Category: 2018 European Adventure

April 6 & 7

The last two days we spent touring some of the WWI battlefields, monuments and cemeteries in the Somme Valley. The battle of Sommes started on July 1, 1916 and lasted until November of that year. But, fighting continued in the area for another 3 years, with very little gains made by either side.

Because I don’t know if when we’ll get another good connection, I’ll just upload pictures tonight and add commentary later. Besides it’s after 11pm and I’m getting tired.

We started yesterday (Friday) in Aimens.

Peter took a video during an organ recital at the church. It was beautiful.

Organ Recital

After Amiens we went to Peronne where we visited the Museum of the Great War. We spent the night there last night.

Today (Saturday 4/7) we did the trail of remembrance from Peronne to Albert. Our first stop was the cemetery at Rancourt where over 8,000 French military are buried.

There were many random monuments and cemeteries scattered all over the area. Here are just a few.

In the town of Poziers, we saw a bunker nicknamed Gibraltar by the Brits after it was captured from the Germans. There’s not too much of it left but in one of the museums we saw a picture of it just after the British took it over.

The Australian Monument

The next few pictures are from the battlefield where the Canadians from Newfoundland fought. It’s the only “intact” battlefield we’ve seen. They lost over 90% of their men in this battle. The paths you see are what’s left of the actual trenches.

Our final museum of the day (we did two today and one yesterday) was very cool. We went underground and the museum told the story of what life in the trenches was like. This was in Albert.

So, that was our last two days. I learned more about WWI then I learned in school. A guide is not necessary as I have Peter, who knows absolutely everything there is to know about the Great War, WWII and just about any other war you can imagine. While I’ve been uploading pictures, he’s been looking at our itinerary for the next couple of days. Tomorrow we’re headed to Ypers in Belgium where there was a big WWI battle, then we’ll switch focus back to WWII when we visit Dunkirk. I haven’t been there yet either so it will be nice to see it. I’m not sure what he’s got after that or where we’ll spend the night. That’s why we’ve been staying in hotels for the last two nights. We didn’t know until literally hours before we arrived (tonight it was only an hour) where we were going to go, and a hotel is easier than Airbnb for last minute reservations. So, your guess is as good as mine where we’ll be tomorrow night. Hopefully wherever it is they’ll have another super-fast internet connection. This was great!

April 7

We’re staying in a hotel in Lille and FINALLY have a great internet connection. This is the first one since we’ve been to France. It may take most of the evening, but I plan to get caught up with pictures. We’ll start back in Brittany.

March 31

Here are some pictures from St. Malo. We visited here after we went to Mont St. Michel

April 1

Next, we moved on to Normandie (or Normandy in English). We stayed about 15 minutes outside of Bayeaux and our first stop was to the Bayeaux Museum to see the famous tapestry. We couldn’t take pictures of the tapestry itself, but we have some from the rest of the museum.

Here are a few pictures from the reproduction. While it was one very long tapestry, each section was marked with a number that corresponded to a piece of the story of the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

Here is a scale model of the story.

The Bayeaux Cathedral

Then we stopped by the Bayeaux Military Cemetery. The first part is dedicated to every journalist who was ever killed in the line of duty beginning with WWII. Their names are on these pillars.

April 2

This is the day we visited Utah and Omaha Beaches. First set of pictures are from Utah Beach.

From the Utah Museum

For all of you Band of Brothers fans (Lynn has seen it at least 10 times)

On to St. Mere Eglise; had lunch, visited the Church and went to the 82nd Airborne Museum.

Point Du Hoc. The Army Special Rangers had to scale these cliffs to eliminate the German guns pointed at Utah and Omaha Beaches.

The Omaha Beach Museum was closed by the time we got there. There are a couple of memorials on the beach.

The Bayeaux Normandy Museum

April 3

We went to the American Military Cemetery and Caen.

American Military Cemetery

Caen

April 4

On our way to Rouen we stopped at Pegasus Bridge, went back to Caen and spent the night in Rouen.

Pegasus Bridge was where the British Glider Squadron landed to secure the bridge in preparation for the amphibious landings.

It’s a very nice museum.

Back in Caen

The Women’s Abbey

Off to Rouen

April 5

We’re still in Rouen and visited the Joan of Arc Museum.

Okay….that’s got you caught up until yesterday. I’ll put Sommes Valley in a new post. Hope you enjoy the pictures. Fingers are crossed we’ll have good connections from now on.

