Normandy & D-Day

Thu. Apr. 14: For this stay the breakfast buffet has been included so we started the day with the biggest breakfast we had had in two weeks. We were therefore well-fortified for our day exploring the many sites centered around the D-Day invasion 67 years ago on June 6. Marv knew a great deal about it already but I learned so much! Going from our Rick Steves book, the GPS, and some other maps we had, we drove through lovely countryside and through tiny villages that hugged the winding road for much of the day. Our first stop was at the “Disembarkment” Museum in Arronmanches. This tells the story of the remarkable artificial harbor, called Port Winston, which the Allied Forces built in just 2 weeks immediately after taking the beach heads on D-Day. The harbor allowed the Allies to get supplies to the troops on the ground quickly and safely. We were lucky enough to arrive just as an English speaking guide began a group tour so we could understand everything as we watched the movie, heard her explanation of the display cases, and watched the slide show. We took a bit longer there as Marv had left his jacket in the theater and had to wait for another showing to let out to get it. From there we drove to the American cemetery. This has a wonderful Visitors Center with a very moving film highlighting some individuals as well as the general sacrifice that resulted from the D-Day invasion. There are many displays as well which are all in English (and French) because it is administered by Americans so we spent a long time there. The exhibits funneled us into the cemetery with its rows and rows of perfectly aligned whiten crosses and Stars of David. It is sobering, inspiring and memorable. We learned that the cemetery was established in 1956, with soldiers’ remains brought from temporary graves all over the area. Families had the choice of having their loved ones buried there or returned home, which about 61% did. Throughout the day the light cloud cover was burning off so that it was mostly sunny but cool as we wandered and contemplated the ultimate sacrifice that each grave represented. Omaha Beach is nearby so we drove there next to walk the famous landing site known as Bloody Omaha for the great number of casualties incurred by the Americans. As opposed to the many reminders left in the water of Port Winston at Arromanches, little remains here but there are a few markers of rusting hulks that we could see in the water, and one we could walk to and examine because it was low tide. The beach was chosen partly for its width at low tide so we walked a ways after we had eaten our lunch of a baguette and some cheese and tuna. By then time was running short so we drove back towards Arromanches to be able to watch the 360° movie that had been recommended to us. However, on the way we managed to find the best preserved German Battery site, which retains some of the original guns. We made our way around there on the long circular path that stops at 4 concrete gun sites with their low rounded roof that, with the help of camouflage, would have concealed them very well from bombers. The path also shows some of the underground ammunition bunkers and one large, two leveled machine gun nest right next to the cliff down to the sea. We left there in time to see the last showing of the movie, which is very well done, combining movie footage from the time of the invasion with footage taken in the same areas in 1994 for the 50^th anniversary. Afterwards, Marv realized that the camera had been on the wrong setting for much of the day. We returned to the German Battery to get new pictures while there was still light and then followed the coastline to return to Caen before getting back on the freeway to go back to Honfleur. By the time we had returned and found out we still couldn’t use the Wi-Fi, it was after 10:00 and restaurants were closing. Knowing we still had to pack for an early departure and that we would have a full breakfast the next morning, we settled for sharing our last packet of tuna and some trail mix for dinner; it was quite a long cry from our lovely meal the night before!

