Normandy

During our travels we were able to spend quite a bit of time in France, but had managed to miss the part that is closest to the UK - Normandy.

Friday, April 9th

We started the trip with a Eurostar train to Paris, which is fairly close to where we were headed. (We actually received free round trip tickets on the Eurostar from our trip to Paris that we took with Sarah in December when the the tunnel rails accumulated condensation and closed down the train.) We picked up a rental car at the train station and headed straight out of town. About an hour north of Paris is a small town called Giverny. This is famous as the home of Claude Monet, where he did a ton of his paintings, especially later in life. All of the works of lillies, willows, etc were done here in Giverny. Since he is one of Jenna's favorite artists, we had to add a visit to our list.

Monet's old home and studio, including the famous lily pond, are now open to the public. We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon touring around the grounds. It was interesting seeing the place and comparing to some of the paintings of his we've seen around the world. You could be standing in a place looking over the lake and say "I think I saw this one". Additionally, now when we see his works from Giverny, we get to see the real place in our minds. Very cool.

After a couple of hours taking in the views, we hopped back in the car and headed another two hours north to the beach at Etretat. This is really just a scenic beach on the northern coast, but it has a famous rock arch that has been the subject of numerous impressionist artworks, including many by Monet. It was only slightly out of our way, but well worth the trip to see in the flesh what we'd marveled at in multiple museums.

After a little time wandering the beach, we headed to our final destination for the night - Bayeux. This is a smallish town, and is the main place to headquarter yourself to tour the D-Day beaches, which we planned for the next day.

Before closing out the day, I have to mention our lodgings for the weekend, which were up there among our favorites in all of Europe. We stayed at a B&B - La Ferme du Pressoir - that is actually a large farmhouse a few miles outside of Bayeux. From talking with the owner, it sounds like her husband made some good money in farming, and she always wanted to have a B&B, so she decided to convert parts of the home and become a hostess. It was awesome. The husband still farms, so there were tractors and horses and all kinds of farming goodies. They have some rooms in a main house, and then there is also a separate guest house with a few rooms. We stayed in the guest house, and since they were slow at this time of year, we had it to ourselves, including the living room and small kitchen, which was great. The fridge was even stocked with some delicious homemade adult apple cider. Yum!

One of the best parts of the B&B was the owner. She spoke very little English, and our French was still pretty rusty, but we both knew just enough to have some nice little discussions about the area and our travels. She was just so friendly and excited to be practicing her English on us, and was really happy that Rick had put her in his book, as it had done so much for her business!!

Also, while staying there we met an American family, a mom and her two sons aged 7 and 9. The older boy joined us for breakfast one morning without his mother and brother and was speaking French to our hostess. We assumed he was French until his mother came and started speaking to him in English. After talking to them we found out that the father was a photographer for National Geographic and was still working. The family had decided to home school that year and were traveling the world to get real life/hands on experience. They had spent the previous 3 weeks in the south of France while the boys went to language school. Before that they had been in Africa on an animal reserve helping the workers there document information on the big 5 safari animals. Basically if we have children someday this is exactly what Jenna would want to do. Now I need to see if National Geographic is hiring... 

Saturday, April 10th

This was our WWII day, and it was a doozy. I wouldn't call myself a history buff by any means, but I do really enjoy learning all the history around WWII (and I think Band of Brothers is probably the greatest TV series of all time), so I was really looking forward to this.

There were 5 beaches where Ally forces landed on D-Day. Most of the British landed near the town of Arromanches toward the east, which is where we started the day. Arromanches is the home of the Musee du Debarquement (roughtly "Landing Museum"). It had a lot of cool memorabilia and information about the beach landings along the Normandy coast. A large portion of the museum was devoted to the port that was created at Arromanches by the British. After the beaches were taken, it was critical that they be secured and defended, which required lots of supplies and equipment, but there was no usable port anywhere nearby, and the waves made it impossible to just build something on the open water. The British devised a plan to build a break-water by sinking enormous cement barriers. They had started this immediately, and within a couple of days they had a working port and had brought in enough supplies to ensure that the Allies would be able to hold the beaches and move inward into Europe. As an embarrassing side note, the Americans attempted to build their own port on one of the beaches we landed on, and it was a massive failure.

After leaving the museum, we started making our way west along the coast, seeing various war sites along the way. I won't bore with all the details, but here are a few of the highlights:

Beaches

We stopped at a couple of the beaches where the Allies landed - the one's made famous in the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan. Sadly, they've become pretty touristy. There are very few remnants from the war. As you walked the beaches there were various metal shards and other random clues that the war had occurred, but the main site on the beaches was guys land windsurfing.

Bunkers

One of the main things that does litter the coast as a reminder of the war are German bunkers. At some of the beaches, there were the small bunkers where gunmen would have been posted, but the most impressive ones we saw actually held large artillery used to barrage the boats and soldiers as they landed.

Shelling Site

In the days surrounding D-Day, there were many bombs dropped throughout Normandy - most attempting to destroy the German fortifications. Over the years, erosion and farming developments have erased the traces of these bombings, but there was one area we visited that has been left mostly untouched.

It was amazing to see just how deep the explosions went. It was sobering to think that thousands of these bombs were dropped in the region in just a matter of weeks.

American Cemetery

This was one of the more harrowing experiences of the weekend. There are many US military cemeteries throughout Europe, but the one we visited - the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial - is one of the largest, and the one that contains most of the bodies of the men who died on the beaches on D-Day. We took a short tour of the cemetery and the nearly 10,000 white crosses. It was definitely something to experience.

Sunday, April 11th

Having seen the sights of Normandy, we headed west on a pilgrimage to Mont Saint Michel.

 This is a very famous middle age pilgrimage site. It is essentially a small island just off the coast, and in the middle of the island (at the top of a huge hill) is an old church/monastery. There is a town below, and when you enter the town you essentially walk in an upward spiral through the MANY tourist shops up to the church. Currently there is a road from the mainland to the island, but in the old days, you could only get there during low tide when a muddy land bridge was exposed. Even now, a parking lot sits off the road and is a few feet lower than the road, and they have signs posted saying what time you need to leave by (before the tide returns) lest your car be swept away. Rumor has it that some years ago a tour bus operator had a few too many drinks in a local bar and lost track of time, forgetting to move his bus, and found it floating away!

The place was probably a little too touristy, but we probably got something close to the experience of the religious pilgrims of old - a walk up to the church that was lined with shops selling t-shirts and magnets (would have been holy water and rosaries), and when we got to the top we paid an outrageous entrance fee (i.e. indulgence) to see the church. All complaining aside, it was very spectacular to see Mont Saint Michel both on approach and from the church at the top, and was well worth the stop-over.

By lunch, we had seen all there was to see, and headed back toward Paris for our return home. Unfortunately, we had a miserable time lost on the streets of Paris trying to fill the car with gas before returning it. The GPS would send us to a closed station, or to one that was on the other side of the street with no access from where we were. We drove around for what seemed like an hour before finally filling up and getting the car returned. Fortunately, we got the car back to Avis and still had quite a bit of time before our train home, so we were able to take the metro to get one last moment with the Eiffel Tower before leaving France for who knows how long.