Day Six - Boxing Day Stinks for the Lunds

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Back home in the States the day after Christmas means business as usual. In fact, it's one of the busiest days in the retail season. Oh contraire in Europe. On almost all of our Christmas forays into Europe December 26th is also a holiday be it St. Stephen's Day, Feast of the Holy Family, the first day of Kwanzaa, Synaxis of the Theotokos, or Boxing Day. And that means most businesses, museums and historic sites are closed. Knowing that would be the case before we left on the trip, I did some internet surfing trying to find something of interest to do on this traditionally quiet day. As luck would have it, the Graingorge cheese factory (http://www.graindorge.fr/) was open that day and were eager to welcome us according to their email.

During the night we had to close the bathroom door as well as the door into our sleeping chamber to keep the glowing sun in our bathroom at bay. Just going in there to do your business caused us to break out in a sweat. Either the maid didn't clean the bathroom or just chose to ignore the 200 degree heat when she tended our room while we were gone. No one touched the string I cleverly re-hung on the back of the heater in hopes that the maid would yank on it and think she broke it.

Once again we decided to take breakfast at the hotel. We had another very full and delicious breaking of the fast which kept us filled-up for most of the day. However, we decided right after breakfast that we would pass on the hotel breakfast on the remaining two days in order to save ourselves $100. Instead, we started heading to the nearest supermarket first thing each morning to get ourselves pre-made sandwiches, donuts, juice and fruit.

Today the World outside our hotel greeted us with a hurricane as we walked to our muddy Renault. We could barely see where we were headed in the deluge coming down on us. That new LeClerc umbrella looked to be a handy purchase for the day's itinerary. Cassie's cat was no doubt resting after its fancy feast of the day before. Our route to Livarot took us through the crossroads towns of Bayeaux then Caen as we headed Southeast into the Auge region. sometimes called "Tne Norman Alps". After Caen we left the N13 Motorway to continue South. The night before I had charged my Garmin Nuvi so it was turned on along with the Renault's own GPS. At one point the Nuvi was giving us an arrival time in Livarot that was almost a half hour earlier then the Renault's. As we followed my own personal GPS directions onto an almost deserted but wide 6 lane highway the Renault's GPS went into a tizzy thinking we were in the middle of a huge farm field. It kept telling us to turn around and return to the road. Evidently my Garmin Nuvi maps were more up-to-date than the Renault's.

Photos

Underwater in Arromanches
Another day, another monsoon. The skies really opened up on us as we sprinted to our car to begin our day's activities. Gail and her mother's room is on the third floor, just to the lefyt of the green sign. Cassie and my room was around the corner and one floor lower.

Free Souvenirs of Normandy
We were putting some very serious mileage on our rental car. By the end of our two week trip we had logged over 1800 miles. Along the way we were forced to do some unscheduled off-roading in our front wheel drive. Apparently the day before we kicked-up quite a bit of that soaking wet French pastureland onto our mirrors and wheel wells.

An All to Familiar Scene
On our way to Livarot we drove through the very heart of Norman farmland. This scene pretty much depicts what we saw most of time between destinations: wide open sopping wet fields of green winter crops punctuated by forests of wind turbines and power lines. The French must use an incredible amount of electricity or Normandy must supply the power for all the rest of France because we saw thousands of wind turbines all along every road we took. Additionally we saw no less than 4 nuclear power plants during our vacation. In checking Wikipedia I now know that France gets most of its electricity from nuclear energy and their consumers' cost is among the lowest in the World. France even exports power. No Co2 emissions, no pollution, an almost endless suppy of fuel and it's cheap. Brilliant. I'm really starting to like these French. They actually have to shut down the plants on weekends because they create TOO MUCH electricity.

What a Friend We Have with Cheeses
After the previous night's Christmas picnic featuring the cheese of Normandy I wasn't quite as gung-ho about heading into the factory where the cheeses were created. Initially this was supposed to be a high point of the trip, but none of us had become big fans of the smelly soft cheeses of Normandy. A positive sign was that it didn't smell like death when we parked our car and headed toward the Fromagerie.

The Seal of Approval
I have been using Trip Advisor almost from Day One of their existence. I still use it to research potential vacation hotels, restaurants and locations. In the early days they often sent me "Thank Yous" in the wya of toiletry bags, baseball caps and luggage straps and tags. Same story with Booking.com - that site has found us some remarkable hotels and guest rooms over the years and was used to find all the places where we stayed on this trip. Alas, the days of the insane bargains like sub $50 a night rooms are gone as Booking.com has gotten so big that they now advertise on TV. Time to find a new favorite travel page.

If Only These Cows Knew How Smelly All Their Hard Work Would Get
We were very happy to see that the Graindorge cheese tour was a self-guided one with most of the tour in English. Very kid friendly and easy for old farts with plenty of places to stop and rest. An informative film showed us just how much effort goes into producing these cheeses.

A Film Cow Will Have to Do
Despite the fact that Normandy is reknowned as the dairyland of France up until now we had yet to see any cows on our trip. When the tour film went into great detail about the preferential treatment Norman Cheese Cows are given, I felt it necessary to document these stars for posterity.

