Storming the Castle and Other Fine Pasttimes

Greetings Friends!

Welp, it's been a long week and we've made it to Nice, but now its time to tell you about last week's adventures in the Chateaus!!

So Fasten your seatbelts---

To start off, we went to Bayeaux. At Bayeaux there is the longest and oldest "tapestry" in the world. 

I put tapestry in parantheses because it isn't actually a tapestry, it is in fact embroidery, however they tried to change the name but it was stuck.

The Tapestry depicts the story of William the Conqueror and how he became king and known as William or Guillame the Conqueror

Halley's Comet!

The town of Bayeaux

After Bayeaux we drove to the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach. It was really cool and an amazing place, especially to go on the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day Invasion. 

This is inside at the Exposition Museum that tells about D-Day

This is Omaha Beach, one of the three US beaches that were stormed.

The Memorial at the Cemetery

Something that was cool was that not all of the gravemarkers were crosses, some had Stars of David on them instead because they were Jewish instead of Christian.
Another cool thing was that even unknown bodies have a marker and it just says "Here lies a son of the nation" or something similar to that, and I thought that was really cool.

The next day we started out at Mont Saint Michel.

This island castle was so cool!!! It is also the castle that Disney used to draw Tangled.

Mont St. Michel main street

A View from the side of the city

Then I went to a little church dedicated to St. Michel or St. Michael aka Adam.

 Then there was this cool cemetery

 Then we went up to the top for our guided tour...

 

After climbing 500 steps we made it to the tip top of the mountain.

 Our tour guide told us about the fortress's difficulties and also the advantages due to the fact that on all sides of the castle there was warring nations.

Then we went into the Cathedral and worked our way down.

Our tour guide told us the legend of St. Michel which says that St. Michael came to a Bishop three times telling him to build a cathedral on this particular island but the bishop was like no way, I ain't got the time resources or technology to do that man, and then on the third time Michel was like dude have I got to press this into your thick skull and accidently put a hole in the bishop's head with his thumb. So the bishop was like dude, he means business and decided to build St. Michel on the rock so Michel wouldn't come back and put another hole in his head.

This is the Statue of Michael in the Cathedral.

Then she showed us the new part of the Cathedral that was built in the gothic style after this part was completely destroyed in a war.

 Then we descended into the depths

This is our tour guide with a very old statue of Mary, we were in a little chapel used by the monks who lived here.

 This is a picture of the actual rock that St. Michel was built on.

 This hole can be seen in the Gothic section of the church and was put there so they could bring stones down from above to the bottom to build things.

This is one of the huge stone columns that was holding the room up

 This giant wheel was used to bring giant stones up to the top of the mountain during one of the many reconstructions and renovations.

 This is an old cemetery and it's filled with centiemes.

 This is the oldest room in the building and was where the pilgrims could come to visit and pay homage to the saint bones that would have been up on top of the altar archway.

 We finally came up to the Cloister

A beautiful garden that was used my the monks who had sworn a vow of silence.

 This huge room was used to pray with everyone, with everyone silent you can hear everything and no one needed to shout.

We ended our tour at the the Great Hall, it was huge and overlooked the ocean.

This is a cannon I found on the way out.

After the Tangled castle we went to St. Malo

 This is like a Pirate ship but not really its a ship for Admiral Quartier who started out from here and then went to South America

 Then we walked around the entire wall of the fortress

 It was foggy out so we couldn't see the incredible view of the ocean but it was still pretty in a mysterious sort of way.

The oldest fortress city in France.

 The next day, we started out at the Chateau d'Angres.

This is technically not a Chateau, it is actually a Fortress, however the locals referred to it as a Chateau for so long that like the Bayeaux tapestry the name stuck. 

 Our guide's name was Dolores and she told us about how Angres was used by Charles II and later after the fall of the Nobility it became Military barracks for a long time, and that is why the chateau is mostly destroyed except for some walls.

Here the Apocalypse Tapestries are hung. and they were very cool.
They are protected by being in the middle of the chateau  inside the fortress.

 The oldest tapestry in France...because it is an actual tapestry instead of embroidery like the Bayeaux tapestry

St. Michael killing the Dragon

 The 4 horsemen  

 The whore of all the earth

 This is an old church that was excavated/found when they where building the room and stuff.

 Then we left the cool underground room and came outside to what was the inside of the Chateau before it was destroyed. There was also a nice view of the Cher river.

After seeing the end of the world we went to the Chateau d'Ussé or the castle for La Belle au Bois Dorme or Sleeping Beauty.

 The original author Charles Perrault based the story off of this castle... It was sooo Cool!

Inside the Chateau they had mannequins with period costumes for different periods of time.

 now I'm a deer.

Model pics in front of the rose bushes.

then I went up the Sleeping Beauty tower and this is the view that she had...

 Then I ended up at the old church next to the Castle

 This is an old Cedar of Lebanon

It was a beautiful old (14th century) castle, probably the most beautiful and castlelike one.

Until the continuation.....