Western
Europe continued
Tour of France continued
Wed
9/26 Day 5 Paris - Caen Will need whole day, too much to see
all listed
113 km to Rouen. 118km to Caen. (~2 ½ hours total). Aaron's
birthday! Pick up rental car in the early morning in Paris. Drop
off keys for flat at 9:30am or can mail in envelope if want to
leave earlier.
Maybe stop in Giverny to see Monet's garden. Maybe stop in Rouen to see place du Vieux Marche where 19 year old Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431. Visit the WWII museum in Caen. This is supposed to be a very good museum as it not only addresses the war, but the history of France during the recovery after the war. Stop in Bayeux to visit maybe. Has Musee Memorial 1944 Bataille de Normandie, huge & haphazard collection of things. Also there's British war cemetery with touching epitaphs.
Visit Aromanches beach, the
main beach where the Americans landed. In Arromanches, see remains
of one of the Allied troops ports. (Its 10km from Bayeux). Musee
du Debarquement explains the logitics of the port Winston and
makes a good first stop before visiting the beaches. Closed on
Mondays.
Near Arromanches , Omaha Beach - the most brutal combat of June
was fought 20km west of Arromanches. Little evidence left. See
American Military Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, contains 9386
graves and monument to 1557 of men never found.
If we're interested, we can also explore the old village of Cabourg, an old swimming spot for the French, with only period buildings in the village. Late afternoon, drive to our hotel and explore the surrounding area and the village Beuvron-en-Auge.
Manoir de Sens
14430 Beauvron-en-Auge
Tel. 02-31-79-23-05
Confirmed for two double rooms. 450FF with shower, 550FF with
bath. Both include breakfast. No credit card needed to confirm
room, did all by phone.
In the end, we did stop at the Rouen and took pictures of where Joan of Arc flamed out. We also saw the cathedral there, and ate at Quick Burger, the French's answer to McDonald's. All I have to say is that we don't have much to worry about on that front. We were then back in the car and we got to the museum in Caen, just as Laura began to feel bad. We got into the museum, and it truly was a great way to be introduced to the World War II history of France. There was some great stuff on the French's Maquis German resistance movement, the Vichy Regime which was the German's puppet government in occupied France, and we got to see a preview of the German's defenses of the beaches of Normandy. We saw actual footage of the landing, and then a rather tentatively hopeful post-war film that took us through the Cold War, past the fall of the Berlin wall, to current problems such as urbanization, vast differences between the rich and poor, and terrorism. Most likely, September 11 will be added later. We then went at our Chateau, the Manoir de Sens, and dropped Laura off in her bed. My parents and I then went out, got groceries, and brought them back to the farmhouse. We had a picnic in our room, ate cheese and dried sausage, even had some gazpacho out of a jar! It was a lot of fun, and I chose the music, this weird opera stuff, but it was quickly shut down. We worried about Laura, but of course, a few hours after the pain hit, it was gone, so we were hopeful for the next day, which turned out to be quite a race!
Tom & Aaron singing in the rain in Rouen. Every driving day we had it rained, but every touring day we got lucky and it didn't rain much or hardly at all.
Dianne & I in beautiful Rouen. The background shows the city cathedral
Our first Chateau, unbelieveable
An evening picnic, life would have been so much easier had I known then I had a parasite