Normandy & Mont St. Michel

Wed. Apr. 13: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SALLIE!! Like the seasoned travelers we are now, we walked with our suitcases down to catch Bus #21 to Gare St. Lazare and boarded our train to Le Havre in Normandy. The gentle farm lands flowed past the windows and the slightly foggy landscapes had a distinctly Monet feel to them with budding trees, lilacs, and spring flowers lending color in every scene. Two hours later we arrived and, with the GPS to guide us, we walked 1.7 kilometers to pick up our rental car. We got on the road with Marv at the wheel and again followed GPS directions but we missed one exit which took us a ways down the road before we could retrace our steps. After checking in at Le Cheval Blanc Hotel in nearby Honfleur we immediately drove 2½ hours to Mont Saint Michel. We drove mostly on freeway with a bypass around Caen. The countryside was rolling and checkerboard-ed with bright yellow fields of what looked to be thigh high mustard in full bloom. It was thrilling to see Mont Saint Michel in the distance from about 20 kilometers away! There was some light rain as we approached the causeway and we kicked ourselves for not bringing our rain jackets from the hotel. But as we walked across the causeway after parking, the rain stopped and didn’t appear again until we drove away a few hours later! Once again we were grateful to take Rick Steves’ advice on how to avoid the crowds (which were not too bad since it was 4:00 by then) and get right to the Abbey. It seems to float impossibly high above the mudflats and it is hard to imagine one can really make it up there by foot. But pilgrims have been doing it for over a thousand years so we could, too! The one street village of 30 residents at the bottom of the hill is completely devoted to tourism and since we had already seen several very old villages with narrow streets we chose to go straight to climbing the ramparts and then the many, many stairs that seem endless up to the Abbey. Rick Steves described each part of the Abbey and it was very enjoyable to walk around and marvel at this engineering feat put up by the bishop of Avranches who heard the voice of Archangel Michael saying, “Build here and build high.” Today’s abbey is built on the remains of a Romanesque church, which stands on the remains of a Carolingian church. We were pretty exhausted by the climbing and walking, particularly because we hadn’t had anything but some cookies to eat since our yogurt and croissants at 7:30. But it was all worth it to have seen such a beautiful place. It began to rain again as we drove out of the area but by then it didn’t matter. At Caen we stopped at a McDonald’s for coffee and made it back to Honfleur and bought gas. After parking in the free lot several blocks away, we dropped things in our room and went to find some dinner on foot. Off the waterfront we came upon “les Fontaines” where a good-natured waitress spoke only French to us and insisted that Marv try to do the same. It was very jolly and our dinner of Normandy specialties like the local “cidre” to drink and the delicious cream and cidre sauce on our chicken made it one of the most enjoyable dinners of our time in France. It was quite reasonably priced, as well! We got back to the hotel about 10:30 and were disappointed to find that we couldn’t get on the internet for some reason that the man at the reception desk couldn’t figure out for us. But it is a charming hotel. The building was erected in the 1500s on the water front and it has always been a hotel. It was also a postal stop for the sailors to come to and pick-up their mail when they were in port. It has been beautifully decorated in period Normandy style and our room overlooks the small harbor from which Champlain left with an Honfleur crew to explore and settle Quebec, Canada. I sat at the desk in the window with lights shining on the water and the sound of infrequent cars rumbling over the old cobblestones to write this entry and we went to bed.

Our Last Day in Paris

Tue. Apr. 12: How to make the most of our last day in Paris?!?! We still had much to do! Our arrondisement’s Farmers’ Market was set up just a block away so we went there and got bread, cheese, olives and oranges for lunch. We began by taking the Metro to Museé d’Orsay and assessing the crowd. As we had read, because the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays, the lines we long so we went on to the Museé de Rodin. There, our museum pass (SO glad Aram and Judy told us to get this!) got us right in with no wait. The museum is in the “hotel”(villa) that he rented at the end of his life for a Paris home. It has fabulous gardens with sculptures such as “The Thinker” and “The Gates of Hell” outside and drawings, paintings and sculptures such as “The Kiss” from throughout his life inside. One room is devoted to his protégé and mistress Camille Claudel. She was an artist in her own right who depicted Rodin’s struggle between his devotion to his long time companion, Rose, and herself in her works entitled “Maturity” here and in the Museé d’Orsay. (I was happy to find out the old man ultimately gave up the sweet young thing, Camille, to stay with the aged Rose. Sadly, Camille slipped into insanity and died in an asylum.) We learned that “The Thinker” was actually Dante overlooking his Gates of Hell in the Divine Comedy, a piece Rodin worked on for over 30 years and never really finished. We also found that he was friends with such other artists as Monet and Van Gogh. They used to trade pieces of their art so there are paintings and sculptures from them as pieces in Rodin’s museum. After seeing the museum and grounds we walked toward des Invalids and found a lovely park in which to ea our lunch. The day was partly sunny, but breezy and cool with temperatures in the fifties. We returned to the Orsay, where the lines were much more reasonable. In some ways we were disappointed by it though. For one thing they kept making announcements in many languages warning of the pickpockets working the crowd. Also they are working on the building, which is the old train station, and there were scaffolding, barriers, and banging noises that were distracting. One nice thing is that they had all the main Impressionist and Pointillist artists’ works lining two long hallways so it was very easy to walk up one side and down the other and see it all. But there were no benches or seats to allow one to linger and contemplate and we had seen so many masterpieces by then that we made short work of the place and got back on the Metro. Back at the Ile de Cité we bought VERY expensive coffees to drink at a street side table in the sun. We returned to Notre Dame for the fourth straight day, this time to take pictures of the Pieta and the three rose windows which we couldn’t get on our other visits. At the other end of the Place we finally found the Crypt Archeology Museum open. One of most vivid memories of my high school visit to Paris was of going down some narrow, steep stairs and bending down to get a glance at the oldest parts of Paris, ruins from the Romans’ time here. The area has now been developed into a museum, all underground, of the ancient main road that ran across the Ile and through the Left Bank, and foundations of the ramparts and homes that were here. They have extensive explanatory panels with English translations and we spent quite some time enthralled by antiquity. Back in the light of modern day Paris we had an expensive misunderstanding at shop, which resulted in, not a piece of apple cake (Gateau de Pomme) but potato cake (Gateau de Pomme de Terre), and not tap water but bottled water sans gas, but since it was the only problem we had we couldn’t complain and even the potato cake was delicious, just not sweet.

