A Frantic Tour de France, Part 3

I have been wanting to finish this last blog entry about our trip to France, but my heart just hasn't been in it since the terrorist attacks last weekend. It's funny how your own joys and sorrows seem to shrink in importance when a tragedy has occurred...and yet life goes on for the living. The laundry may not seem important but it's piling up nevertheless; birthday parties and book club gatherings and school bake sales are on the calendar and we are obliged to attend. We continue to go each day to work and school and to plan for dinner tonight and a date night next week and a Christmas vacation because life doesn't stop just because we are sad or afraid. The truth is that tomorrow is never guaranteed no matter where we live or what activities we pursue. So my solution is to press on; to be vigilant but hope for the best and believe in the goodness of most people.

And so, after a moment of silence....

Here is the last part of my France story:

We picked up our bright yellow rental car in Paris and drove a few hours away to Caen. Here we discovered galettes, the buckwheat pancakes I mentioned above, as well as apple cider which is a famous product of the Normandy region. Dan and I also had the chance for a quiet walk around William the Conqueror’s castle as dusk was falling, while the kids chose to read quietly in the hotel room.

The castle was built by William the Conqueror
and is now a museum.

Mémorial de Caen, the Center for History and Peace

The next day, no surprise, we were up early and found a boulangerie with yummy pastries for breakfast. We made a second stop for a coffee for me and were lucky to find a chai tea, which Dan had been sorely missing. We arrived at the Caen Peace Memorial right on time, where we began our visit with a powerful D-Day film. The film had no narration and consisted solely of actual footage. The screen was split and it took a little while to realize that both sides depicted preparing for battle, the Germans on the right and the Allies on the left. The film was masterfully done; I could feel the emotions of the soldiers, and by the time the D-Day landing began I couldn’t hold back the tears. If I had been alone watching the film I’m certain I would have sobbed and sobbed for the terror and the violence and the lives lost. But since I wasn’t alone, I let the tears silently roll down my face.

All text in the museum was tri-lingual: French, English and German

After the movie we spent a couple of hours walking through this excellent museum, learning all about not only D-Day but the lead-up to World War II and the story of the war and the slow turn of the tide in favor of the Allies. There are many D-Day museums throughout Normandy, but I highly recommend this one as the one to visit if you can only visit one.

Monogrammed suitcase belonging to Adolf Hitler - creepy

Dan and the kids walk towards the American Garden.
Each of the Allied nations has its own garden with a memorial.
The American memorial has plaques from each state
remembering their dead.

Carter (orange) and Haley (pink) play hide and seek among the
remains of German fortifications at Point du Hoc

After a quick lunch in the museum, we drove to Point du Hoc. This is the place where the American rangers, in a pre-invasion before D-Day, scaled the cliffs to take out the German canons that were in range to fire on the D-Day landing beaches. This was a great choice to follow a morning at the museum. We all knew the basic story at this point and could appreciate the history of the location and, more importantly, the interpretive signs were all outside and the kids could run around and explore in the fresh air. Dan and I walked around and marveled at the huge craters left over from bombardment by the naval ships, the steep cliffs the rangers needed to climb with their grappling hooks, and the strong and sturdy fortifications the Germans had built to defend the area. The kids mostly ran up and down the walls of the craters and played games in the bunkers and gun emplacements.

Cliffs scaled by the Rangers, under fire, at Point du Hoc

The ground at Point du Hoc is extremely uneven from all
the explosions

The greatest generation

Eloquent words from President Reagan

We ended the day at Omaha Beach, one of the American landing beaches.

Omaha Beach memorial - kind of like a ship with sails

They haven't forgotten...
...on the door of our restaurant

We drove on to Bayeux, where the kids were delighted to find a bunk bed and we spent our second night. Dinner was at a wonderful restaurant that served oven-baked gratins; mine was potatoes with cheese and apples, delicious.















