Normandy: Day Two

As it was raining rather hard, we slept in late, and didn't check out of our hotel until almost noon.  With the weather, we decided to spend the day seeing indoor sights, so we return to Caen via Chez McDonald's for lunch.

We then stopped into the Caen Memorial to World Peace, which is an expensive, but extremely interesting museum.  It has one of the best exhibits regarding World War II that I'd ever seen, all presented in French, English, and German.  One interesting exhibit was an audio recording that the Germans had made of the calls made by the Generals who signed the French armistice after the fall of Paris.  They didn't know the Germans were recording the call, and hearing the call was sort of like being a fly on the wall of history, as the two French generals decided how to handle the rather unusual situation.

We spent about 3 hours in the WWII portion of the museum, then another hour in the Cold War section, and a few minutes in the modern section, which contains beams from the World Trade Center.  We then nabbed a few post cards from the gift shop, and departed for Paris.

The drive back to Paris was uneventful, we stopped for fuel a bit outside the city, and I accidentally put about 3 litres of the wrong diesel fuel (the car used regular diesel, which is "Gasole" and I accidentally grabbed "Gasole sans soufre") into the car before I realized my mistake.  Fortunately, that wasn't enough to do any apparent harm, and I put in another 30+ litres of the proper fuel, at a cost of about 45 Euros.  I haven't worked out exactly what the cost is in dollars per gallon, but it was 1.15 Euros per Litre at that station, though the one next to the rental car return was only 1.07.

Holly successfully guided me through the busy streets of Paris to the rental car return station, which was only two blocks from our hotel, the Mercure Terminus Est, directly across the street from the train station.

We checked in to find a small, yet cozy and well-appointed room, and the cost for wireless was actually reasonable, unlike all the other hotels on the trip, and I had no bandwidth cap, so I used it to download a few episodes of the Daily Show to watch when I get a chance.

For dinner, we ate at a fast food place called "Quick" on the corner.  I had a "Supreme Cheese" and Holly had a "Long Chicken" which came with the dreaded mayonaisse on it, despite assurances from the teenager who took our order that it wouuld not.  Quick fries are much better than McDonald's fries, at least the French versions of them.  My burger was pretty tasty, with a strong black pepper flavor to it.  Holly scraped the mayo off her chicken, which she said was tasty as well.

We then returned to our hotel room where Holly crashed for the evening, while I tried to catch up on some blogging and web-reading.

Normandy: Day One

After a few hundred kilometers on the A13, where there isn't much to see, just like our Interstate Highway system, we arrived at Caen, navigated our way through several traffic circles, and continued west to Bayeaux. 

I wanted to locate our hotel first, before we started sightseeing.  Fortunately, there are signs in Bayeaux to help you find your hotel in the city, or you never would.  Bayeaux looks much as it probably has for the last two hundred years.  Narrow cobblestone streets and twisting old roads through the city center make navigating it a bit confusing for a newcomer.  With the aid of the street signs, we eventually found the Best Western Hotel Brunville, and I went inside to ask about check-in time.

There was no clerk in our hotel, but a sign that told me to go around the corner to the Hotel Luxembourg, which is another Best Western property, and that someone there would help me.  I found a clerk who told me that we couldn't check in until 2, and as it was now only 12:40, we decided to go get some lunch and start sightseeing first.

We found a patisserie for a quick bite to eat, then pointed our Clio west in search of Omaha beach.  I didn't have a firm grasp on the route to Omaha beach, but I assumed it would be marked, and with the ocean to guide me as a boundary, we soon found it a few miles west down a winding narrow road.

Omaha beach itself today looks much like any other beach, though it is massive in size.  The tide was out about 70 yards or so when we arrived, and the thought of crossing that much land in the open while under enemy fire terrfied me.  We gathered a few stones as souvenirs, then began climbing the hills toward what remains of the German fortifications.

We paused to examine the concrete bunkers, or what remains of them, and to read the memorial to the Big Red One.  Holly and I then continued farther up the hill to the American Cemetary.

