Normandy Invasion

October 11-October 14, 2019

Day 47 Friday, October 11:  We are excited!  We’ve been researching and planning for a trip to Normandy while Edgar is in town and it’s finally here!  His flight arrives around 6 am, so we get up about that time and leave our apartment by 7 and head for Gare du Nord.  We find our way to the car rental desk while Edgar is making his way via RER to this station from the airport.  We are grabbing coffee when Carson sees him across the way.  She’s missed him SO much!  After a happy (but tired) reunion, he pulls out 6 CHIC-FIL-A SANDWICHES!  What?!?!  I must give credit where it’s due…this was Geer’s idea and we told Edgar a month ago.  I totally forgot, so naturally we are clucking with delight.  After a lengthily rental car procedure, Edgar is behind the wheel of a Citroen Picasso and we take to the streets of Paris.  He insists that if you drive like them and honk they will get out of the way.  The kids are excited to catch up with him, and also happy to be sitting in a car with their devices and just chilling.  We make our way to Bayeux, our first stop.  I’ve been telling Edgar and the kids that we will see the Bayeux Tapestry and as we pull in to this sleepy town with just a few retirees headed to the museum, I know Edgar suspects this is typical tourist trap material.  We park and go through a beautiful cathedral.  Geer always says the churches are his favorite park.  Finally we are at the tapestry.  This thing is, if you can picture it, 70 meters long (that’s  230 feet so I’m told), about 4 feet tall and, oh, almost 1,000 years old!  It was all hand-embroidered to recount the story of William the Conqueror’s invasion of England and the Battle of Hastings.  It’s basically like a huge modern-day graphic novel.  We have headsets that tell us the details and I thought it was just amazing.  There is a 20 minute film about it and wouldn’t you know Edgar and Carson use this time to nap:). We then head to the coast and eat fish and chips at a little shop and walk around the rocky shore for a bit before heading up up up a hill to Arromanches.  There is an amazing 360 degree WWII video that is so moving.  Then you walk out onto the cliff and they have metal statues of soldiers in battle and memorials.  It was very moving and I choked up when I read one plaque, “It was either him or me”.  We find the Citroen and head for the next stop, the American Cemetery.  Again, I’ve seen pictures, but to be there and see the vast number of white marble crosses, to hear taps played and see the American flag flying over this place where so many lost their lives was a surreal experience.  Back in the car, we criss cross Normandy and head for Mont Saint-Michel…another 2 hours away.  Have I mentioned that Edgar is amazing!  He flew for, I don’t know, almost a whole day of travel time, then drove us 3 hours, toured around, and now 2 more!  We stop at a grocery and get some local cheese and wine and apple juice for the kids (apples, cider, calvados, cheese, yogurt, caramel…these are all specialties of this region).  We get to our really dated hotel just over the bridge from Mont Saint-Michel and pile into one hotel room and devour 4 cold Chic-fil-a sandwiches.  Edgar made it through 1/2 glass of wine and he was out.  The kids and I giggle our way through a French cooking show on tv and finally get to sleep…happy to be together.  