The next day the kids experienced one of the great joys of travel, a hotel breakfast buffet, the first on this trip. Carter and Haley stuffed themselves by returning again and again to the pastries and yogurt and juice and hot chocolate and cereal. After breakfast, I had planned to view the Bayeux Tapestry, which tells the story of William the Conqueror, but we decided to stick to a single war for this trip so we skipped that attraction. Instead we went straight to Arromanches, where the Allies built a “Mulberry”, an artificial harbor which allowed them to unload tanks, troops and equipment far from the shore and bring them to land on floating bridges.

On the beach at Arromanches; part of the huge Mulberry
stands on the shore on the left behind us

The remains of the Mulberry are visible in the distance.
Hard to believe that the Allies had to park their boats
WAY out there and had floating ramps that stretched
all the way to shore so they could get tanks and supplies
to land.

Dan and I took pictures and contemplated the scene while the kids frolicked on the beach collecting shells. Then we went to the American Military Cemetery at Colleville Sur Mer, and immediately followed that with a visit to the nearby German cemetery in La Cambe. The contrast between the two was stark. While the American cemetery’s monument was hopeful and strong, the German monument was sad, somber, heavy. Each American had his own grave and marker, while the Germans were buried two to a grave. The American cemetery had lots of visitors and a large infrastructure of parking lots and a slick visitor’s center to match; we were one of four cars in the small German parking lot and there wasn’t much fanfare, only the graves and a small rather dinky building with signs in German and French. The German cemetery was beautiful though. Quiet and peaceful with the trees dropping their fall foliage. Dan and I were really moved by the poignant quote at the base of the monument, a translation of which is “Dark is the mound that arches above the soldiers’ graves. Dark stands God’s commandment over the war dead. But bright are the heavens above the looming cross. Brighter yet shines their solace: God has the final word." We interpreted this to be a plea for mercy and a trust that God himself is merciful. Very thought-provoking. If you're interested in reading more, I'm going to link to this blog that I found very interesting and insightful: http://followtheflammias.com/d-day-in-normandy/ It also has a lot of pictures of these same sites but on a beautiful blue-skied day!

Memorial at the American cemetary

Memorial at the German cemetary

Crosses and stars of David, each inscribed with a soldier's
name, division, home state and date of death 

German solders buried 2 per grave, with humble flat markers.
Clusters of 5 crosses are placed periodically throughout
the cemetary.

Looking down on the beach from the cemetery at Colleville Sur Mer. Fighting
took place on this very spot. Dan remarked, "It's a long way to get from
the beach to the top of the hill when people are shooting at you."

Next was a drive further west to Mont St. Michelle, a historic abbey turned prison turned monastery which, due to huge tidal swings, alternates between being an island and being surrounded by mud flats. Unfortunately for us, the days of our visit were in a period of perpetual low tide, so we never got to see Mont St. Michelle as an island. Also unfortunately for us, we had a series of three logistical mistakes that combined to cause us to arrive - after driving a couple of hours, catching a shuttle to the island, and climbing two hundred and something stairs - too late to tour the abbey. 1) As usual, the day’s activities took us a little too long and we arrived about an hour later than we wanted to. 2) Haley for some reason took off her skirt in the hotel room and was wearing just her shirt and a pair of tights. I told her to put the skirt back on before we left, but we were rushing to catch the shuttle and I didn’t realize until we were on it that she hadn’t put the skirt back on. As a consequence, I told her that we needed to buy her a skirt or pants in the little village and the money would come from her allowance. But we went in several shops in the village and could find only shirts as souvenirs, not actual children’s clothing including skirts or pants. We tied her jacket around her waist and gave up, but it cost us 15 minutes. 3) In my research I had noted that the abbey closed at 6, but it turns out that the last admission is at 5, and everyone needs to be out by 6. I was so frustrated, but the others enjoyed wandering up and down the steps and towers of Mont St. Michelle, despite not being able to enter the abbey. 

A crepe filled with chicken and potatoes, covered with
bacon - yum! With Normandy cider.

