VRBO - Saint Malo, Brit

 

Most of the laundry has dried and has slowly climbed back into our suitcases.  Deb is anxious for breakfast but I want to have Kouign Amann (pronounced kwina man) fresh from the oven. It is a local laminated pasty made with 40% flour, 30% butter and 30% sugar.  As the French say, Oh LaLa!

 Saint Malo has the highest tides in Europe.  They can be as much as 30’ but today was only 12’.  There are islands that you can walk to at low tide but not at high tide.  There is even a self filling swimming pool!  

There is only so much you can do here.  You can walk the ramparts(we did eight miles according to Deb’s watch) or you can eat and drink at sidewalk cafes (we ate eight times according to my belt).  Both of these activities provide an opportunity for extensive people watching, which is probably what makes this place so popular.  I wonder if those people were watching us…nah. 

VRBO - Saint Malo, Brittany

 We were up early to catch the train.  By the way, Bayeux is pronounced as Bay-ø (sounds more like the ir in bird).

We are staying in the Intra Muros (walled city) which has few cars and lots of cobblestones (not a great place for a roller bag). One of the specialties here are Galettes which are very thin crêpes folded around virtually anything.  Our VRBO hostess speaks very little English, so we had our first real language challenge.  I think we did okay!  Deb was able to understand almost everything she said, or she was just nodding and pretending (I’m not asking, she’s not telling). 

Saint Malo is the Corsaires city.  Corsaires are pirates who plunder for the king, so it’s okay!  These pirates plunder British ships so that makes it even better.  Today is the annual festival of the corsaires, complete with a Welch bagpipe parade (yet another group not fond of the British).

This is our only chance to do laundry.  As in all of Europe, we have a washer but no dryer, so we have clothes drying everywhere.  Hopefully, they will be dry by tomorrow.

There are more restaurants in Saint Malo than anywhere else in France, but if you subtract seafood restaurants and crêperies, you get Italian (that’s Deb math!)   Lasagna and Calzones and a happy wife!

Tomorrow we walk the wall around the city.

VRBO - Bayeux, FR

 After staying up past midnight watching the Longest Day, we kinda slept in.  Today is Bayeux day,  we are exploring the town.  Our first stop is the Bayeux Tapestry, which isn’t from Bayeux and isn’t a tapestry.  It’s 68.9 meters long and was made somewhere (no one knows for sure, maybe England, maybe Normandy) in 1066.  It depicts the story of William the Conqueror.  Everyone has a headphone so they can listen in their preferred language, and they move at the same pace.  There is a movie at the end.  Deb is a little impatient and doesn’t want to wait for the English version, so we watched in French. (Not really all that helpful)

We spent the extra €2 to gain admission to two other places.  So our second stop was the War Museum.  Yesterday we saw the Normandy beaches and got through the first day.  This museum got us from June 7th to August 14th.  Bayeux was spared any bombing or shelling.  (There are as many explanations for this as there are residents). Either the streets were too narrow for German tanks, or some member of the resistance told the allies it just wasn’t worth it.  

Our final stop was the Museum of History and Art which had loads of painting depicting the several victories of Normandy over England, over and over.  The disembarkation of Normandy was called Operation Overlord.  Our two days in Normandy might be called Operation Overload, but we have a much better appreciation of everything that happened in the Battle of Normandy and how it changed the course of history.

Campanula

Tomorrow we are off to the walled city of Saint Malo in Brittany.    

VRBO -Bayeux, FR

 Today we did a full day tour of the Normandy disembarkation (not invasion - this is just the first of many misconceptions that I had about D-Day).  The itinerary for the trip includes Saint Mere Église, where the paratroopers landed, Utah Beach and Omaha Beach.

Our tour guide, Julie, is knowledgeable and relishes pointing out inconsistencies in the historical recollections of events. The day culminated with the playing of taps at the Normandy American Cemetery as the rain started to come down.  An all day tour can be a little draining, so we had a light dinner at a D-day themed restaurant before returning to the apartment to watch The Longest Day, a three hour retelling of D-day.  (Kind of a fitting title!)

VRBO - Bayeux, FR

We took a long train ride (150 miles) from Paris to Bayeux, our stepping off point for visiting the Normandy beaches.  We arrived a little early to check into our VRBO, so we had lunch, more French style, at 1:30.  After checking in, we ambled around town.  They had just celebrated the 80th anniversary of the invasion on June 6th so the town is still decked out in American, Canadian and British flags.  

We took the obligatory walk through the cathedral (not sure why I need to go into every cathedral I see).  The cathedral was started in 1077 but was nearly destroyed in the 12th century and then rebuilt in the 15th century and completed in the 19th century.  Deb liked it because it has thousands of gargoyles, most of which were pretty secular (like two cherubs heads together sharing one eye)

Today was just a get acquainted with the town day.  We found a few interesting restaurants and a market where we could buy cheese and wine and instant coffee.  And a small loaf of fresh bread for $.75!  

Bayeux is a British and American tourist destination, so all our acquired French dinner time rules do not apply.  Restaurants are full by 6:30, sacré bleu!

Hotel Villathéna - Paris

 We have nearly completed our first day in France. So let’s be completely honest here.  After diligently doing little French lessons for a year, we are still pretty much stuck at “Merci” and “si vous plaît”. 

As we have found before, language is not really the problem.  It’s figuring out when to eat in Europe that always eludes us.  By the time we had reached Paris, we had eaten two dinners: pizza at the airport and shepherds pie somewhere over Newfoundland and a tiny little breakfast snack over the Atlantic at about 3:00AM.  Once we got to hotel to drop off our bags, the bed looked so inviting that we decided to forego lunch for a short nap.  After all, google says that many places stay open all afternoon.  Maybe they do where google lives but not here in Paris. 

Look all ways before crossing!

We set out from the hotel and after a short hike we found a “fast food” eatery.  Deb had a chai latte, while adventurous me had a “golden latte”. Turns out that in a golden latte they replace the chai with curry.  Well there’s a pick me up!  

According to Google, Parisians eat dinner around 8:00.  We arrived at our little sidewalk cafe at 7:00 for dinner and the place was packed, but, voila!, everyone was just drinking.  We finished our dinner by 8:30 (they put us in a back room so as not to upset their regular clientele) and, voila!, the place was still packed with people just drinking.  So when do they eat? Tomorrow, we will slooth this out and report back!

France Trip

 Tomorrow, we head off to France for two weeks in Normandy and Brittany.  Our plan is to fly to Paris, spend one night and then off to Bayeaux for a few days.  We ar3 scheduled for a tour of of the Normandy Invasion (we didn’t realize it would be only a few days after the 80th anniversary).  Then to Brittany for the rest of the time.  Finally back in Paris, we plan to see Notre Dame, and fly home.