Utah Beach and the Airborn

Some years back I parachuted into France and heroically secured the town of St. Mere Eglise. It was very intense.

This of course was in the xbox game Call of Duty. Ever since then, I've wanted to go see St. Mere Eglise in person. I know that's lame, but it is what it is.

So here I am in front of the église:

If you look above my shoulder and to the right of the clock, you can see the fabric of a parachute on a church spire. Hanging from that parachute against the wall is a fake John Steele. This is sort of a permanent re-enactment of what actually happened to the real John Steele of the 505th.

Inside the church you can see this stain glass window with paratroopers on it.

This glider was pretty interesting. Lots of guys had white-knuckle rides in these in the early hours of June 6. It's a simple craft, fabric skin over a tubular skeleton.

Just looking at these rations made me really hungry. The mouthwatering packaging makes them irresistible.

Here I am standing on Utah Beach. Beyond the sand, the terrain is quite different than Omaha.

Ella enjoyed the sand for a few minutes. The Utah Beach museum is behind her.

If there is one thing they do not have a shortage of here, it is museums. They have far more museums than bathrooms, though the bathrooms are cheaper to get into than the museums. Come to think of it, I might start a business and put a D-Day museum inside a bathroom.

Looking down on Arromanches, where the remains of a Mulberry harbor can be seen.

If you've seen the Chevy Chase movie, National Lampoon's Vacation, you may remember the amount of time they spent at the Grand Canyon in Arizona. It was the same thing at Arromanches for us: look, bob your head twice and then head back to the car.

We had to drive back to Caen to return our car and catch the 3 pm train to Paris. But first we had to fill the tank with fuel, and there were no gas stations to be found.

After driving in circles for an hour, we eventually found a station. By that time our train was already half way to Paris. Pas de probleme! We found out we could use the same tickets on the next train at 5! Which is what we are doing as I write this.

Ella inspects the work that Mama is doing. She is not satisfied!

So that ends our side trip to Normandy. It is a very beautiful region, and the D-Day sites were worth the trip.

"Not Another Building!"

Ella was not amused.

It turns out that France is filled with churches, museums and stairs.

When we left this morning, my pitch was that we were going to see a cool building on a hill by the sea. Where we were really heading was Mont St. Michel, which is the most famous thing in all of France.

We set off for the hour drive this morning and headed southwest. At one point I got to go 130 kph, which seemed excessive given the shakiness of the steering wheel in our Opel Mariva.

This is our Opel. Diesel. Stick shift and reasonably peppy.

Mont St. Michel rises in the distance.

Ella is still in the dark.

Eventually we get into the place. Which is built on a rock in a bay. That's when you see that it's really pretty much a Disney World attraction, minus the cast members. The entire thing was designed to collect money from tourists.

Parking: 4 euros
Toilet admission: 40 cents
Admission to the Abby: 8 euros (beanie was free)

The streets are filled with tourists and junk shops and restaurants. And today, it had one very upset 5-year old, who was sick of stairs, buildings, and boring stuff in general.

"I am not walking up more stairs. I'm going home right now."

Never mind the fact that parts of the place were constructed in the 900's, or that the vista from the top is beautiful.

The spire is relatively recent, but the whole thing is a jumble of rooms and buildings.

"It's just an empty room," said Ella.

Instead of wringing Ella's neck, JJ points out the interesting architectural details of the vaulted ceilings.

But eventually, Ella perked up. I think it's because we started going down stairs instead of up them.

So that was that. This place in on the cover of a lot of books about France. It's kind of cool, but the overtly tourist-trap nature of it really takes away from the experience. I can't blame them for cashing in, but it could be done with free bathrooms.

So Ella made it through another building without actually dying of boredom. Then we headed back to the pigeon tower to rest our tired legs.

The B&B

We are staying at this bed and breakfast. Well, this building is where we have breakfast.

This tower is the pigeonnier. It's where our beds are. It used to be where they kept pigeons. We have this all to ourselves. There are very steep stairs that lead to the sleeping levels.

It makes up for it's quaintness by having that satellite dish on the side.

These purple weeds are kind of pretty.