The plan had called for us to tour Mont St. Michelle in the afternoon, spend the night, and then hit more D-Day sites the following day (mainly Mere St. Eglise, the first city to be liberated, where there is a museum dedicated to the paratroopers who accomplished that), but we decided that we had seen about as much of D-Day as we needed to for this trip and we would rather make the most of our visit to Mont St. Michelle instead and stay for a half day the following day. Mont St. Michelle has a captive audience for restaurants, so the food there was more expensive and less special than anywhere else we had been. Still, we had a decent dinner at La Rotisserie. Funny story: the restaurant I chose after much deliberation was full and there was a wait. Rather than try a different place, we put our name on a waiting list and went back to the hotel across the street so I could get a book to read while I waited and the kids could go ahead and take their showers. When I returned to the restaurant a little while later, I attempted to say in French that I was waiting for a table for "Cripe".  The waiter grabbed two menus and asked me "Salée ou sucrée?" I stared at him blankly and he repeated it. Just then the waiter who had taken my reservation came to my rescue and explained to the first waiter that we had a reservation and that a table was opening up right now for us. I puzzled over this exchange for a couple of minutes before I figured it out and busted out laughing; when I said "Cripe", he thought I was saying "crepe" and he asked me if I wanted "sweet or salty" so he could hand me the appropriate menu! After dinner we spent the night in our unique hotel room that included a loft accessed by ladder - cool!

View of the kids' beds looking down from the top of the ladder

In the morning we were treated to another breakfast buffet. We joked that Carter was going to build a reputation among European hotels whereby they might charge us extra for him because of the amount of breakfast he consumes! We boarded the shuttle to Mont St. Michelle with about a hundred people from an Asian tour group, but once we arrived at the island, since we had already been there the night before we skipped all the preliminary pictures in front of the fortress and began our climb up the stairs ahead of the throng. In our wanderings the previous day we had learned that walking up the direct path through the village with all its shops that try to lure you in was the slowest way up to the abbey entrance. I led the family to a narrow crevice shortcut I had found that led to the cemetery, and from there Carter scouted a back entrance to the abbey stairs. In a rare success story, through our team effort we managed to arrive at the abbey just as the doors were opening for the day, and we had a good 20 minute head start on the tour group! 

The abbey sits at the very top of the hill

The abbey tour was well worth the price of admission and I’m so glad we stayed for it. I definitely recommend buying the audio guide because there isn’t any commentary otherwise. We learned about how all the stone to build Mont St. Michelle was brought in from 35 km away! I can’t even imagine how that was accomplished, because the fortress is massive. It was amazing how many rooms, staircases, doorways, levels, twists and turns were planned out in that structure. It would be the ultimate place for a game of hide and seek. There were also some incredible views during the tour that were only accessible from inside the abbey.

Dan and the kids pose in a turret

The monks would stand inside this wheel
and walk, like gerbils, to pull things up the
hill into the abbey using a pulley system.

The rooms had beautiful columns and ceilings,
each done differently.

View of the mud flats from the deck outside the abbey's church. The black
blobs in the middle of the photo are people - they do tours where they take
you out into the mud to walk around and presumably hear stories about the area.
You can only go out onto the mud with a guide because it's dangerous - the
tides can come in quickly and leave you stranded, plus there's quicksand!

We finished our time at Mont St. Michelle with a lunch of crepes at a really cute creperie in the town on the island and then set off on our way back towards Paris. On our drive back we kept seeing beautiful fall foliage and the sun even came out every once in a while, so Dan wanted to veer off our route to find a nice photogenic spot. In keeping with the theme of our entire trip, we couldn’t really find the type of spot we were looking for, repeatedly got lost, and before we could find a place to stop the clouds took over again. Dan was so frustrated with cloudy weather, terrible for photography, during our entire trip. On top of that, just after passing a rest area Haley decided that she needed to use the bathroom urgently. As soon as we had the opportunity, we followed an exit that we thought would lead to a restroom but took a wrong turn and had to go way out of our way before we were able to turn around. (We discovered several times on this trip that it’s a time-consuming and sometimes costly mistake to miss your exit in this part of France. There is a large distance between exits and, since we were traveling on toll roads, it’s possible to pay the toll prior to the exit, take a wrong turn out of the exit, travel for 8 or 10 miles, turn around, travel back 8 or 10 miles, and then pay the toll again (which we did in this instance).)

