Ferme de la Tuilerie, E. Graindorge Liverot Cheese Factory, Camembert, and La Cite de Mar

Here are the kids checking out the beautiful scenery in the daylight as the cows shuffled past:

You don't see them here but we spotted a lot of white cows in Normandy (which I hadn't really seen before).

We had to run to the nearest town to get cash to pay for the accommodation and grab breakfast. The kids are deliberating over which one to pick:

You can't tell here but Hailey wore a lot of hers (what were we thinking?):

Back at the farm guesthouse, the nice owner gave us a tour of the animals. She was really friendly and it was interesting to talk with her. She convinced us to go to the cheese factory in Liverot instead of the President factory in Camembert. Usually it wouldn't be open on a Sunday but we lucked out and it was some sort of "Patrimony Weekend" and a lot of things were open that were not usually open (and a lot of museums were free). She was telling us how President is too commercial now and was trying to buy milk for cheaper (so they could sell it for cheaper) and change the way that the cheese was made but that the local dairy farmers put up a fight and won. Apparently there are strict guidelines for making "Camembert", it has to come from Normandy cows that spend over half of the time outside and they can only eat certain things, etc. 

Pigs aren't the brights of creatures (this one is trying to eat the barb wire fence):

These are special Normandy sheep that are smaller in size (these are full-grown):

We contemplated raiding the cheese truck at E Graindorge:

Cheeses that they make here:

Chris and I didn't care for the Liverot cheese. We bought some Neufchatel and Camembert and put it in our little cooler to bring home. However, stores there don't sell ice apparently. We had most of the Camembert on crackers and bread on the ferry for din. We had try and feed Hailey pre-ferry and take shifts having dinner so Hailey wouldn't see/get upset when she couldn't have any. Oh, the cheese ended up stinking up our whole fridge at home! I'm not sure if it is still good but Chris wanted to risk it and had the rest of the Camembert and seems to be okay. 

Here is the cheese man and his son:

Carried on to Camembert and the lady at the guest house was right, there is not much there. A guest center and a cheese museum (but it is closed from 12-2 and wasn't open for another hour). They have the town name with a red slash through it when you are exiting that town and it was almost comical how close together the Camembert town sign and the "leaving the town" sign were from each other. It is gorgeous though. 

About the cheeses in this region:

We checkout out the Cite de Mar in Cherbourg for a few hours before boarding the ferry. They had all sorts of cool submarines, a declassified sub that you can wander though (Chris did so while I took the kids to the Aquarium exhibit, only adults were allowed in the sub), and a Titanic exhibit that was very state of the art and interactive.

Hailey is scared that the blue lobster is going to get her:

Cool glow in the dark fish:

Baby seahorse hitching a ride from his parent:

These jellyfish just remind me of the scene in "Finding Nemo":

And back we went on the ferry. At one point the boat had to stop and check out this overturned dingy that was floating in the water (which they determined was okay, had probably fallen off the back of a bigger boat but added 30min. to our arrival time). It took some work trying to keep the kids entertained but was pretty uneventful otherwise. Hailey was being loud but she won people over by saying goodbye to everyone as we left.