Amy

Visiting Mont St. Michel:<BR>We left Cancale at 8 a.m. for the 45-minute trip to Mont. St. Michele. Had read about it and wanted to see it, but was totally unprepared how it dominates the landscape for miles.<BR><BR>Could see why one would want to get there early. Within one hour of our arrival, it was packed.<BR><BR>We climbed up to the abbey admissions booth on the service road, not on the steps, thus reducing over 300 steps to 90. The rented audioguide was very helpful.<BR><BR>We exited by 11:15 (the descent was just full of bodies--hard to get out) and headed toward the Calvados region of Normandy. Again, the Mont dominated the landscape for miles as we drove away.<BR><BR> After a lunch, we headed on bikes to the next accommodation with a stop at a lovely abbey, the Abbey of Saint-Martin of Mondaye, just outside of Audrieu, founded in 1215. It's still an active monastic community, and the church is simply beautiful. In one of the side chapels, you can see the damage from WWII shellings, and some of the paintings still have bullet holes. We didn't take a tour of the monastery, but I would like to have done so. They offered tours in English.<BR><BR>Next on this same posting: Chateau d'Audrieu and French Resistance<BR> <BR>

amy

Weird hotel rooms and French Resistance:<BR>The accommodation that evening was at the Ch&acirc;teau d'Audrieu. If you're staying there and have a suite, you can rest assured that you have a fantastic room. If you've reserved a regular "chambre", be prepared for doors. Lots of doors. <BR><BR>I just assumed we had drawn the really odd room in the hotel (it was next to a sitting area and underneath the stairs so that voices and footsteps reverberated like a drum until 1 a.m.). And what the heck--we usually stay at 2 or 3* hotels anyway. But it did seem odd to have a room like this at a much-vaunted "luxury hotel." Then other members of the group reported that they had never seen (or heard) anything like their rooms, either. <BR><BR>The retrofitting into this lovely chateau with exquisite grounds was, to put it mildly, not a success. To meet the guidelines of "luxury" hotel, I'm supposing, the rooms were chopped up into little spaces--separate dressing closet (with doors) between room door and WC (another door) which was next to the sink/shower/tub area (another door) adjacent to the sleeping area (another door) with an armoire (more doors). Heaven help you if nature called in the middle of a dark night. It was even harder for another member of the group--her bathroom was down a short flight of stairs. With a door, of course.<BR><BR>Depending on where you were located, the noise varied. Ours was voices and footsteps; others had the sound of moving chairs (and could not figure out why).<BR><BR>The service was just as quirky as the rooms. The front desk was quite helpful. We loved the bartender in the little bar (and it was cozy and homey). The wait staff in the restaurant, however, was almost abusive, so much so that it became a joke. The food was good, but none of us could figure out how it deserved a Michelin 1 Star. Just flat-out odd.<BR><BR>None of the mattered, though, when put into the context of what we experienced our first night there. We had dinner with Andre Heintz, a member of the French Resistance during WWII. He was a teenager then and is a quite dapper and fluent octogenarian (SP) now. You can imagine how blessed I felt that my children were able to meet and to ask questions of a true "everyday" hero. <BR><BR>He told wonderful anecdotes. We heard how "liberating" bottles of Calvados was deadly for Allied soldiers--the alcohol content was so high that many died. He himself had tested the "kill a rabbit with Calvados" theory. Supposedly, one teaspoon was enough. His rabbit needed two teaspoons--it spat out the first.<BR><BR>Because he was so fluent in so many languages, his major area of expertise during the occupation was communications and creation of documents. He described how most American pilots' papers had to list them as "Deaf and Dumb" because they didn't speak French.<BR><BR>Andre now spends his days lecturing and helping American and British servicemen find the French families that gave them refuge. A wonderful man and a wonderful evening.<BR><BR>We would later see the tin can that harbored his secret transmitter in the Peace Museum in Caen. <BR><BR>The next day we had a lovely bike through the Normandy countryside), visited a goat cheese farm run by three sweet spinster sisters, and stopped for an English tour of the Chateau de Fontaine Henry, a 13-th century castle that's still inhabited. The tour guide there was a young man with very limited English, but he was so earnest that one felt compelled as a member of his tour to help him finish all the sentences. And he was very grateful for any effort. The chateau isn't a big deal compared to the Loire Valley things, but we still enjoyed it.<BR><BR>The next day we would start what most of us came to do: visit the D-Day museums and areas.<BR><BR>To be continued on this same post<BR><BR>

amy

Bayeux, Arromanches and Port-en-Bessin:<BR>We biked on to Bayeaux the next morning. Parking our bikes near the Tapisserie de Bayeux Musee, we first headed over to the Musee Memorial de la Bataille de Normandie. This was an entirely different kind of museum than what we would encounter in Caen. It was low tech, but it was fascinating. It isn't an "overview" type of museum, but rather an extensive collection of all types of D-Day memorabilia organized by countrymen: British, American, Canadian, German. Letters home, newspaper accounts, poems,uniforms, equipment, you name it, it's there. We also got to see a short film on the D-Day invasion. <BR><BR>After a quick lunch at a pizza/salad shop and a walk-through of the Bayeux Cathedral, we entered the Tapisserie de Bayeux Musee. I enjoyed it all--the pre-tapestry viewing scene by scene display, the film about the history, and the actual tapestry itself. The kids were not nearly as impressed. I think they expected to see intricate needlework rather than the "cartoon" embroidery that served its original purpose: a banner to hang in the cathedral retelling William's heroics.<BR><BR>We biked out of Bayeux to Arromanches to visit the Musee du Debarquement. One member of our group hit the museum at the right time: crowd size was down, English tour of all the dioramas, English film, etc. We walked in at the wrong time. There were so many people inside this rather small museum that it was hard to see the displays. Still, we were able to grasp (and be awed by)the technological achievement that helped solidify this campaign.<BR><BR>We then climbed the hill to the 360 movie theatre. The reactions to this film were missed in my family. I liked it: the maker contrasted what the towns and beaches looked like on D-Day and during the campaign with what they look like now. Its impact on me would increase as we visited so many of those areas in the next few days.<BR><BR>Biked on to our new hotel in Port-en-Bessin, stopping along the cliffs to check out the Batterie de Longues, one of the famed German batteries lining the coast. <BR><BR>We had a steep descent to our next hotel, La Cheneviere, located just outside Port-en-Bessin. This was a very nice facility. Spacious comfortable rooms and very kind staff. Most of us felt the meals here were the best of the trip.<BR><BR>To be continued on the same post: Omaha Beach, the American Cemetery, Pointe du Hoc, and the Ranger Museum.