Day 48 Saturday, October 12:  We sleep in.  Hey, it’s the weekend!  When we finally get going, I realize the free breakfast (code word free) ends momentarily and the free English tour of the Abbey begins shortly after that.  I, in motherly overdrive, dash to the restaurant while kids and hubs get dressed.  I make their plates laden with croissant, baguette, toast, jam, butter, yogurt, cheese…whatever is left, and get it on the table.  They show up and I run back to pack up the room while they finish.  We load the car and hop on the tram to the Mont.  With only minutes to spare, we race up the bazillion steps to the Abbey at 80M high, and can I just say, we arrive at the precise tour start time.  Lucky today.  Our tour guide was amazing.  Without the tour, we would have loved walking through the Abbey, but she made it come alive, telling us how the Abbey was birthed from a dream of a nearby bishop, the historical uses for religion, as a symbol of French resistance and even a prison since it’s inception in the 11th century, the uses for each room, the importance of the Abbey to the religious leaders, the aristocracy and the commoners.  This is such a beautiful and unique place….at high tide the mountain village is completely surrounded by water.  Oh, and this is a world heritage site AND the inspiration for some of the Lord of the Rings movie scenes or some other nonsense.  Look it up-it’s breathtaking!  Even now, you can find Monks and Nuns and services daily.  There are sites other than the Abbey (including a famed omelet known to be the best in the world, but at 28 euro, we just ate the free breakfast instead), a few eateries, souvenir shops, yayaya.  But we hit the road when we finished, leaving the breathtaking Abbey in our dust.  Next stop is Saint-Mere-Eglise and the little town were paratroopers inadvertently landed on D-Day.  At this point, my crew is getting museum-nausea.  We hop out to see the church and they still have a fake parachuter hanging from the spires.  Kinda creepy, but a stark reminder none-the-less of what happened.  We squeal past Utah Beach, hop in and out of a few bunkers and find ourselves on tiny roads that don’t even show on the map.  Thank you National Car Rental for installing a GPS or else we wouldn’t still be married.  We pop in for some of the best caramels EVER in a little road-side shop, then we head to our final D-Day location, Pointe du Hoc.  With Utah to the left and Omaha to the right, this was a very important location to be overtaken.  It was just unbelievable to see the sheer cliffs that had to be scaled, the bunkers, the huge crater leftover from artillery, I think.  We all watched The Longest Day earlier in the week (it was wonderful) and so we had images in our mind of what it was like, but to smell it and touch it and walk on it was something else.  We wrap up our D-Day adventures and drive another hour or so to Caen, a city that was pretty much wiped out during WWII so it’s new and more modern.  We unpack, take a walk and find a little Brasserie (the kids love to say “Brazere” everytime we see a Brasserie) for dinner in one of the few streets untouched by WWII.

Day 49 Sunday, October 13:  If I said they had museum-nausea earlier, they are full-on ready to be done with this trip now.  I pictured us strolling around Caen, a nice brunch, maybe another cathedral or museum, stopping in Giverny to spend a few hours with Monet and the impressionists then meandering home.  What I got was throw your bags in the car, eat a croissant, a Giverny drive-by… you can almost see it in the rear-view mirror, squeal into Paris going over 120 (yes I know it’s km, but it still seems fast) and whip around the Arc de Triomphe like real Parisians as 12 other avenues of traffic merge to meet us, ditch the Citroen at the train station and ride it home!  It was a lot to fit into 48 hours. After we clean up a bit, Dad does let us show him around our neighborhood.  We take him to our regular laundromat, walk through the secret gardens at the Archives, grab a few sweet treats at a bakery and take up seats at the cafe on the corner.  We finish piled into bed and listen to our current Harry Potter book on audible.  It’s the little things.

Day 50 Monday, October 14:  It’s Dad’s last day in Paris.  We were invited over to the McLaughlins for breakfast, so we really have something to look forward to.  We take the metro to their neighborhood and are treated with fresh crepes, nutella, whipped cream, fruit, eggs, coffee, oj and a great visit!  The kids were excited to see our friends and I enjoyed introducing Edgar to our favorite family in France.  At home, we all do a few hours of ‘work’ (my work is usually researching what we are going to eat, um, uh, I mean do).  It’s a nice day so we then take to the streets and walk along the Quai to the Tulleries and watch the kids have a blast on the playgrounds.  We take a circular, LONG route back home, at which point everyone was getting a little agitated.  Thankfully, we came to the Mexican restaurant recommended by Andy and MA near our neighborhood.  This place was on the smaller side.  Truly, only 12 people could sit inside at any time.  The kids bellied up to the bar and we stood and enjoyed frozen margaritas with spicy salt rim, guacamole and really really good carnitas street tacos.  It was simple food, but so good and such a welcomed change to what we’ve been eating.  In McKee fashion, we finish the night with our last family Glace at Grom and a little more Potter.  Paris has been good to us so far!