Loving it in Paris

Mon. Apr. 11: Most of the museums in Paris are either closed Monday or Tuesday so we had to plan our stay accordingly. From our travels yesterday we had a better idea of what to expect with lines and so forth. So after yogurt and a croissant we went straight to Notre Dame to get in line to climb the 430 steps into the towers to look over the city of Paris. After about a ten minute wait we were in the third group to ascend after they opened for the day. It’s a pretty rugged climb but it’s broken up twice with flat places to stand and recover while peering over the edge and it was really thrilling to see nearly 360° from that height. It is also awesome to note how worn the spiraling stone steps have become after so many years of people going up to have a look around. Equally enthralling is to consider the effort it must have taken over two hundred years to build the cathedral with the day’s technologies, and much of it was done with volunteer labor from the people of old Paris. The detailing and sculpture included all to the Glory of God and without consideration that most of it wouldn’t be seen by the common people is breathtaking, right down to the carved “sleigh bells” surrounding the belfry holding the biggest bells and, of course, the iconic gargoyles and chimeras. After plenty of time to look around and take pictures we made our way back down the 430 steps of the south tower and considered what to do with the rest of the day. The Museé de Cluny was just up the street from our hotel so we went back to our neighborhood to visit this display of Medieval relics. The museum is housed in a “hotel” built long ago on top of the nearly 2000 year old baths built there by the Romans when the city was known as Luticia. They have many of the original stained glass windows from St. Chapelle, fantastic tapestries with a lady, a unicorn and a lion, original wooden choir seats from a cathedral, and the original Kings of Israel statues that were from the portico of Notre Dame. Revolutionists, thinking they were French kings, removed and decapitated them. Someone had the forethought to bury them in their yard where they lay forgotten until 1977 when they were discovered! From the Cluny we picked up giant gyros for lunch and then took our first bus to the Louvre to walk in the beautiful Tuillerie Gardens. It was a sunny day in the seventies and there were lots of people out strolling, playing and sailing a few boats in the concrete ponds. We rested in a couple of the green chairs that are everywhere and enjoyed the scene before going into L’orangarie. They have a modest but very nice collection of Impressionist Paintings there including 8 giant canvases of Water Lilies given to Paris by Monet after World War I. As we took pictures outside at the Place de la Concord the battery went dead on the camera. So we took the Metro back to the hotel to get another and rest a bit On the way we picked up a sandwich to take with a bottle of wine we purchased way back at the Bacchus Festival to have a picnic at the Eiffel Tower. Let me say a little bit about the hotel here. We have a very nice and impeccably clean but small room. The hotel is “green” and saves energy in many ways, the most interesting of which is that the hallways have motion detecting lighting so that each time the elevator doors open the hallway is dark until you step out, and the room electricity is turned on by inserting the door key into a holder next to the door every time you enter. They have you leave the key at the desk each time you leave thus insuring that the electricity is off whenever the room is not used. The buffet breakfast they offer is apparently local product and free trade but at 15€ a person per day we didn’t avail ourselves of it! Rested and re-energized (new battery) we took the Metro back to the Champ de Mars to have our picnic supper in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Around 6:30 we got in a short line for security and to buy tickets and then rode the elevator up the East Tower (leg) to the second platform (not the summit) of Eiffel’s engineering marvel. We had a marvelous view of all Paris at a level low enough for the landmarks to be recognizable. (That way we also didn’t have to wait in what we heard was a line over an hour long to get to the top.) From there we watched the sun set and the lights of Paris come on. It is a magical sight!! It was also fun to listen to all of the languages on this Tower of Babel! At 9:00 we enjoyed the five minute twinkling light display on the tower. Then we walked down to the first platform to look around some more before taking the elevator to the ground to have a different perspective of the 10:00 display. It was late when the Metro delivered us just down the block from our home away from home for the night.