These flowers are covered in thorns for some reason.

Blah, blah, blah. Cute, quaint, beautiful. Whatever.

It's the breakfast!

D-Day Tour from the Mama's perspective

The whole D-Day Tour was incredibly important to Eric, so I took complete responsibility for the 5-year-old in our family. This was so Eric could have his experience with minimal interruption.

I'm not going to go into major detail, but it's a really unique experience trying to explain war to a young child. For simplicity, I had to break everything down into black hats and white hats -- bad guys and good guys.

Yet that isn't how I WANT to explain it. Most people were doing what they were told to do. Many were doing what they thought was best for their country and/or their family. Some didn't know what they were getting into and others just didn't have a choice.

At that point in history, war was needed stop atrocities, promote freedom and advance humanity. Yet it's nearly impossible to reconcile the loss of life. We've tried to explain to Ella many times that not all soldiers die, but she still doesn't understand.

And how could she? War is not black-and-white and neither is human nature ... and she's just a 5-year-old who knows that she doesn't want to be a soldier when she grows up.

Omaha Beach

One of the reasons I wanted to come to France was to visit Normandy. More specifically, I wanted to visit the D-Day beaches and the American Cemetery. Today, I did that.

This is at Omaha beach, looking west. We're in front of what was called the Les Moulins draw.

I did not intentionally dress like an Army guy. I was trying to protect myself from the sun.

It's a long, wide beach.

This is one of the landing craft.

On a tree at the cemetery.

France gifted the land the cemetery is on to the US in perpetuity.

The cemetery is on the bluff above Omaha Beach.

A German bunker on Pointe du Hoc, just west of Omaha Beach.

Ella climbs out of a German fortification on Pointe du Hoc.

Taxi, Train, Tapestry

Today we packed up a suitcase, headed to the train station and choo-choo'd up to Caen, in Normandy. We were originally planning to catch the metro to the train station, but I made the executive decision to grab a taxi. I figured it would be simpler than hefting our 248 lbs suitcase through the turnstiles and up and down the stairs. 

The taxi raced forward 15 feet before getting stuck in traffic. We watched helplessly as pedestrians strolled past us and out of site. It ended well, though. We got where we were going in plenty of time.

The train left the station a little late, but was not a big deal. It smelled a little musty until some guy sat with us, then it smelled like an ashtray. When we got of the train in Caen, I think he lit up five cigarettes at once to make up for lost time.

Ella tried on my hat. It is one of the many things that marks me as an American.

As you can see, we really bonded during our two hour ride through the countryside. 

As usual, we were starving, so when the food cart guy came by, we jumped him and took all his sandwiches. Ella ate a bun in one bite and then slammed her first Orangina.

Ella took one sip and was hooked. I'm afraid I'll find her pawning my Macbook to fund her knew habit.

We don't allow Ella to drink soda, but this was a special occasion, i.e. famine.

We got to Caen and hotfooted it across the street to the Hertz office. It was a short walk from there to pick up our car, which is some kind of compact diesel wagon that looks like a miniature min-van, which makes it a mini-minivan. It's peppy and has a stick shift! Fun. I'll post a picture if I remember to snap one.

Driving here has been pretty straight forward, but I have to pay attention (unlike at home, where I usually drive blind-folded while juggling). I have not found the other drivers here to be as -- um, exuberant as those in Italy.

Once we found our way out of Caen, we drove up to Bayeaux to see the 900 year old Bayeaux Tapestry, which is an ancient comic strip. It's about two feet high and maybe a couple hundred feet long. When you go in to the temperature controlled display room, they hand you a little audio guide machine that you hold to your ear. Then in English, a guy tells you the story as you walk along and follow the scenes based on the numbers above it. 

My favorite part was where the horse got axed in the head.

I love that I found this pic on the the web. It's small, but you can see the horse on the right, and the axe in his noggin. Notice all the carnage beneath the horse. This is good family entertainment.

The tapestry depicts William the Conquerer . . . er, conquering England in 1066.

I'll spare the boring details of our drive to the bed and breakfast we're staying in. I'll post pictures of the place at some point. But I can't end a post without mentioning a run to the grocery store. We found an Aldi and stocked up on some snacks and soda.