The Production Line
After the film we followed the tour route through the factory up and across catwalks suspended over the production floor. Here the cows' milk is poured into these big white tubs which are slowly heated then sent by conveyor belts to the separating machinery.

Separating the Curds and Whey
See the video link I posted in the storyline to learn what happens after the milk is heated then transferred to the skimming room. There the warm milk is stirred to separate the curd from the liquid. Then in this room the solid stuff is filtered out and formed into balls that eventually are transformed into soft cheese.

Now It's Starting to Look and Smell Like Cheese
In this hermetically sealed room the cheese clumps are formed by hand into their final round shape. Then they're put on these racks to dry out. After that they are sent to a purposely moldy room to ripen.

Our Fromage Tour Guide
Throughout the self-guided walk through the plant we constantly looked up to the video monitors where this saucy wench went on and on blabbering in French about this wonderful cheese. I can't recall ever seeing her eat it however.

The High Point of Every Tour
The final stop of every factory tour has to be my favorite part: not only do we get to see the finished product that we are most familiar with, but it's also the place where the highly mechanized machinery usually screw-up big time. On numerous brewery tours we've seen just one errant bottle cause a massive backup resulting in glass breaking on the floor and beer spilling on the machinery. Long long ago on a Hershey candy tour I saw the wrapping machine go berserk and eject labels on everything but the actual candy bars. At the Utz potato chip plant I was wowed by the piles of chips strewn under the entire conveyor line. With eager anticipation I watched and waited almost 15 minutes waiting for the cheese to go flying or the tiny little balsa wood boxes the cheese is dropped into to jam the machinery. No luck.

String Theory
Once the cheese has aged and gotten moldier and stinkier, it is brought out of the simulated musty cellar for final preparation. Here the cheeseologist scarpes off some of the funky stuff on the casing then takes some of those reeds harvested from a nearby pond and wraps them around the cheese. I have no clue why they do that but if anything I suppose the filthy reeds taken from some duck crap infested lake must lend a very special aroma to the cheese.

Check Out Those Reeds
I really think much of this gourmet stuff is just plain nonsense. Do they really need reeds only from this particular pond to make their cheese? Do they really have to shove French bread down the geese's throats to make good pate? Does the wine really taste different because the grapes come from the sunnier side of the river? But I CAN taste the difference between Sam's cola made in their main plant and when it's made overseas (yecccch).

Downtown Livarot
After spending a good 20 minutes in the highly over-priced cheese and souvenir shop at the end of the tour and buying absolutely nothing, we hopped back into the Renault. We reversed our route back through the town of Livarot. With all the cars parked on the street and seeing a couple of shoppers walking with the
ubiquitous loaf of bread tucked up under their arms, we decided to park and take a look around. We hadn't shopped in days!

Maybe This is Just a Movie Set
Incredibly, there was noting open in town other than the bakery and a newssatnd. The latter lured us inside because of the tastefully tacky souvenirs we saw in their window. Some nice pocket knives with the town sigil, dish towels with pictures of the town and mugs with the Graindorge cheese logo. But once we went inside none of the nifty items we saw on display were for sale in the store. If someone in the shop had spoken English we might have asked, but more than likely the only souvenirs they had were those in the window. I would've felt really bad if they had moved racks of magaizines out of the way, climbed into the window bag displacing other items, and pulled out the mugs only to have to tell them they were too expensive or ugly up close.

This Picture Didn't Quite Come Out Right
It looks like I was photographing the slums of Livarot, but I actually wanted to get a shot of the faded sign that had been painted on the brick wall. Throughout our trip in some of the most out-of-the-way places we had been through, these old ads still remained on some of the oldest buildings. I suppose most date from the 40's and 50's. I think some enterprising young art school student should go around restoring them and making a lot of money in the process.

The Normandy Alps
Not exactly the Matterhorn out there in the distance, but the French do like to exaggerate. At this high pointy on the Caen-Livarot road we were looking over a rather large campground with its own Alpine Slide (blue track).

History Everywhere We Drive
Even when we got semi-lost leaving Livarot we stumbled upon nuggetd of history. We decided to head toward Ste-Mere-Eglise, the farthest west of all the D-Day sites. Our two GPS devices disagreed on the route to take so we improvised. Instead of going all the way back North to Caen then heading west, we tried to triangulate. This resulted in our ending up on some rather narrow farm roads seemingly in the middle of nowhere. We drove for miles with no cars or people in sight. In fact, all that was in sight were miles upon miles of open fields. That is until we started to drive up from a gully flooded by the recent rains and then spotted a Canadian flag out in the middle of this farmland hill.

Doug Checks It Out
By now my crew was totally bored with the WWII stuff. Therefore I was the only one to get out of the car to take a look at the monument. There was no layby or even much of a shoulder to park the car, but it seemed like we were the only humans in no-man's land si I left the Renault parked rather precariously on the side of the narrow road. I had to make my exploration quick in case a truck came up the road and made it necessary for a new monument to three American women travelers to be erected here.