2nd Part - Brittany, France

After our grand D-day tour, we headed to Brittany to savor the region and see Mont St. Michel.

We lost our Rick Steves book while in the American cemetary. And all our hotel information for Brittany was in that book. RATS. Luckily, Brian had written the small town it was in on our itinerary, Plouer-sur-Rance. So we drove to that town based on my superior navigational skills and just hoped there would be a billion signs for the place when we got there. And THERE WAS! So we made it just fine.

The first day in Brittany, we drove along the coast between St. Malo and Mont St. Michel. The views were spectacular. We got out of the car and played on this beach with an island home in the backdrop.Along the way, we stopped and bought some Calvados, a French apple brandy, from a guy selling some from outside of his van. Sweet. He also sold some of the best apple juice and raspberry apple juice I've ever tasted.

Finally, we made it to Mont St. Michel and were greeted first by crowds of people and then HUGE rainstorms. Luckily, we got some family pictures before that began:

After hiking uphill towards the abbey and taking the stairs, Michael decided he was tired and ready for his nap:

Don't know how he got so tired when he didn't actually DO any of those stairs! :o) We signed up for an English tour of the abbey and were so glad we did. Despite all taking turns taking care of Michael, we all learned a little bit about medieval times and society. Some random interesting points:

• None of the stones used to build the abbey were from the actual rock island it sits on. The land/material from the location is considered sacred so it was not used.
• Quicksand and the fast rising tide are 2 of the dangers of the abbey.
• Pilgrims have been making the religious trek to this location since the 900's.
• It is suspected that the abbey was built structurally to represent the heirarchy of their society and religious life.

All in all, a very informative and beautiful stop. For dinner, we ate at this funny little Restaurant du Terroir, which was not only open, but practically empty, good, and reasonably priced. And to boot, they had 2 goats. Which once Brian and Michael discovered that the goats would eat anything...well....brings new meaning to "dining entertainment."

Brian spent the rest of the meal asking us, "Are you going to eat that vanilla bean? Let's see if the goat will eat it."

And Michael running around asking each of us, "Do you want to go feed the goats?"

I would not have been surprised if those goats had the runs after what Brian and Michael gave them to eat!

Well, after taking a bit too long in Normandy, we decided to extend our stay by one night in Brittany. After asking our hotel owner and stressing him out a bit and changing our train tickets, we found ourselves on vacation for another night.

The next day, we set off for Dinan, a town in Brittany. It was a normal European town, small, quaint, with cute architecture. We enjoyed the rampart views, despite the rain:

We finished with Dinan by early afternoon and decided to visit Dinard, a cute beach boardwalk town. But on the way, the entire car fell asleep and a storm cloud rolled in and spoiled all the fun. So we just relaxed for the remainder of our last day.

On our travel day back to Paris, we headed to St. Malo and wandered along their ramparts and enjoyed their beach views with sailboats.


Brian got our train tickets switched to get back to Paris an hour earlier! So there we were. At the end of yet another successful trip exploring France.

La Belle France. I could go on and on about how absolutely delightful the countryside is in France. Paris...you can take Paris from me and I would be absolutely fine. But in my heart, I'll always carry around my memories and sights from Collioure, Sarlat, the Cathar castles, and driving along yet another small windy country road in France.

It is THOSE moments that have made my stay in France something to write home about.

1st Part - Normandy, France

In mid July, we took a vacation to explore the Normandy region of France and, of course, visit the D-Day beaches. Prepare yourself for a very mini and hardly expert history lesson. I welcome any corrections on my info because it is VERY possible that I am mistaken at times.

We 1st visited a small charming port town called Honfleur:
There, we began our vacation in slow fashion by having a delicious seafood lunch. Michael got this amazing fish in a wine cream sauce and mashed potatoes and loved it! After this, we wandered around the small town, Michael rode the carousel a million times, and we hiked up to the top of the town for views of Le Havre, another French port.

After exhausting Honfleur, we checked into Madame Sebire's bonafide farm, which was about a 10 minute drive from Arromanches. She had new calfs in the barn and real cows in the pasture. Michael L-O-V-E-D that. At the end of everyday in Normandy, he would ask us, "Go home to farm?"

The next day, we drove to Arromanches to see their memorial and the D-Day 360 movie. Here is the view of the town from the top. See the mulberries in the ocean in the distant? These were used as a man-made dock to unload supplies etc. for the Allies.
After this, we drove to Longues-sur-Mer, which is where 4 German artillery bunkers still stand today. You can see 3 of them built kind of into the hills here:
Despite being bombarded by Allied naval fire, they are still standing. Incredible. Here is a closeup of one of the canons:
After this, we drove to the American Cemetary, where we were in awe of how meticulously kept it was. It was beautiful, serene, peaceful, and such a great dedication to our nation's soldiers who died for something really worth fighting for, freedom:
If I am not mistaken, the walkway between these reflecting pools and the memorial behind the photographer is the exact point where American soldiers first broke through enemy lines at Omaha and penetrated the top of the beach. If not here, it is somewhere here along the cemetary that it is.

Michael at the cemetary:
From the cemetary, there was a tremendous view of Omaha Beach. There was a hiking trail that took you down there. Instead, we followed Rick Steve's recommendations and drove to Vierville where we parked...and walked 2 minutes to Omaha. I think I prefer that way!
Michael and Brian rolled up their jeans and went playing on the beach with another French family. It was a quite necessary part of the day as Michael had to be well behaved everywhere we went. So he needed that time to blow off some pent up energy!
Because one day full of history wasn't enough, we continued our D-day touring the next day at the Caen Memorial Museum. They had amazing on-site childcare with a certified childminder and lots of new, clean toys. It was like we had stepped back home to America instead of being in France. And it was FREE.

So us 4 adults had the chance to actually read the things in the amazing Caen Memorial. I won't go into details about everything we learned. But I will say that by halfway through the exhibit, I gave up and had too much of information overload! It was very well done though and we learned a lot. We also saw their very good D-day video which included German footage as well as American.

Continuing on our D-day tour, we also visited the Ranger museum in Grandcamp Maissy, which was actually very cool. It was very small...no where NEAR as big as the one in Caen or high tech. But it outlined the creation of an elite unit of soldiers called the Army Rangers whose first mission was to capture Pointe du Hoc. The trip was made really special because we were with a real live Army Ranger. Here he is at Pointe du Hoc: I learned a lot in that little museum. One special fact being that Aggie Lt. Col. James Earl Rudder was the Commanding Officer of the 2nd and 5th battalions of the Army Rangers at Pointe du Hoc. I'd seen statues of him at Texas A&M and there is an entire tower named after him...and it is just now that I know why. I hate to admit it, but there it is!

At Pointe du Hoc, Michael and Brian played in the craters that are still there today from Allied cannons:
I couldn't possibly post all the pictures we took. It was an amazing part of our vacation and we learned a lot. Stephen Ambrose's book on the D-day invasion made it even more meaningful as I learned about all the planning and execution it took to stage such a history-changing event.