Giverny and Paris

After staying in the cutest French farmhouse last night (that had at least 2 neighboring kitties) and having a fantastic dinner at Hotel/Restaurant Baudy, we made for the gardens and house of Claude Monet.   I can see why he was inspired by the lily pond and the gardens...the place was pretty magical.  Not to mention it really is in the middle of nowhere.

That was the end of our Luxembourg,  Belgium and France driving adventure.  All in all we packed a lot in during the two weeks.  So it was nice to be able to drop off the dirty rental car and check into a nice comfortable,  modern hotel for our last two nights in Paris.

And since we had all already 'done' the city, we were under no pressure to visit any particular sights. It was great to be able to stroll and just take in the atmosphere, the Eiffel Tower, the gardens, the arc d' Triumph and to be able to stop for a cider or glass of wine or lunch at any given time:)  And as a bonus we even had sunshine! A fantastic way to end our time in Europe.   Next up our flight home in business class on a huge Air France A380.  Should be an interesting experience!

On the road again...to Caen

Friday we hit the road - heading east with the first stop in Caen...which was basically destroyed in June of 1944 by American bombers going after the surrounding bridges.  Ironically they missed those targets and leveled the city.  The city isn't anything to write home about (at least what we saw of it), but they have a stellar memorial...Caen Memorial which is a huge amount of information about WWII and the events leading up to it.  Again not exactly remembering all that we learned in our history classes...that this segment of time (1939-1945) cost the lives of 60 million people and a staggering amount of these (35million) were civilians.  Talk about not being able to wrap your head around something.  Just for comparison purposes,  Russia led with 21 million...and the U.S. came in at 305k...with all the other major players (China, Germany, Japan,  Poland, France, Italy, the U.K.) coming somewhere in between.  60 million.  Unbelievable.  It's sinking in why so much of the messaging in regards to anything/everything WWII and that time is 'we will not forget'.  We can't afford to forget.

St Malo and Mont St Michel

After touring all the memorials and cemeteries, it was a nice break to just walk the ramparts,  the jetty, and do some shopping for a day.  And we made a new food discovery...Gallettes.  They're crepes -but not sweet- and they can basically be filled with what you want.   Usually with an egg and cheese to start off with as a base.  Pretty yummy for a lunch time snack.

Thursday we got an early start to visit Mont St Michel - the second most visited site in France after Paris.  It's a pretty impressive site with the abbey and tiny town built on a big clump of rocks that in its heyday was surrounded by water at high tide.  Because they had built a causeway to allow easier access to visitors, it shifted what happened to the sand and the silt.  So now they're in the process of building a new bridge so the area and water can return to its natural state.  Got to love progress.
Place was neat, but happy too to leave the crowds behind.   Plus, I think I've decided that Mont St Michel is better and more spectacular from afar.

After MSM, we decided to visit another German Military Cemetery that was just a few kilometers away.  This one was entirely different from the two previous ones that we had visited.  It still had a staggering amount of names - 12k- but instead of headstones,  these graves were done in a vault style...in a circle with 2 levels.  This was the first time too that we found the name Wachholz in the mix. Theodor...born in 1901, passed September, 1945.
Am thinking I may need to explore this a little further.

Felt it was important to end the afternoon on a high note,  so decided to revisit Cancale - and make sure that the oysters from the previous visit weren't a fluke...nope - still the best they've tasted!  Good thing we didn't waste the trip;)

Bayeux to St Malo

So we're running a tad behind in our blogging exercises...oops.  Take that as a sign that we're having a great time and too tired at the end of the day to write about it!

Tuesday was a travel day...driving from Bayeux (after visiting the Cathedral in the morning) west and then around the coast via Cancale - where Graham and Owen could slurp down a dozen freshly shucked oysters (huites in Francaise) and then onto St. Malo, in Brittany.  Old Town St Malo is only about a mile wide and long, but is all enclosed by a sea wall.  Wouldn't necessarily be my cup of tea as the place doesn't get much sun unless you're on the ramparts or the beach, but it will work for a couple of days;)

Omaha Beach

Utah and Omaha beaches are vastly different. Whereas the area behind Utah is low-lying (which was flooded by the occupying Germans to slow the Allied invasion), Omaha has steep bluffs. Most of the D-Day stories we hear are about the difficulties the US forces had overcoming the strong German defenses, advancing across the beach and over the bluffs. It was sobering to be standing on that very spot and attempt to comprehend the effort and the individual sacrifices made on that beach in 1944. However, none of that prepared us for the emotion of our visit to the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer.

It is very hard to put into words what we felt during our time at the memorial and amongst the stark white marble headstones that seemed to have no end. The sheer scale, combined with the beautiful setting, can make it very easy to lose perspective. The magnitude of the sacrifice only made sense to me when I envisioned each of the more than 9,300 soldiers standing in front of his headstone. The weight of that image will be with me forever.

There are few places in this world where we 'need' to visit during our lifetimes. This is one.