April 5

We started the day by walking to Tourist Information by the Cathedral to see what else we could do today. Turns out, we’d pretty much seen everything of importance yesterday with only one exception. Since attractions tend to close from 12:00ish until around 2-3pm, we went straight to the Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) museum. Rouen is where she was put on trial and executed on May 30, 1431, so they have several different monuments and a museum dedicated to her.

The museum was very different in that it was a series of movies rather than just stuff to look at and read. The museum is in the building in which the trial occurred, so that was cool, and we moved from room to room hearing different parts of her story. It was very excellent. Given that we’ve been in more museums than we can count in the last 5 weeks, this was one we’ll remember.

Then we had a bite of lunch before getting on the petite train that took us around the city.  They have these in many of the French cities, but it was the first one we took. We had the entire 3-car train to ourselves, and the driver even stopped for Peter to pick up a sandwich along the way (he didn’t like his lunch).

After that went shopping to look for a scarf for Peter and yes, it’s still that cold. There were a couple of department stores but since we didn’t want to pay 70 euro (about $85) for a scarf we kept looking. We finally saw what looked like a small Target store and we got one there. It was still more we spent on Lynn’s in Portugal but at least it will help him keep warm.

After stopping for a glass of wine we are now settled in for the evening. It’s only 5pm but Lynn’s doing a small load of wash (keeping fingers crossed everything dries on the rack before morning) and since we’ve got a busy few days coming up, we’re looking forward to a restful evening.

Well, that was our day. Hope yours is going well and we’ll talk soon.

April 4

Well, good news/bad news. The good news is that the sun is out (after raining all day) and should be out again tomorrow. Yeah!! The bad news is that in spite of staying in a larger city where we hoped to have hi speed internet, we still can’t upload pictures….grr. We managed to get 4 uploaded the other day and was hoping for more today but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. So, here are a few from Chateau Chambord where we visited on our first day in France a week ago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry, that’s all we’ve got but we’ll keep trying at different times of the day. We’ll get them posted as soon as we can.

Okay, so what have we been up to the last few days? Yesterday (Tuesday) we visited the Bayeaux (pronounced Bye-you; with accent on 2nd syllable) Normandy Invasion Museum. It was very well done, and we especially liked that it covered not just D-Day, but the entire Normandy campaign that lasted through the summer. There were a lot of great artifacts and tons of stuff for Peter to read; he was in heaven.

Then we went back to the American Military Cemetery. They have a very nice visitor center but, unfortunately, due to the amount of rain we’ve had, we couldn’t walk off the sidewalks in the cemetery. Peter wanted to see Theodore Roosevelt Jr’s grave, and Lynn wanted to see the Niland brothers’ (inspiration for Saving Private Ryan). Even though we had the locations, we couldn’t walk the rows to see them. We thought about taking the guided tour, but it started raining again so we decided just to move on.

By this time, it was about 3pm so we headed into Caen to check out the Abbey of Saint-Étienne, also known as Abbaye aux Hommes (or Men’s Abbey). It was founded by William the Conqueror in 1063 and is one of the most important Romanesque buildings in France. It was quite impressive. William’s grave is just behind the main altar, almost in a separate chapel. Here are some google pictures. Abbey of Saint-Etienne

It was only about 30 minutes back home where we had dinner and tried to figure out what we’re doing for the next few days. We decided to head east to Rouen where we’ll spend the next two nights, then move on further east and switch our focus to WWI.

Today (Wednesday) we were up and out of the house by 9am, heading back to Caen to see the Women’s Abbey and the Caen Chateau. The Chateau de Caen was also built by William in 1060 and his son added the Church. It was in pretty good shape until the Allied bombing as a precursor to the D-Day landing. It’s sad to think that something that stood for a thousand years was destroyed in just a couple of days. We were able to climb up to the rampart and walk around the grounds a little. Of course, the sun disappeared, and the black clouds rolled in so we high-tailed it back to the car only getting a little wet. Chateau de Caen

Then on our way out of town we stopped at the Abbey of Sainte-Trinité also known as the Abbaye aux Dames (Ladies’ Abbey). This is the female version of the Men’s Abbey. It was smaller than William’s Abbey but in the same Romanesque style of architecture. In the sacristy, instead of having statures of male saints there were hangings of female saints. Those looked fairly new (there was one of Mother Theresa and she’s only been a saint since 2015; we were in Rome when she was canonized) but it was nice to see the women honored. William’s wife, Mathilda, is buried in this church. Only the first 6 or so pictures in this link are actually of the Abbey.  Ladies’ Abbey

