Day 2 - Beaches, cemeteries, tired tootsies

Day 2 France 2012

We slept about 12 hours catching up on lost sleep and had breakfast at our hotel.  We forget how wonderful French breakfasts are with fresh, crusty baguettes, cheese, butter, and fabulous jams and honey.  Leon loves the strong French coffee with milk, and I have my favorite Lipton Yellow Label tea.  After stuffing ourselves, we packed our car and headed out.  We drove around Honfleur again looking for a good souvenir shop and found nothing except a place that had “I Love New York” mugs out front.  In fact, most of the stores were closed today.  We later found out that the weekend was a big religious holiday (The Ascension) and since everyone worked over the weekend, they closed shop today.

I programmed Helen for Mont St. Michel, and then we headed out for the D-Day (Jour-J in French) beaches.  Helen was not happy with us for taking an alternate route and complained about it with dozens of “recalculating” comments most of the day.  We drove by Juno and Gold Beaches which were where the British and Canadian troops landed.  The beaches along this area do not have the bluffs and cliffs that are found farther west, and have been greatly overbuilt with resort hotels and homes.  There are so many Brits here that we saw a big sign on the road that said, “FRANCE…Keep Right!”  There are British flags flying alongside French flags.  We were not sure if that was because these were the beaches where the British soldiers landed on if there were just so many Brits living here.  In the Memorial areas along the beaches, there are flags from all the Allies flying.

We drove on westward to Omaha and Utah Beaches where the American soldiers landed.  We stopped by the American cemetery at Omaha Beach and walked around.  I had wanted to go there for a long time, and it was a very moving experience.  It is right on top of the beach cliffs where the American soldiers landed.  There is a really nice memorial area and then acres of white crosses.  In one of the photos  you can see the ocean behind the trees.  Most of the crosses have names on them, some have Stars of David on top instead of crosses, and there are a few Unknown Soldier graves.

As we drove through the French countryside (more fields of yellow rape seed) and along the beach (la plage) areas, I was reminded of just how beautiful France is, even in misty British style weather.  We drove past many very tall, narrow houses.  Leon read that they were taxed by the depth of the houses, so they were tall and thin and wide.  The houses in Deauville and Trouville are half-timbered like we think of houses in the Alsace region and even England.  Leon said he thought that the style is actually Norman and was taken to England by the conquerors.  Most of the houses along the coast were shuttered…obviously holiday homes that were not open for the season yet.  New houses under construction are made of concrete blocks, stuccoed, with tile roofs.  No wood frame buildings here!  They build to last for centuries!

I had brought rechargeable batteries for the camera and had dutifully charged them before we left, but I think that they were too old to hold a charge and when I put them in they did not work, so we stopped at a MonoPrix in Trouville to buy new ones.  I decided to just get picnic supplies for lunch, and we ate in the car since it was only about 50 degrees, windy, and damp outside. French strawberries look and taste nothing at all like American strawberries.  These are sweet, juicy, and delicious!

Helen is really good at roundabouts, but she loves tiny, narrow streets.  We were going through one village, and she put us on a tiny street so narrow that we were in danger of losing a side mirror, so I folded mine in.  Some of the roads in the countryside were just little narrow lanes through farmland…lots of cows and horses and cultivated fields.  There has been so much rain this year that the farmers have had trouble getting into their fields.  Normandy is apple country, and the preferred drink is calvados (apple brandy) and hard cider.  Apple orchards are in full bloom now and are so pretty.

We were driving through one little town and saw cars backed up on the highway and realized that the highway crosses a little estuary and the bridge across it is a drawbridge.  We watched as a boat went through and the bridge lowered, and the traffic flowed  again.

It has been several years since we were at Mont St. Michel, and we had read that they are changing the Causeway that leads to it, so we decided to stop by to see the changes.  Oh, my gosh…big mistake!  There is now a parking lot about 3 miles from Mont St. Michel…nobody except residents can get any closer.   It is an expensive lot to park in…more about that later.  You walk about halfway to the island and catch a shuttle bus that takes you about a mile and lets you out with still a half mile walk to get there.  We went in the visitor’s center and asked if there was not a closer place to park, and they said there was not, so we walked to the bus stop (about 1.5 miles) and when we realized that the bus did not take us all the way to the island, we just got out, took some photos from there, and crossed to the other side and took a shuttle back to the pick-up spot and then walked 1.5 miles back to the parking lot.  Good thing I am not too handicapped!  We used to be able to drive right up to the city walls.

 When we drove into the parking lot, there was an attendant standing by the exit gate, but it was late when we left, and the bar was across the exit.  We put our ticket in, and it said we owed 8.50 Euros.  There was no place to put in cash, but a picture showed a credit card going in the slot.  We put our credit card in, but, of course, it wouldn’t take an American credit card since ours have magnetic strips, and European cards have microchips in them.  We couldn’t figure out how to get out of the lot.  We drove around and around and realized that was the only way to get out…we thought about driving through the flower beds, but they were so wet we thought we would get stuck…(Jason and Cara know that story!).  We stopped one guy to ask him, but he only spoke French.  We decided to piggy-back on a car going through, so we got close to a car and when that person paid and drove through, we went through right behind them.  The bar came down and hit our windshield and bounced back up, and we just kept on going.  So far, no policeman has caught us!

Our hotel for the next 3 nights is a wonderful place made from a manor house and barn that are 300 years old.  They have gutted the inside and made it into rooms.  We have a great view of the Rance River and the inlet from the sea and all the surrounding farmland.  It is on a narrow country road but the signs were good to get here from the main road, so once we got close we just followed the signs.  Helen really likes a street address, and we did not have one for the Manor, so we just used her to get us close.  We stopped at a market on our walk from Mont St. Michel to the car and picked up food for dinner, so we picnicked in our room with a little vino and enjoyed the view.  The sun does not set here until close to 10:30 pm.

Tomorrow we will explore some of Brittany.