It was an early start for the Saturday we were collected after breakfast and taken off to a place where they train people in the art of 'pâtisserie' and 'boulangerie' very near the Centre Commercial Hérouville Saint Clair, just to the north of the city.
They were laying on classes in 'British Cake Baking'. These classes were very oversubscribed and as a result they will be running more in the New Year.
We were treated to demonstrations on scone making, cheesecake making and shortbread making. The Lady Mayoress and I shared our experience of shortbread making and she even got stuck in and made some. I did not bother as the last time I made any with butter as I said they turned out more like crumble mixture than biscuits!
Gallery of images from the pastry school
The afternoon of course was the main event - a gala re-signing of the Twinning Charters with Cllr. Ken Ellcombe, Lord Mayor of Portsmouth and Joël Bruneau, Mayor of Caen.
This event was attended by many dignitaries from the City of Caen and other dignitaries such as the Mayor of Ouistreham, Romain Bail, who has also been working with the Caen-Portsmouth Friendship Committee on the Franco-British Museum, which will be built right on Sword Beach in Ouistreham-Riva-Bella.
We presented the city with an antique ship's wheel and they presented us with a sculpture in Caen Stone of the Spinnaker Tower, in order to mark this event.
Gallery of images from the afternoon charter signing ceremony.
France 3 Télévisions were there for the local news programme in Caen. We were featured on both the Sunday and Monday evening. Both the mayor of Caen and myself were interviewed for this event. I was oddly asked lots of questions about Brighton by the journalist, rather than Portsmouth so much of my interview was not used, however I do briefly feature on the Monday night report, with an hilariously spelled name.
At the moment clips for these two features can be found here for Sunday 26th, November:
Both of these have been quickly subtitled in English by myself using free software.
The evening meal also took place in Caen's City Hall. This event was attended by many mayors of Caen past and present along with other important figures from all over the Calvados Department.
Images of the evening meal
Another fairly late night, but at least we have the next morning with a bit of lie in before checkout from the hotel and another lot of engagements and meeting the people of Caen.