Since it was still raining, we decided to head to Rouen where we will spend the next couple of nights. Our host, Elise, was at work until 5pm so we found a place to park and spent a couple of hours roaming around the city center. The sun came out for about 5 minutes but by the time we got to the Cathedral, it was raining pretty hard again. The Rouen Cathedral of Notre Dame is even older than the Abbeys we saw in Caen. It was first built in late 4th century, was enlarged in 650 and visited by Charlemagne in the mid-8th century. For those of you who might be fans of the History Channel TV show Vikings, the real Rollo (in the TV show he’s Ragnar’s brother but it’s not certain that Ragnar was a real person) was baptized and buried in the original church. Very cool. BTW. Rollo was the 1st Duke of Normandy and William the Conqueror is a direct descendant.  Anyway, the current building was built in the early 11th century with construction continuing for several more centuries. One of the side chapels is dedicated to Joan of Arc. It was a relatively simple, but beautiful, cathedral. Rouen Cathedral

After getting settled into our flat, we headed back out for a walk, but it started to drizzle again, and it was cold, so we came home. Tomorrow we plan to first head to Tourist Info to see what else there is to see here. There is no hop on/hop off bus, but they have a Petite Train which is a small train that does a tourist circuit around the city. They have them in most French towns of any size so we might do that as well. We don’t think there’s too much to see so hopefully the sun will be out and it will warm up a bit so we can sit at one of the sidewalk cafes and watch the world go by. We’ll let you know how it goes. Bonne nuit everyone.

April 3

Good morning everyone. Didn’t post last night so thought we’d put something up this morning before we leave for our day of sightseeing.

Yesterday (Monday) we spent mostly on the Normandy landing beaches of Utah and Omaha. There’s not much to actually see on the beaches but Utah has a very nice museum commemorating the landing. We actually spent almost 2 1/2 hours looking at all the exhibits.

Then we headed out to Saint Mere Eglise which is one of the towns that figured prominently in the movie “The Longest Day”. We saw the church where Red Button’s character (John Steele is real name) got his parachute hung up on the steeple of the church. There’s a replica of that on the church. When we can upload pictures again (hopefully tomorrow) you’ll see a parachute hanging from one of the church spires and a manikin hanging from the side of the church. Kind of hokey but cool. After lunch we visited the museum dedicated to the 82nd Airborne, which is one of the two Airborne divisions (the other is the 101st Screaming Eagles; Easy Company from Band of Brothers was in the 101st) that parachuted into Normandy on June 6th. The 82nd primarily landed in St. Mere Eglise and is responsible for its liberation. The museum was very well done, and it was another couple of hours to see all of those exhibits.

From St. Mere Eglise we headed to Point du Hoc where the Army Rangers lost more than half their men scaling 90-foot cliffs to take out the big guns. When they finally made it to the top the found the guns had been relocated. When they finally found them, the guns were aimed right at Utah and Omaha beach. Luckily the Rangers disabled them before they could be fired. The ground around the area is filled with giant holes from the intense naval bombardment that occurred for days before the invasion. They looked like giant gopher holes. There are also some bunkers and pillboxes. It looks like they left everything exactly as it was during the invasion, so it was easy to get a picture in our minds as to what it looked like on June 6th.

Our final stop of the day was Omaha beach. Again, not much to see on the beach except a few memorials but it was still a sobering site. Knowing the carnage that occurred at what is now a very peaceful, beautiful beach was very thought provoking. By this time, it was after 6pm and the museum was closed but we don’t think we’ll go back to it. Lynn was there in 06 with her mom and remembers it as being small and not as interesting as the museum at Utah.

We wanted to go to the American Military Cemetery, but it closed at 5pm so that’s on our list for today.

So, it’s Tuesday morning and today we’re going to the museum here in Bayeaux, then we’re off to the cemetery. Depending on what time it is when we’re done there, we may head to Caen to check out William the Conqueror’s castle. We’ll keep you posted.

Love to all.

April 1

Happy Easter (and April Fool’s Day) to everyone. Well….for the 3rd straight farmhouse we have a very slow internet connection, so we’re sorry to say, no pictures for the next couple of days. But from here we’re moving on to a larger city so hopefully we’ll have a fiber optic connection and can upload tons of pictures.