They're in the midst of constructing a new interprative center at the Cemetary, which is on land that has been permanently given to the United States by the people of France.  I noted that this was the site of the only drinking fountain I had seen in France, and I wondered if it had beem imported from the US, as I have not seen another one anywhere.

We stopped briefly in the office to sign the guest register and then entered the cemetary with the rest of the visitors, who were mostly Americans.  There are over 9,000 US soldiers buried there, and it is a somber and beautiful place.  The grounds are immacuately maintained, and found myself wondering what equipment they used to trim the grass so evenly around the headstones.

We walked completely around the cemetary, which overlooks Omaha beach and the Atlantic Ocean beyond it, and contains a small chapel in its center.  At the west end, two statues stand, and at the east end, there is a pool and a large memorial.

Especially sad are the hundreds of graves that hold the remains of unknown soldiers, who were unable to be identified.  Given modern forensic science, I'd think that many of them could be identified now, though it would certainly be a massive job to do so, and after so long, I'm not sure whether it'd be "proper" to do so or not.

A few of the graves had fresh flowers on them, or small American flags.  There is a group of local French citizens who occasionally come to place flowers upon the graves, and there were small wooden crosses placed by someone at many of the markers for the unknown soldiers.

We eventually left the cemetary, found our way back to the Clio near the beach, and bought a coke from the vending machine there to quench our thirst.  We then set off for Pointe Du Hoc, which is about 10 miles further west along the coast.

Pointe Du Hoc has also been given to the United States to use as a memorial to the Rangers who fought and died to take it.  I'd explain more about that battle, but you can read about it at Wikipedia on your own, and I suggest you do so, then return here.

What was really interesting about Pointe Du Hoc is that the craters from the naval bombardment are all plainly visible today, though they are now covered by grass.  There are more German fortifications here, and they're preserved better than the ones by Omaha Beach.  It's easy to see why the German's felt this position was unassailable, as the sheer cliffs are pretty imposing.

After spending an hour or so at Pointe Du Hoc, we got back in the Renault and drove further west along Utah beach, then turned around and found our way back to Bayeaux, where we checked in to our hotel.

Our room in this hotel was very small, and the bed was pretty shoddy.  While we did at least have a double bed, it was so soft that both of us sort of rolled into the middle of the bed, because it sagged so much.

We walked around until we found a brasserie still open, where Holly got some croissants for herself, and I bought some type of baguette that was filled with some type of meat, I think it was ham or bacon, as well as some type of cheese.  It was sort of injected down the middle of the bread, and while I'm not sure what I ate, it was good.

There was a cinema directly across the one-lane street from our hotel room, and we saw that Spiderman 3 was playing at 9:00.  The poster listed the language as being English, and a theatre showing the movie in Paris also said it was English with French subtitles, so we figured we'd go see the movie.

It was 7 Euros each to get in, and then we bought some popcorn and a coke, only to discover that the poster was in error, and the movie had been dubbed into French!  We snuck out pretty quickly, and forfeited our 14 Euros in embarassment.  The french popcorn is rather different than ours.  It's not buttered or salted, but is glazed with sugar, sort of like kettle corn, but different.

Having given up on the movie, we returned to our hotel room to watch CNN International, the only English channel on our TV.

Paris: Day Six

We awoke around 7:30 a.m. and set about showering, getting ready for the day, and packing up our hotel room.  Once everything was packed, I left Holly in charge of checking out of the hotel and getting the bags to the curb, while I set out after our rental car.

I had originally planned to take the Metro, but it involved a transfer to another line, and given the distance involved, probably wasn't much faster than walking.  It was a cool morning, and about 15 minutes later I arrived at the Avis counter to pick up my car.

I wound up with a Renault Clio with a diesel engine, which was a slight upgrade from the Citroen C3 I had originally booked.  The rental agent showed me how to work the lights, and made sure I was capable of driving a manual transmission before setting me loose upon the streets of Paris.