Carpe Paris!

Sun. Apr. 10: Yogurt and coffee in our room and a pastry from a patisserie along the way and we were ready to seize the day. We started once again at Notre Dame to do the last bit of our Historic Paris podcast. There was a Mass just beginning so we explored with a musical and Latin accompaniment. There was a long line to climb the towers when we left the church so we’ll try that tomorrow. There was a “Les Cars Rouges” bus sitting beside the Place so we began our hop on/hop off tour right then. It was sunny but a bit cool and breezy sitting on top as we went past Museé d’Orsay, Opéra, Champs Elysée-Etoile, Grand Palais and the Trocadéro before going to the Tour Eiffel. All along the way streets beside the river were closed off and full of the 40,000 people from all oer the world running the Paris Marathon, which starts and ends along the Champs Elysée and the Arc de Triumph. We got off at the Tower to see what we wanted to do about going up the tower. The lines were very long and, although that’s probably almost always true, we decided to follow Rick Steves’ advice to go up late in the afternoon and watch the lights of Paris come on as evening falls. We would leave that for Monday. After sitting in the grass for a while in the sunshine we set off to find the Museé du Quai Branly, a new (2006) museum of Indigenous People’s Art museum from cultures all over the world. It is very dramatically presented and lighted, which adds to the mysteriousness and power of the displays. One begins by climbing a long, wide, spiral ramp which has tumbling words projected like waterfalls down the sides and then onto the ramp like a river stream that you are walking upstream. It is very effective at moving the visitor away from the streets of Paris and into another world. The museum was a very unexpected pleasure! We hoped to find some food by then but had arrived at the dead time between lunch and dinner. We finally found a Creperie open where we shared a ham crepe and a tomato salad. Fortified for the rest of the afternoon, we decided to take on the Louvre. We were shocked to find it crowded but not to the point of having lines to wait in. We used another Rick Steves Podcast to make our way around. In about two hours we had seen the “Big Attractions” of the Denon wing and then ventured off on our own to see the Germanic, Holland, Flanders and Netherlands painters in the Richelieu wing. By then we were pretty much overcome with art and felt like we had absorbed about as much as we could for one afternoon. We ended up walking to the pedestrian only bridge to get pictures of the Pont Neuf and the point of the Ile de la Cité. Even though we were pretty exhausted by then, we strode on towards the hotel but stopped under the gargoyles of St. Germaine des Pres to have dinner at an outdoor table. I had the more expensive daily meal so I could have an appetizer of escargot in memory of my dad. He would have approved!! We were seated outdoors next to two other tables of Americans, including a couple who had come to Paris just to run in the Marathon! They were from Minnesota and the other couple was from Syracuse so we all traded snow and basketball stories. It was all very fun but we left first and made our way back to the hotel. After a short rest we took another evening stroll around the neighborhood before falling exhausted into bed.

