Caen Scenes

Our last visit to Caen featured The Memorial, Caen's superb museum of D-Day, the Battle for Caen, and WWII. Previous visits were cursory, featuring the citadel or other similar sites. We were not yet fully into the architectural nor cathedral thing. We have made amends with this visit: seven churches, all well worth visiting, and those just along the main drag from the Men's Abbey to the Women's Abbey, twelve blocks or so. Although much of Caen was wrecked in WWII--it took Montgomery a month to take the place--much remains, and it is of the greatest historic and architectural significance. I am not sure how I will deal with the seven churches...maybe not seven posts! but I hope to do some little justice to these great sites. What follow below are simply some street scenes along the way.

We camped at The Memorial, which presently features Seward Johnson's sculpture 
Embracing Peace, from Eisenstaedt's very famous VJ Day photo from August, 1945;
the French and feminists generally find this depiction objectionable, depending on
how it is presented; personally, I don't quite see what it has to do with Europe; forcibly
kissing a woman (a man?!) in France is sexual assault, a crime

OK, so moving right along, we are on the Rue de Maine Drague
between the Men's and Women's Abbeys; what? you didn't know
that Caen has both His and Hers abbeys? This is because William
and Mathilde wanted to get married, but they were fifth cousins
(how could you even calculate that?) and the Pope saw a great
business opportunity, and, voila!, we have His and Hers abbeys,
in Caen, William's capital; the Pope and William were to have
further profitable dealings (e.g., England) 

Largest hydrangea yet, at least since Albi

Typical shop along Rue de Maine Drague (it's a pedestrian thing)

Home of Malherbe, father of French poetry (Rebecca, are you
following this?)

Another beautiful old shop; the French are still really into books, print; how
retrograde!

More Main Drag Caen

You see these things all over France, and particularly in Normandy; the French
are mindful, grateful; still; good on them!

We wandered down the Rue de Froide and fell into the tractor beam of the Heula
shop; we have loved the Heula humor andimages for years, and here was a whole
shop

Their stuff is so smart; I could post a hundred images; look at it! buy it! 

A church not visited, apparently another ruin...next time

I had just vowed never to photograph any more half-timbered buildings that
were not at least pre-Christian; but then these two 16th century wonders
appeared (below them are a shoe store and a discount fashion store...sic transit,
Gloria)

Passing by the great citadel; we'll be back

Street scene: so we're about to walk into St. Peter's, the big parish church in Caen,
when, across the street, there is this large teenage group, and one of the kids is doing
some sort of break-dancing routine, and then the Audi pulls up and a black guy hops
out and shows them how it's really done, stopping traffic along the street, and it goes
on and on and on (to the dismay of the Mini driver)...France; wonderful!

After St. Peter's, we hit a restaurant row kind of place...actually two blocks of
nothing but restaurants, both sides...and we finally succumbed for lunch 

Where Vicki finally found a drink to like