisles of plastic wrapped danishes or supersized potato chips; no swirling colored dispensers of slushies or Big Gulps. Instead, there were plates of salmon and rice pilaf; there was a child tucking into a steak across the table from his grandfather who was working his way through baked chicken to be followed by what appeared to be a lemon soufflé. There were half bottles of wine for sale. Cheerful women served the food. It was as unlike an American rest stop as you can get. It was truly a stop for rest, a place of road-side refreshment for travelers, not road hogs.
Armed with refreshments we made our way to Caen in Normandy, and its excellent “Museum of Peace” that covers WWII from a horrors-of-war perspective that is markedly different from the hail-the-valiant-soldier approach taken by most war museums. Over the next day we visited Omaha Beach where thousands of Americans fell on the D-Day invasions. It is a long beach backed by cliffs where the remains of German bunkers are scattered, cement walls and roofs still intact. In one a massive gun is still mounted on a swivel stand. Further down the shore is a long pebbly strand where the American soldiers once crouched in terror, seeking any shelter they could find from the barrage of German bullets. Children now run on it; there’s a playground and surf shop, a restaurant and hotel behind it. If there are ghosts, they are not seen by the holiday-makers at this beach.
Older history beckoned us. Another battle launched from Normandy nearly a thousand years earlier had also changed the course of history, and we went to Bayeux to view the ancient tapestry that told its story. Here, told in the voice of colored thread and stretched linen, is the tale of William the Conqueror’s successful assault on England in 1066. The unknown stitchery artists of nearly a millennium ago rendered the battle in detail so meticulous that historians know from the tapestry what the armor of the 11th century was like; how soldiers wore their hair; how their arrows were fashioned, their horses outfitted, their lances deployed.
The odd juxtaposition of events in Normandy has not gone unnoticed. The French king William subjugated the English in the 11th century, launching his successful campaign from the shores of Normandy. Nearly nine hundred years later, the English landed in Normandy to liberate their former French masters from the grip of the Nazis. A memorial in Normandy notes that the conquered came to save the conqueror. The circle of history twists and curls, the D-Day beaches a short drive from the Bayeux tapestry.
Once again, our efforts to see and do all that we can, to sally forth into the unfamiliar, is rewarded.
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