Nut Ella

Behold the Nutella Crêpe!

I'd heard about the wonders of dessert crêpes, but I had not experienced one until last night. My crêpe had Nutella in it, which is a spread kind of like peanut butter, but which tastes exactly not like peanut butter.

JJ had a chocolate/banana crêpe, which I snuck a bite of. I generally like my bananas necked, so it wasn't for me, but JJ seemed to like the combo.

The Nutella crêpe was pretty good, but I haven't acquired the taste for it, so I'ma have to give it another try.

Now, the other Nut Ella is ma fille, who only wears her hood when it's not raining.

Today we went for a Paris Walk directly outta the book given to us for Christmas by Nicole and Chad. This was "Walk 6," and it covered parts of the 3rd and 4th quarters of Paris directly across the river from where we are living.

JJ and Nut Ella are dwarfed by St. Gervais, a 17th century church. There were some beautiful stained glass windows in there. Out of respect for the rules, I didn't take any pictures of the inside.

Here is a photo of the inside of St. Gervais I found on Wikipedia. It looked exactly like this.

Art is everywhere here. At any moment you can run across a random exhibition -- like this courtyard filled with wooden humanoids.

These sculptures stand in the rain in this courtyard. The "gallerist" said she rents different places around Paris and arranges these exhibits. The pieces were for sale.

As we continued on our walk, we saw this old brick wall, which is dull and uninteresting until you know what you're looking at. It's part of the Paris city wall from the 12th century.

The wall partly encloses a basketball court which dates to the early 2000s.

Our walk took us past the Hôtel de Sens, which used to be the home of an Archbishop back in the day (end of 15th Century) but now is a library.

Note the tiny black dot just right of the round tower and above the window. That is a canon ball that has been stuck in the wall since it was shot up there by a . . . uh, canon.

I would like to note that Nut Ella was beyond "extraordinarily bored" for the duration of the walk. After every thing we did, she would ask, "are we going home now?" To which we would reply, "no." To which she would respond, "aaawwwwuuuuh!"

The original plan had called for stop at a playground, but due to rain that didn't make sense. She had to settle for going on a fun-ride.

Ella is a blur in this tea-cup style capsule.

Tomorrow we head for Normandy. Not sure what the internet situation will be, so you may not see any posts for the next few days.

Risk, risk, risk!

For those of you who know anything about my life coaching career, Fearless Living means taking risks. A person stays stagnant in the status quo. Living, learning and growing means doing things that don't feel comfortable -- things you wouldn't normally do. Needless to say, I'm doing new things here everyday. I'm risking and feeling vibrant!

Today's risk was going to church. While doing trip research, I came across the American Church in Paris. I was worried about Ella having interaction with English-speaking children, so I figured that taking her to Sunday School would give her some time with her peers. And who knows, maybe we'd be able to hookup with some family for a playdate.

Ella and I headed out on the RER train about an hour before their 1:30 p.m. contemporary service. I made a wrong turn coming out of the station, but a quick map check got us in the right direction. We arrived at the HUGE church and found a door to go inside. Fortunately there was a reception desk close by, where we were told that there was no longer a Sunday School class at the afternoon service. Ella was incredibly disappointed.

There were already some risks there, but the bigger risk came now. We went into the worship service and sat down. A few moments later, a woman came in with a child. I jumped on that opportunity! I walked right up to her, introduced myself, explained the Sunday School misunderstanding and asked if we could tag along with her. This is something I would NEVER normally do ... it felt like I was being too pushy or imposing myself on someone else. BUT I did it anyway.

Turns out that the girl was a very shy 7-year-old named Flora, so she wasn't really into interacting with Ella. It was their first time at the church, too. Her family is originally from Scotland, but have lived in Paris for a couple of years. And even though Flora didn't really say much, Ella sat next to her, talked to her a couple of times and seemed satisfied. She even left church saying, "That was great!"

So, woo-hoo for me for taking another risk, and woo-hoo for Ella being bold in trying to make friends. I could learn a thing or two from that kid ...