Day One of our Trip to Normandy and Brittany

We took a long weekend at the end of March to go on a driving trip of Normandy and Brittany. It was almost canceled because Howard had the stomach flu and was horribly ill the few days before. But the day we were to leave, we packed up the car and drove off with high hopes and excitement. Two hours into the drive I came down with "Howard's Stomach Flu" and made multiple mad dashes out of the side of the car into the French countryside for the remainder of the drive. Thankfully after a good 24 hours, we were both well and ready to go!

Our first stop was Rouen, a 2,000 year old city, whose claim to fame is that Claude Monet lived there as did Joan of Arc. Where Monet painted the cathedral, Joan was burned at the stake in the main place.


Rouen's other claim to fame is pottery. I almost bought this one that I saw in the shop window!

Next, we drove to Bayeux, only six miles from the D-Day beaches where we spent the night. I went straight to bed to recover from the flu while Howard toured around the town. Bayeau was the first city to be liberated after the landing. Incredibly, the town was spared the bombs of World War II. It is a cute town with an wonderful cathedral. Here's a picture of one of the water wheels we saw while walking around town.

The cathedral.

Probably one of the most amazing things in Bayeux is the tapestry museum. It is a 70 yard long, almost 1000 year old, hand embroidered, wool and linen cloth "document" that tells the story of William the Conqueror's rise from duke of Normandy to king of England and shows his victory over Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Here's a shot from their website. There was a fantastic audio guide that explained each scene. How does material like that remain intact after 1000 years?

Day Two- Normandy- A childhood goal realized (Howard speaks)

I have always wanted to be able to visit the D-Day invasion area sites in Normandy since I was a kid old enough to know history. This is due to me living in the Philippines as a kid only 20 years after WWII and seeing the war sites there, as well as playing "army" in intact Japanese bunkers in the neighborhood. No kidding.

D-Day always seemed so huge on film and in the pictures. This is the small town of Arromanches. Imagine the largest armada in history landing outside your window and creating the largest artificial harbor and dock in six days while a battle surrounded you. This was the British landing site of Gold Beach. There are remnants of the jetty and loading dock still in place. The scale is impressive given that there was no way to test anything due to the scale of the operation. It had to work.

This is the site of Longues-sur-mer. It is an intact German big gun site with four bunkers like this one. It has a sweeping vista of the Channel and was an important target.

This is the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach, a sacred site like Arlington National Cemetery, and the resting place for 9387 brave Americans. WWII for us as we grew up was portrayed in black and white in news films, but when you walk above Omaha Beach and into the cemetery, you realize how much red there really was on the landscape. It is a strangely beautiful and peaceful resting place 64 years later, and very moving.

This is a site known as Pointe du Hoc, the most heavily fortified position on the Normandy coast. It was an important target because the German guns here (similar to Longues-sur-mer) could hit Utah Beach and Omaha Beach with devastating blasts. The photo doesn't portray the devastation. The holes that you see are bomb craters, and that is what the 40 acres looks like. 225 US Army Rangers had to scale the cliffs to take the guns, and two thirds didn't survive.

This is a "peace statue" recently donated by a Korean artist to the local town near Pointe du Hoc.
This is a memorial at Omaha Beach. It is a symbolic rising of Freedom, Liberty, and Justice from the beach where many died for these principles. It is somber and when you look up and down the beach you see the scale of how large the invasion really was.

This is the German memorial cemetery where 20,000 German soldiers rest. It is also somber and when you see the dates of June 7, 1944 on some of the tombstones and it brings back the immediacy of the time instantly. There are many graves of Unknown Soldiers. All the dead were mostly in their twenties. The cemetery is cared for by a German War Memorial organization that cares for 100 sites around the world, not just German. Their premise was stated by Albert Schwitzer: "The best memorial to peace is a cemetery of fallen soldiers".

Day Three- Mont St. Michel

Mont St. Michel, among the top four pilgrimage sites in Christendom through the ages, floats like a mirage on the horizon. It sits in the middle of a vast mudflat, connected to dry land by a two-mile causeway. Today, 3.5 million visitors- far more tourists than pilgrims- flood the single street of the tiny island each year.



Upon arrival, visitors must read the signs carefully in the parking lots. They outline when the tides are high, which means that they cover the parking lot...where your car is parked. It is a bit problematic and frightening. From our room we could see our car and I must say that we did check in on it a few times. There are many stories of cars getting swamped by the tides. If you squint, you can see our car below.

The one street on the island is made up of half-timbered buildings, cute signs, touristy stores, over-priced restaurants, and over-priced hotels. From 10am-4pm the island is flooded with bus loads of tourists but at 4pm sharp, they mostly leave. At that point, the island was all ours and I must say it was a very special experience to watch the sun set over the mud flats. The island is lit up at night and quite beautiful and we were free to quietly stroll around the island in peace and quiet.

You can hike all around the ramparts of the island and from those points, have beautiful views of the mud flats. Apparently when the tide does come in or out, it moves at the pace of a galloping horse. So you are warned not to hike too far out into the mud flats and to know for sure when the tide is coming in.

Here's a shot from our terrace off of our room.

This picture is from the abbey, perched on the top of the island. We took a tour in the morning and it was really magnificent. Apparently Mont. St. Michel has been an important pilgrimage center since A.D. 708, when the bishop of Avranches heard the voice of Archangel Michael saying, "Build here and build high" and "if you build it, they will come".

Today's abbey is built on the ruins of the previous versions. There is a church, cloisters, a refectory, a guest hall, and the list goes on. The tour takes you through many floors, tunnels, hallways and the like. In the end you can't help but marvel about what wonderful architects and masons these medieval craftsmen were.



And here is Michael the Archangel himself, sending us off at the end of the tour.

Here's another lesser island on our drive to Brittany after a wonderful stay at Mont St. Michel.

Day Four- Brittany

The last day of our trip we stayed in a small town in Brittany called Dinan. We loved the town for many reasons but wow, the people were fantastically friendly. It was a beautiful, cobblestoned, half-timbered town with a river snaking through it. The town escaped the bombs of World War II so many of the oldest building are still intact. In the old part of town, the streets are named for the primary commerce that took place on that street. The signs all had the name of the street and a picture denoting the type of commerce.

Because the houses were made from the soft stone from nearby, timbers were inserted through each wall to make them strong. All the streets in the old town are narrow and charming like this one. The buildings date from the time when property taxes were based on the square footage of the ground floor. So to provide shelter from both the taxes and the rain, buildings started with small ground floors, then expanded outward with their upper floors.

Here's the view from one of our windows in our Bed and Breakfast.

The old city is surrounded by medieval ramparts, many of which could be walked along. Here is a picture taken from the top of one of the ramparts of the River Rance and the famous old bridge (Vieux Pont) that dates to the 15th century.

A photo contest

During the Winter this year we took a few day trips to various areas of Belgium. This picture is of the canal in Damme. I submitted the picture to a photo contest in a local English magazine and I won! So the photo was published...but there was no money involved.

Damme is a cute little town but the claim to fame is the canal because it is a great bike riding location. It is beautful, quaint and FLAT!