But let’s get you caught up. On Saturday (yesterday) we moved from the Loire Valley to Breton (Brittany). Our first stop was the amazing Mont St. Michel (Mountain of St. Michael). It is the #1 tourist attraction in France outside the Paris area. Most of you have probably seen a picture as it’s very famous. Here is a link to a great picture. Mont St. Michel

Lynn was here in 2006 with her mom. But since mom couldn’t walk up the hill or climb the stairs, they didn’t make it out of the village. Yesterday was miserably cold (upper 30s) with a strong wind and, of course, a drizzly rain. But we got there early and beat the crowds to the Abbey so there was no line at the ticket counter. We took the free English-speaking tour and are so glad we did. There’s just no way to get all of the information without a guide.

The Abbey was built in the early 8th century and remained an Abbey until the French Revolution in the late 18th century; a thousand years later. The church is literally on the top of the mountain. The challenge was that the top wasn’t large enough to hold the church as it was designed. So instead of making the church smaller, they made the mountain bigger. Well…not exactly. What they did was build 4 small churches (called crypts) on each side of the mountain. Then they used the tops of the crypts for the base of the main church. We actually got to go into two of the crypts. It was very cool.

The tour guide was great and told lots of interesting stories about the Abbey. One of the jobs of the Benedictine monks was to write elaborate manuscripts. Even working all day, the only produced 3 manuscripts per year. We wanted to see them at the Scriptorial d’Avranches Museum on our drive today, but the museum is only open from 2-6pm Tuesday through Saturday. If we have a chance, we’ll head back down there before we leave the area.

The tour last about 90 minutes and then it was time to hike back down off the mountain. We stopped for lunch at a small restaurant in the village before taking the shuttle bus back to the parking lot.

Then we headed to St. Malo for a quick peek. It was about an hour northwest of Mont St. Michel, and it was a busy day in the city in spite of the nasty weather. It took about 20 minutes to get a parking spot, but we only walked around for about an hour. We couldn’t find the entrance to the Cathedral and Lynn wasn’t in the mood for yet another chateau turned museum. Since it was still cold and damp, we decided just to find our flat and settle in for the evening.

We stayed in a very nice over the garage apartment and Helene was a great host. We had roasted chicken and potatoes for dinner before several rousing games of Rummikub.

Unfortunately, Easter morning was a bit of a challenge as Lynn woke up with terrible back spasms. She couldn’t walk without assistance and took about 30 minutes just to get dressed. When Helene came up to check us out of the flat, she saw that Lynn was in a great deal of distress. Turns out she’s a nurse so she put her medical hat on and got a heat pack and some meds. Lynn has muscle relaxants, but they make here super sleepy, so Helene gave her something…. we think the French version of Tylenol. The heat pack helped a lot so by the time we were ready to leave she could actually shuffle herself out the door and down the stairs.

It took over 2 hours to get to Bayeaux because we had to stop several times so Lynn could get out and walk. Sitting locks up her hip joint, which is what causes the muscle spasms, so it was definitely worth the extra time.

When we finally got to Bayeaux, we went to the museum that holds the famous Bayeaux Tapestry. The tapestry was made in the late 11th century and is about 230 feet long and 20 feet high. It tells the story of the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The story in a nutshell…. King Edward of England was dying and asked his brother-in-law (Harold) to go to Normandy to tell William that he was Edward’s chosen successor. In spite of being kidnapped by one of William’s rivals, he finally succeeded in passing along the message. Before he left Normandy to head back to England, he pledged his allegiance to William. Once Harold got back to England, he found the king on his death bed. Once Edward died, Harold went back on his promise to William and declared himself King. Well, Williams was understandably pissed so he gathered his army, invaded England, and whooped Harold’s butt. So, William the Conqueror becomes king of England, France and just about everything else in Europe.

The tapestry tells this story with embroidery. It is an amazing piece of art and well worth the trip. Here are some pictures. No photos were allowed so this is the best we’ll be able to do. Bayeaux Tapestry

After lunch we headed to our new flat which is a beautiful stone house about 9km from Bayeaux. Once again, it’s in the middle of nowhere so while we have an internet connection, it’s very slow. Even though the bedrooms are upstairs, we think we’re going to enjoy staying here. The place is huge, so we have a little room to spread out.

Lynn’s back loosened up with all the walking she did at the museum. The spasms have stopped but it’s still very sore so it’s going to be an early night with a muscle relaxant. Hopefully it will be back to normal level of stiffness by the morning.