April in Paris

Sat. Apr. 9: We left Nice shrouded in haze and low clouds and brought the perfect weather we had all week in Nice to Paris! Bus #98 took us right to the Nice airport where we checked our bags, got our boarding passes and got online with free WiFi, the only annoying thing being we were there much earlier than necessary. Before we left home, Marv had downloaded about 8 Rick Steves walking tours and radio shows. While in flight we listened to one of two of his radio show podcasts about Paris. When we arrived at Orly we got our bags and called for our transport shuttle, which was waiting at the door with our name on a sign. He whisked us into the city to our hotel, La Jardin de Cluny, which is in the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank, about a two minute walk from Notre Dame. It is very nice and will be a terrific home base while we explore the city. We dropped our stuff in our room, walked to “Point Zero” in the square in front of Notre Dame, plugged in two sets of headphones, and began our Historic Paris walking tour. Steves suggests you take about 4 hours to do the tour and it took us at least that long, even though we skipped Notre Dame because it was so crowded and we can come back at a better time. His narration took us around the Ile de la Cité and the Left Bank including extended stops at Sainte-Chapel, where we bought our Museum Pass that will get us into many places over our time here, and the Conciergerie, where over 2000 prisoners, including Marie Antoinette, were held before going to the guillotine. We looked at both islands from many perspectives and hung our feet over the edge of the point of the Ile de la Cité near Pont Neuf. It means New Bridge but is actually the oldest bridge in town because it was built around 1600. The weather was absolutely perfect, with temperatures in the 70s and not a cloud in the deep blue sky. The tulips and flowering trees are in full bloom and add immensely to the beauty of every little plaza and park. They are having a bit of a heat wave for the next few days so we won’t see normal high 50s until our last day in Paris. So at the end of our tour we were happy to sit by a small playground in the shade of the flying buttresses and leering gargoyles of the by now closed Notre Dame. On our way back to the hotel we bought some provisions to make a supper in our room and relaxed for a while before going back out to explore our near neighborhood after dark. We are both already feeling confident about the streets around us and are ready to branch out further. It is so magical to just wander the streets of Paris after dark, still teaming with people who appear ready to make a late night of it! We however got back to the hotel to call Ken, as he had requested, finished the blog, and went to bed by midnight to get an early start tomorrow.

Our final day in Nice

Fri. Apr. 8: Our last day in Nice was unplanned except for a few foods we all wanted to try before leaving. So we walked over to the Market at 10:00 and found Teresά’s stand, where she was warming and serving her socca, a crepe made of olive oil, flour, and ground chickpeas. It is served very hot and sprinkled with pepper and was the traditional breakfast for fisherman before they set off. It was delicious with a small cup of espresso. Next we wandered the streets a bit and found the Church of Réparate open so we looked around there for a while. More wandering and strolling and we came upon a patisserie where we each had a decadent pastry. On a whim, with plenty of time left to our day, we decided to ride the bus to Vance and St. Paul de Vance two of the so-called “perched villages” in the hills surrounding Nice. Coming around the curves as we approached them, it was immediately apparent why they are called “perched”. The ancient walled towns seem to hang from the hill side overlooking deep valleys. Most of the afternoon was spent in Vance, where they have a self-guided walking tour that takes the visitor to explanatory plaques which include an English translation. The villages with towering walls seem both self-sufficient and impenetrable and it is possible to imagine why they have lasted for 2000 years and linked with other equally ancient towns since the Romans set them up along their roads that stretched along the valuable coastline. What is harder to imagine is what life would be like in a town where the “roads” needed to be only wide enough for a hand pulled cart and sometimes went up and down the hills with steps. We had pizza for lunch on a quiet main square before leaving Vance for nearby St. Paul de Vance. St. Paul is much more tourist-y and was much busier so we made quick work of it. But we did enjoy the magnificent views from its ramparts and visiting the grave of Chagall. After walking about halfway around the walls of the city we cut back through the central plazas on the main road before getting back on the bus and returning to Nice. We used up wine and other food for a light dinner and began to pack up to leave Saturday morning. Heidi and Kris had an 8:30 plane to catch, which meant they were taking a cab at 5:30 to the airport. Marv and I could take the 98 bus to the airport to catch our plane to Paris at 11:30 to continue our adventure. Nice had been everything we could have hoped for and more!