Okay, so April is a great month to be in France

Since my last blog entry, we have traveled to Normandy to see the beaches of WWII and a little needlepoint and Bretagne (Brittany) to see the Megalithic Stones placed by some other generation around 4500 BC.

I will start this series with my reason for wanting to go to Normandy:

The Normandy trip started because I heard about something called the Bayeux Tapestry. It's not really a tapestry, but it is actually an embroidery that is about 15" high and about 23 feet! long. It is rumored to have been created around 1080 AD, and is probably one of the earliest forms of political propaganda or history if you want to say that - that exists. There has long been a great debate about who commissioned it, who designed it, and who did the embroidery, but there are many great books if you are curious. We know the work was done by women, just not what nationality, English or Norman (which some would now say French?), and we know that there are a couple of leading contenders for the commission - William the Conqueror's step brother - ODO, or Possibly Edward the Confessor's Wife, and what about King Harold's Wife? She was trying to get back in the good, but there are no obvious names for the designer...

credits photos@ Musee de la Tapisserie de Bayeux


I picked up the book I read at the Red Wheelbarrow , my favorite Paris source for books in English, but Oriel of Paris Walks was the one who really set me up to look for the info. The book is by Carola Hicks took this really clever approach of telling the role that the tapestry played in the history of Europe over say, oh the last 900 years. Her 500+ page book read like a great novel documenting the critics, examiners, the adorers, the exploiters and the keepers of the tapestry, so that we could all see it now. I learned not only about the tapestry, but some fascinating details about the history of France, England and Germany.

Every french person we talked to knew of the tapestry, as did some of my real history buff friends from the US, but oddly enough, very few people had seen it live. I guess because it is squirreled away in a really cool museum in the town of Bayeux, but frankly off the beaten path for almost anyone. We were really glad we went there and when coupled with "the beaches" it made for a great trip.