Normandy

This weekend, my friend Marwa and I went to Normandy.

The trip was a strange combination of things not going quite right, magical moments, and truly disgusting French food.

I picked Marwa up at 9:00 and we set off on the 3 hour trip... which took almost 7 hours because of the Belgian traffic jam we drove into. Thankfully we had a 12-cd changer and a lot to talk about.

So,... I've been meaning to post some pics of men peeing in public as this is a much loved Belgian passtime... sitting in traffic for a few hours gave me many opportunities to snap some riveting pics on this subject. Here's just one of them (hmmm.... so many to choose from):

After a very long drive, we arrived in Dieppe and parked at the beach. I was really impressed by the landscape. This is a picture of Marwa on the beach in Dieppe.

It is impossible not to imagine what it must have been like during the war... facing those cliffs, the rocky shore, the waves... The tributes and memorials to the Canadian contribution was really touching. This , located at the Canadian War Museum, is one of the most beautiful.

We walked around for a few hours, enjoying the town and the sights... we saw bag-pipers, lovely shops and bistros, and memorials. The people we interacted with were an interesting mix of sterotypically rude French waiters -- such as the woman who, after 20 minutes of waiting to be served at an outdoor cafe, came to our table and told us to take our feet off of the crappy plastic chairs and then walked away without taking our order. Baffled, we chalked this up to the lack of a scooping law in France. Dog shit on the ground is plentiful, and perhaps she hadn't seen that we were taking care not to rest our shoes (which had no dog poo on them, btw) on the chairs. Anyway, she failed to return, so we left for another pub to have a couple of drinks and discuss where we were going to stay that night.

The next person we interacted with was a stereotypically lovely and light Parisian woman who patiently tried to give me directions to her bed & breakfast in French. She assurred me that my French was very good (it's not) and told us that she would hold our room while we tried to find her.

That night we found the bed & breakfast which turned out to be a lovely converted farmhouse from the 18th century. This is a picture taken in front of it by the man who works in the restaurant. Neither Marway nor I are sure why it was important for him to send us home with a picture of his dog's asshole, but we assumed it has something to do with subtle French humour.

The 2nd day, after a completely lovely French breakfast consisting of nothing but carbs, we set off for the sea road. The first amazing thing we found was an incredible little store, tucked in the woods as though owned by faeries. Marwa and I went completely mad over the clothes as they were all unique and very inexpensive.

We stopped later in another town (must remember to ask Marwa to remind me of the name). When we walked into a restaurant for lunch, the most amazing thing happened... the handsome waiter asked me immediately to play Scrabble with him for money (you might remember that the personal ad I placed mentioned my passion for scrabble). I agreed to play and he asked how much we should bet. I asked him, in French, if we would play in French or English. He said English. I asked if I would be playing against him. He said that, yes, I would be playing against him, but that he would have some help. I looked over and saw his dog and asked if the dog would be helping him. He laughed and said yes. I considered this for a moment and said that the dog looked rather smart, so I would only bet him 5Euros and that I wanted a 20 point lead.

You might imagine that this led to a playful, lovely interaction. But it didn't. He left us for a moment and Marwa and I discussed what we would eat. The plate of the day, I thought I overheard him say in French to some children, was fish. I told Marwa that the special was fish and would she please order it if he came to take our order while I went to the car to get my wallet.

When I came back, she had ordered and was drinking local cider and everthing was going really well. And then our meal came. And it wasn't fish. It was, in fact, a grotesque looking black oozing sausage.

Marwa, who is a vegetarian, could not have looked more revolted.

I told her not to worry and called the waitress over and explained that Marwa is a vegetarian and that we had mistakenly understood that the plate of the day was fish. The waitress snatched up the plate and said that we would have to pay for it anyway and then thrust the menu at Marwa. Wondering whether I should try to eat it or order something different as well, I asked her what kind of meat it was. She said she would ask the cook and spun on her heel and marched off toward the kitchen. I stuck my fork into the sausage which oozed out a vile-looking blackish red goo. Marwa and I looked at each other in disbelief.

The waitress returned and told me in French what it was. I said I didn't understand. She said in English "blood". Certain I had misunderstood her, I said "I'm sorry? What kind of meat is this"?

"It" she said haughtily "is blood".

I could not mask my disgust at this and pushed the plate for her to take away and asked for a 2nd menu.

Here is a picture from the Internet of what was on the plate of the day. Blood sausage... To imagine what our lunch actually looked like, you are going to have to use your imagination and add lumps of congealed something-or-other and a gooey, gelatious, bloody sauce to the image below. There. Yes. That's what our lunch looked like.

Wikipedia has this to say about blood sausage:

blood sausage or blood pudding is a sausage made by cooking animal blood with fat or other filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled.

Now, doesn't that sound absolutely scrummy?

Marwa and I both ordered egg and cheese crepes.

Noone got to play scrabble and noone lived happily ever after with a charming French scrabble-playing waiter.

The End.