Tomorrow will be an all about D-Day sightseeing day. We’ll start in Utah Beach and head to the east, stopping at several museums and beaches along the way. For those of you who know Peter well, you know he’s crazy about the WWI/WWII history so this will be a great day for him. We’ll let you know how it goes. Night everyone and have a great holiday.

March 30

Since the weather for today was rainy, we postponed our trip to Mont St. Michel until tomorrow. It’s still supposed to be cloudy and rainy but there’s a possibility that weather will clear later in the day. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

So, we needed a plan B. After breakfast, Peter searched the internet for someplace to go and found a couple of small chateaux nearby. Since they were less than 30 minutes away, we decided to check them out. We made it to the first town of Vitre in only about 15 minutes but ran into our first challenge quickly thereafter. The road on which we needed to turn was blocked off, so we made a few turns to try and get the GPS to reroute us. After driving around, a subdivision for 10 minutes we ended right back at the closed road. But then we noticed that people were driving on it so we though, what the heck, if the locals can do it so can we. So, Peter drove around the do not enter sign and made the left turn. Well….turns out that the town center (where the chateau is located) was closed for we’re not sure what. All the access roads to this main road were closed and there were barricades on all of the curbs. People were lined up with their umbrellas along the street. That’s when we realized that there might be some kind of parade going on…oops. We just kept driving to get out of town but got stuck behind a tow truck that was clearing the streets of parked cars. That’s when we realized it was Good Friday so maybe it was some type of passion play. Anyway, we scratched that chateau off the list and headed to the second, Chateau des Rochers which was only another 15 minutes away. We got there without problem to find no cars in the lot and the door closed. The sign said it was supposed to be open, but we think Good Friday got in our way. So, we scratched that Chateau off the list as well.

Then we decided to head to the larger city of Rennes, which was only about 30 minutes away. That’s when we ran into our third challenge of the day…. we were scary low on gas. When we left the house, we had about 100km worth of gas but in all the driving we had already done that morning we didn’t see a single gas station. We thought that when we hit the main road on our way to Rennes, we’d see something…. nope. So, we turned the GPS back on and told her to find us a gas station. In the meantime, the warning light goes on and since the owner’s manual is in French, we have no idea how many liters we have left. Now we’re starting to panic just a little, especially when the GPS says it’s still 15 minutes before we hit a gas station. Seriously, how is it possible not to have any gas stations for 100 km??? We finally got there just as the warning bell is beeping like crazy. You could almost hear the gas tank guzzling the fuel as we filled it up.

Our to-do list in Rennes consisted of finding Lynn a new pair of jeans (hers had started to tear after the soaking at Chambord), get a SIM card for Peter’s phone, find a place to print/scan a few documents and, if possible, do laundry. We got super lucky and stumbled into a mall where Lynn found a pair of jeans (not her favorite style and too long but no holes so they were keepers). The salesperson at the store pointed us in the direction of a phone store where we got a SIM card that is good for all of Europe. We’re very excited about that as some of you may remember the nightmare we had on our first European adventure when we had to get a new SIM card in every country. It has 5GB of data for 14 days which should be plenty, but we needed it for 4 weeks. So, we bought another activation which we’ll use when this one runs out. It only cost 50 euro for the 4 weeks and since we spent $100 in the first 3 weeks on data, we think this will work in our favor.

The phone guy gave us the name of a place where we could print/scan Lynn’s documents, so we turned on the GPS and headed into the center of Rennes and another errand was checked off the list. The only thing we didn’t do is laundry, but we decided that we had done enough boring stuff for the day. So, we headed to the town of Dinan, about 45 minutes away. We’re so glad we did because it was a very cute old town. We stopped at the main church but Good Friday service was going on, so we just peeked in and left. Most of the restaurants were closed (it was 4pm and most don’t open after lunch until 7pm) but we finally found one and enjoyed a delicious late lunch/early dinner of crepes. That is a specialty in Breton, and we’ve been looking forward to it since we got to France.

Afterward we walked to the Castle. It was built in the early 14th century and is in remarkable good condition. There are no furnishings or decorations, but it was nice to tour it all the same. Here are some pictures from google. Castle of Dinan

Then it was a little over an hour back to our stone farmhouse where we took a wrong turn and met all the farm’s cows. There were quite a few so now we’ve met the girls who gave up their milk for us.

As you can see, it wasn’t the most exciting day but we had a few laughs along the way and the sun came out in the afternoon, so life is good.

Tomorrow night we’re staying in a place near St. Malo and are hoping for a better internet connection so we can upload photos. Thanks for your patience. We’ll chat again soon.