amy

Omaha Beach, the American Cemetery, Pointe du Hoc, and the Ranger Museum:<BR><BR>We were warned it would be an emotional day, and it certainly was.<BR><BR>Before the morning bike, our tour guide handed us a folded sheet of paper. "Read it on the beach," he said, "And carry tissues."<BR><BR>After parking our bikes in the Omaha beach parking lot, we wandered down to the beach. It looked deceptively normal. Kids were playing on it. And then we sat down to read.<BR><BR>It was Ernie Pyle's description of D-Day plus 1. It described the obstacles encountered as these Americans landed, and it was easy to visualize how everything had played out on the beaches. We climbed in silence to the various monuments overlooking the beach, monuments existing side-by-side with the remaining German fortifications.<BR><BR>Leaving the beaches and biking the hill toward St-Laurent-sur-Mer, we arrived at the American Cemetery. As I had described in a previous post, I still remember clearly my visit there as a teenager. I felt so blessed to be able to take my kids there too as witnesses to the courage of their countrymen.<BR><BR>It was as before--as soon as one sees those endless crosses and Stars of David, the literal cost of freedom becomes overwhelming. This visit I noticed other things. I read the letter from the mayor of the town talking about the tie between Lafayette in the founding of our country and the return of Americans to save him. All the inscriptions were more powerful this time around; the chapel was especially moving.<BR><BR>The kids and I also visited the wall behind the memorial to read the names of the 1,557 soldiers whose remains were never identified.<BR><BR>Finally, and rather reluctantly, we left the cemetery to ride out to Pointe du Hoc. Hard to believe the Rangers scaled it--and also hard to believe the guns so feared by the Allies weren't there.<BR><BR>We descended from there into Grandcamp to visit the Ranger museum. Again, this wasn't a high tech museum, but it was very effective. It simply told the story of what was accomplished that day by very skilled and very brave men. There was a short film, too.<BR><BR>Continued on same post: Caen and the Peace Museum.<BR><BR>

Amy

The Peace Museum in Caen surpassed every expectation. Beautifully, artistically, and emotionally presented, it told of all the events leading to WWII. Small films along the presentation pathway highlight certain events: Holocaust, Battle of Britain, etc. <BR><BR>I cannot even begin to describe the variation of presentation of all the materials. It may simply be the best designed museum we've ever visited.<BR><BR>And then the films upstairs top the exhibits below. A D-Day film shows on a split screen the preparations of the Allies to invade and the building of fortifications by the Germans against it. The next film in the same theatre shows on a map how the Normandy campaign proceded throughout the next months. And finally, in a theatre across the hall, another film asks us,"Can we truly have peace?" We all, kids and adults alike, could have spent four hours in the museum. We were very sorry to see our time end with the museum and with the members of our tour. They were very kind and interesting people, and our tour guides had been excellent.<BR><BR>On a later post, I'll give just a quick overview of our trip to Honfleur, Giverny, and Auvers-sur-Oise on the way back to our flight from CDG.

Linda

Amy, what tour guide did you use?

amy

It's ironic you should ask that, Linda, because I am just now starting to look for a Normandy Beaches bus tour company for my parents. <BR><BR>We happily used Backroads (biking/hiking type) for this trip with very good results. This was our fourth tour with them, although it was the first time we did a non-specified "Family" version with them.<BR><BR>I had been interested in this specific tour for years. Backroads offers special Family weeks, but in prior years, the Brittany/Normandy Family dates didn't match with our schedule(last year, one family tour was scheduled for September!), so this year I just asked if my kids could go on the the regular tour. Next year they will be offering a Family trip again.<BR><BR>The nice thing about doing this type of trip is that while I get off the hook for being, as one of my friends puts it so well, "Julie, Cruise Director," for the family, we still get to spend most of the time together, by ourselves, doing pretty much what we want to do each day. Have bike, can travel. <BR><BR>We only have to be with the group at dinners/breakfasts and on any shuttles. It's companionable, not confining.<BR><BR>The reason Backroads was willing to allow us to do the "Adult" tour is that a)my youngest (age 11) has easily done the biking on other Backroads tours and b)she can sit through very late three-hour dinners, a situation that obviously can be a hardship on young kids. <BR><BR>Now, however, my parents want to go, and I'm going to have to quiz this site for help. There's no way they could handle even a rental car, so I'm looking for a bus tour that doesn't try to do it all in one day. Am hoping there's a three-day thing centered around Caen or Bayeux. If you know of anything, help!

topping

topping report part three

kavey

Thanks Amy<BR