Driving in Paris is rather difficult at first, as they've opted to make their street lights a bit more subtle than we're used to.  Also, like any large old city, there are numerous one-way streets, bus lanes, bicyclists, and pedestrians to complicate things.  Streets often change names after only a few blocks, for no obvious reason.  Staying near a landmark like the Eiffel Tower makes navigation easy, even when you don't know which street to take, so getting to the hotel was mainly an exercise in figuring out the traffic pattern that'd take me there.

I pulled up to the hotel to find Holly waiting by the curb, she threw our bags in the back, and we set off for Normandy.

I had printed directions from Google Maps before leaving the US, but after a few blocks, we didn't need them as the A13 highway was well marked, and I just followed the signs to it, and ignored Google's instructions, and soon we were out of Paris.

Paris: Day Five

Our fifth day in Paris started out slowly, we had some croissants for breakfast, then set off south from our hotel with the ambition of finding the Avis location for our rental car pickup on Saturday.  In the process, we discovered a laundromat that we vowed to take advantage of later, and a McDonald's, where we had lunch, though I couldn't get their wi-fi to work.

The Avis location was on a streed called Rue Bixio, which was rather difficult to find, as it wasn't on our city map, and turned out to be only one block long, but after an hour of wandering around the neighborhood, we found it.

We then noticed that we were right next to Les Invalides, and we used our museum pass to get inside.  We toured the museum of the army, which had thousands of pieces of armor and swords and other melee weapons.  Then we found the stairs that lead to the WWI and WWII exhibits which were even better.  They had an excellent section on the French resistance during WWII. 

After a couple hours in this museum, we visited Napoleon's tomb for about 10 minutes.  There's not really much to see there, it's just a big tomb inside the dome of Les Invalides, but at least the audio guides are free.

We then caught the metro to the museum of asian art, which was very good, but the information on our museum pass regarding the hours was wrong, so we wound up with only 45 minutes to see it all, instead of the 90 minutes we expected.  Holly enjoyed it a great deal, and vowed to visit it again if she ever returned to Paris.

We zipped back to our hotel for a quick rest, then talked to the concierge about the laundromat we saw earlier, and he suggested a closer one that was open later.  So, we hauled our dirty laundry to it in my suitcase, and Holly watched the laundry while doing some quiliting, as I attempted to find somewhere to eat dinner.  I didn't find much (other than McDonald's) in the neighborhood that was still open, as it was now after 8:00 p.m., so after spending about 20 euros to do our laundry, we stopped at the same Italian cafe that we'd eaten at the day before, and ordered a pizza to go.

The pizza was a four cheese (quatre frommage) affair, with a white sauce.  It was very good, after I picked off the large chunks of bleu cheese on my pieces.  It was quite different from anything I've had in the US, probably closer to a cheesebread than any pizza.

We then turned in for the night, after watching the Eiffel Tower sparkle from our hotel room for the last time.

Paris: Day 4, Part Deux

We found a neighborhood restauraunt that served Italian food, and Holly had some lasagna that she said was excellent.  I ordered a ham and mozzarella pannini sandwich, which was pretty good, but the fries that came with it were much better.

We then walked over to the dock near the Eiffel Tower, and presented our 25% off coupons for a Seine river boat ride.  The boat holds hundreds of passengers, but we found seats on the starboard side and the boat got underway just after dark.

There are a lot of options for river boat cruises, and I think we chose the most crowded one, but we enjoyed it anyway.  Paris at night is gorgeous, and it was a calm clear night to see the city.  The tour took about an hour, and we both agreed it was one of the high points of our trip so far.

After we were dropped off back at the Eiffel Tower, Holly bought a crepe and I got an ice cream cone, and we strolled south as we ate them.  Holly had figured out that the Eiffel Tower sparkles at the top of every hour for 10 minutes, so we sat and waited for the 11:00 show, before turning in for the night.