From Orchards to Omaha

Our morning in Honfleur was the first morning of the entire trip where we didn't have to set an alarm. We had plans of course, but nothing at a specific time. No tickets purchased in advanced, no rental car to pick up. Plus, we were now far enough into the trip to have conquered jet lag and be more or less on local time.

As an added bonus, this hotel room was nice. (If you ever find yourself in Honfleur, consider staying at Le Rituel.) The room was spacious, had decent curtains and a shade on a switch to keep the lights out, and the most comfortable bed we'd find on the entire trip. (Maybe even more comfortable than our bed back home!) This was the perfect occasion to sleep in, right?

Wrong! Around 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, the fire alarm went off, another "trip misfortune." After taking a moment to investigate, then another moment to realize the alarm wasn't going to stop, we decided the responsible thing to do was evacuate. We got dressed, made sure we had the backpacks with our passports, and were about to reach for the door... when the alarm stopped. As you'd expect, we were back in that bed as quickly as possible, though sleep was not quick to come again.

When we checked out a few hours later, the apologetic hotel employee informed me (in French, but I was able to understand) that someone had left their shower on too hot for too long, and the steam had triggered the fire alarm. (Our room had no shower; instead it had a nice big tub with a spray nozzle on a long hose. I'm not sure if she was being literal or figurative, but I know she said "shower." When they teach you that word in junior high French, you never forget it: "douche.")

Anyway... the focus for the day was on something Normandy is famous for, cider! At least, that had been the expectation. Things took a surprising but welcome turn when we arrived at the first of a couple planned stops. Christian Drouin, it turns out, isn't a cider maker! Instead, they make calvados. Essentially, what whiskey is to beer, calvados is to cider; after going through the steps to produce an alcoholic cider, you then distill it into calvados.

A friendly employee took us through a guided tasting, teaching us just what calvados is and explaining the different gradings used for the spirit (most of them hilarious English abbreviations for the thoroughly French drink). Calvados is certainly not cider -- it's less sweet even than the driest cider you've ever tasted. But it's not quite whiskey either -- there are definitely subtle flavors and aromas of apples and other fruit that aren't common to the average whiskey.

Christian Drouin is large enough to distribute its calvados in parts of the United States, yet felt like a small family farm dedicated to one particular product. Our next stop, on the other hand, felt like "apple Disneyland." A very short trip down the road brought us to another distillery, Père Magloire. We were aware that a tour kicked off here once every hour, alternating between French and English. We bought tickets and waited the 10 or 15 minutes for the tour to begin.

When the time arrived, it was only my husband and I. Well, I thought -- I guess we better have some pretty insightful questions for the tour guide, since he'll be going to all this trouble just for the two of us. Nope! No tour guide. This experience was something akin to a family-friendly theme park ride. You leisurely made your way from room to room, each one a darkened theater with lighting effects, projections, and movie clips to explain the manufacture of their product. Here too: not cider, not even pommeau -- calvados. Without quite intending it, it felt like we'd found two very different experiences centered on a spirit we hadn't really known before. We even got to snap a picture with (a mannequin of) the man himself, Père Magloire. (A Colonel Sanders sort of figure to the French, it seems? Or at least, they wanted you to think so.)

A tasting followed at the end of the tour with a friendly young woman from Ukraine who spoke at least four languages -- Ukrainian, Russian, French, and English. She claimed not to be very good at English as she seamlessly explained different calvados "expressions" and pointed out half a dozen different tasting notes in each one. (Her facility with English, paired with her insistence on how bad she was at it, made me feel almost too embarrassed to want to attempt French for the rest of the trip. If this is "bad" at English, then neither English nor French has the words to describe how "bad" I am at French.)

The next leg of our drive brought us to the Omaha Beach, a site of the D-Day landings in Normandy during World War II. After lunch at a nearby cafe, we visited the museum near the shore. It featured displays of World War II artifacts, including weapons and vehicles, plus a half-hour film about the pivotal day in the war. It was the one time on the entire trip where answering "America" when asked "where are you visiting from?" didn't feel like an embarrassment. (Also, though not specifically planned, we were there on the 25th anniversary of 9/11.)

After the museum, we went down to the beach itself. Aside from a somewhat modest monument and art installation honoring D-Day, Omaha Beach is... well... a beach. A beautiful, but unassuming beach. That's perhaps part of the odd power of standing in the place -- it could be any place. Americans in particular don't have much concept of a war that happens in their own backyards; war is a thing that happens in "faraway places." Not so in France. World War II happened in every corner of the country -- including this random beach that happens to be a strategic landing point for a sea invasion.

We made a brief stop at a farm in the area, Ferme de la Sapinere, where we actually tasted a little cider rather than calvados, but soon had to move along to our stop for the evening. The town of Avranches was where our hotel was this night, for its closeness to our main event for the following day. The hotel manager recommended a local restaurant for dinner called L'Atmosphere, and while it wasn't bad, it wasn't great. Or maybe it was just that we decided to roll the dice on another famous bit of French cuisine for the appetizer. Foie gras? More like "full gross." Anyway, check off that experience.

And the next day, check off a much more pleasant one....