Carter enjoys the Carter burger

All that to say that when we finally arrived at Versailles, our destination, we walked to the garden gates and found them locked. Sigh. Dinner was at Sisters’ Cafe, an American burger joint where the burgers were named after presidents. It was really, really good. I had an Obama burger - bacon, cheese, a fried egg and guacamole, while Carter had his namesake burger.

The next morning we had planned to get up just before sunrise, pack our bags, walk to the gardens arriving just at sunrise (8:25), and enjoy strolling and photographing for a few hours before we needed to head to the airport. Imagine our surprise when we left our room around 8:00 and the sky was already bright. Europe had rolled its clocks back an hour without letting us in on the secret! Daylight savings time had ended, putting sunrise at 7:27. Yet another glitch in planning.

It didn't bother us much though. We had a nice time wandering around the gardens with only a few joggers and photographers for company. None of the fountains were on because there was going to be a musical gardens show later that has paid admission (the gardens are normally free), so that was kind of a bummer. But it also made the place really quiet and allowed us to see wonderful reflections in the still pools.

Reflection of a beautiful sky

A rare moment when the sun came out briefly

Beautiful fall color

Dan and the kids had a bit of fun with this statue

Orangerie, from above

When we were ready to leave and hour or so later, the palace had opened its door and the tour buses had arrived. It was insane how many people were waiting to enter the palace. Someday maybe we'll go back and see the palace, but on this trip it didn't make the cut.

Gates of Versailles when we arrived

Looking towards the gates of Versailles as we were leaving -
a huge line snakes up and down through the courtyard

Thus ended our super busy but nonetheless memorable trip to France. Here is a summary of some of our observations.

1. France, and especially Paris, is very expensive! People say that Berlin is cheap for a capital city and I can now understand why. 
2. Driving in France is also expensive. Many of the roads are toll roads and the tolls are hefty - €5-10 per stretch of road. I'd say we spent €40 or so on tolls.
3. Driving was also frustrating. The navigation system that came with our car was terrible and we had no data plan on our phones, so we kept getting lost. I mentioned earlier that it's hard to turn around on the highways, so mistakes can cost a lot of time (and money, if you have to pay tolls twice!)
4. Dan was so disappointed in the weather. We had 10 straight days of clouds with just the occasional one-minute burst of sunlight (like in the early Versailles gate picture above; the picture an hour later is completely socked in with clouds), which was horrible for photography. We visited such beautiful places and Dan really wanted to practice his photography. But the light was dull and flat pretty much the whole trip. I told him it could have been worse - it could have been raining the whole time. Thankfully we only got a little rain here and there, and it wasn't very cold.
5. This is my second trip to France and by far the longest trip. I was happy to discover that a little of my 7 or so years of studying French came in handy. It was interesting and frustrating that my brain's default "foreign language" seems to now be German. So when I tried to think how to say "May we have the check please?" or "Excuse me, which way is the Louvre?" I could only come up with the German. Actually it was interesting to discover just how much German I actually know, because many of the things I needed to say in French I could actually come up with the German words. But over time I found some French words and phrases coming back to me and I found that I could communicate just enough in many cases. I can also read French pretty well, which came in handy in the Louvre where the written commentary next to the paintings is only in French. 
6. I love all the pretzels and pretzel breads in Germany, but my heart is with the French pastries. I'm just not a big fan of the way the Germans do their pastries, cakes and desserts. But the French pastries were to die for, especially the one filled with almond paste, and the desserts were pretty darn good too.
7.  Our "skip the line" museum pass was pretty much a dud. It's probably still worth buying if only for the convenience of making just one purchase, but just don't expect it to save you a ton of time.
8. The hurried pace of this trip is something we don't want to do again. Family members become unpleasant without downtime.
9. The great thing about memories is that they can be molded. Yes, everyone was relatively unhappy at the end of this trip, but only because they needed a break. Now that time has passed, I think we're all able to look back and remember the awesomeness of the Eiffel Tower, the super yummy crepes, the beautiful and haunting beaches of Normandy, and the cool island of Mont St. Michelle as treasured time we spent together as a family and shared memories we'll always have.