France Part 1: Mont St. Michel and Normandy

I don't really know how to blog about the trip that we just went on. It was ten days packed so full that I am finding that I need to rest and recover from my vacation. We are sad that it is over, but happy to be with our little Ellie again. To hear about what she was up to go here. We missed her so much, but knew she was in great hands. Thankfully we were able to video chat with her regularly. Baby Miriam went with us. She was such a trooper.

From my journal: Well, we did it. We had a successful trip to and from France. It was really, really great! I am definitely in post trip let down mode. It was a super busy trip, and we saw a ton of stuff. I took 898 pictures on our camera alone. Let alone the camera that John and my mom took.  The day that we left we got everything ready and drove to Ogden to drop Ellie off at Marc and Miriam’s house. It was pretty sad, and I cried twice, but I knew that she would be in good hands. We drove to the airport a little late (Miriam made us lunch), but still had to wait for our airplane. We got all settled on the plane, and had a pretty uneventful flight except that we just didn’t sleep very much. We flew direct from SLC to Paris about an 11 hr flight. We left about 5 in the afternoon and got to Paris 11 hours later at about 11 am Paris time. It was a very long day after that. Once we got to France things were a little more eventful. I think it was partly that I was very, very tired, but that day was really hard. Finding the train to get to Paris was hard. Navigating the metro was hard. Dropping John off and dealing with baggage was especially hard (John took the train to Nancy to start attending the conference). One of the worst things was how cold it was. I was freezing! It was raining outside and the station that Mom and I had to sit in for a few hours was super cold. It was pretty miserable. Eventually we made it on the train, but everything just seemed really stressful. It was late departing. I fell asleep on the train for a little while (after getting settled in the wrong seats.) I woke up to the beautiful countryside of France. Rolling green hills, checkered with fields of yellow flowers. (I later learned that they were canola flowers to make oil.) I was really nervous about us getting off at the right place, Bayeux (pronounced Bye-you). All that stress was for nothing though, because it was just fine and we got off. I was so tired though and it was getting dark. We had to make our way to our hotel on foot. My suitcase was ridiculously heavy, and I was exhausted. Fortunately we made it. We stayed at the Lion D’Or Hotel, which is famous for being a favorite of one of the Roosevelt’s. Super cute little hotel, with no elevator. Fortunately there was a skinny bell boy that my mom paid to carry the monstrous suitcase up to the fourth floor. I was able to video chat with Ellie and John, and eventually go to sleep. However, Miriam didn’t sleep much that night. I think she woke up every hour or so. I gave up on her sleeping in her own baby cot pretty quick, and she just stayed in the bed with me and my mom, who was quite the snorer that night. Oh well. 

Back to blog: I can't really believe that the trip is over. I have spent so much of my time in the last few months researching what, how, and when to see what. It really paid off though. What a great experience! The first day was pretty long. We flew direct to Paris where we got in at about 3 am our time. Then we had to wait for a few hours before taking train to our destinations. We were awake for about 30 hours straight. John spent the first few days in Nancy presenting his research at the Eurotherm Conference, while my mother, baby Miriam, and I went to the Normandy coast to see the sights. First stop was Mont St. Michel. This 1,300 year old monastery is on a rocky tidal island. It is the second most visited sight in France (after the Eiffel Tower) and was really amazing.

Journal: The next day we were late getting ready, but made it to the Churchill Hotel, where we took a van to Mont St. Michel. (pronounced Mone San Meeshelle). There was a lot of road construction, so we took a while getting out of town, but I loved the beautiful little lanes around the country near Bayeux. I loved the green farms and narrow lanes where one car has to pull to the side so the other can get past. This was when I learned about the canola oil fields and also about the mistletoe in the trees, which looked like little bushes in the trees. The driver told us that there used to be a law to the remove the Gee (mistletoe), but that now it just everywhere. It is really bad for the trees. We also saw many towns that had to be completely rebuilt after being destroyed in WWII.

             Eventually we got on the motorway (freeway) and drove south along the coast to Mont St. Michel. I loved seeing all of the little villages with the big church in the center. They were so beautiful. Our driver kept talking about drinking and how there was always a bar near the church. We drove through Normandy and went nearly all the way down to Brittany. Apparently it has been a big deal whether or not Mont St. Michel was in one or the other. In actuality it started out in Brittany, but when they diverted the river, it became on Normandy’s side.

            We finally caught a glimpse of Mont St. Michel at the top of a hill and it looked just like a castle on the edge of the ocean. It was so beautiful. The land around Mont St. Michel is really flat so with the tides the coast changes a lot. Apparently it covers land faster than a horse can run the distance. Because the grass it often covered by the ocean, it gets a salty residue, so the animals that eat it get a particular flavor which is famous and only found in that area.

            Mont St. Michel started out as an abbey for monks that was built on a big rocky hill a little way out to sea along the English Channel. As time went on, it was built bigger and bigger and there was a small village that was built around it on the island. We were anticipating it to be really crowded as we were told that it is second on the sites most visited in France (after the Eiffel Tower) and gets three million visitors a year. But it really didn’t seem very crowded to us. We walked through the little village and up the abbey. Gorgeous. Very narrow roads with high walls. Fun little arches and bridges. We went up quite a ways in elevation which meant it was good that I was wearing Miriam in a front pack rather than trying to use the stroller. We walked through it and read about it using a guidebook we got to France. The walls were very thick (a few feet). It seemed like you could wander around there forever and not find your way out there were so many little passageways. The views were amazing. It is just so crazy to see something that is 1300 years old. I fed Miriam out of the wind in the actual church part of it, which worked out great. She was such a trooper about being bundled in a snowsuit and carried around in a front pack. I loved all of the gardens too. We stayed there for a couple of hours and walked down to the van again to ride back to Bayeux. 

Blog: The abbey really reminded me of the castle in the Harry Potter movies, and I couldn't help wondering if it inspired  it.

Yes, we are really bundled up. It was shockingly cold the entire time that we were there. We really regretted not having our winter coats. Fortunately we packed the baby's snow suit 'in case of emergencies,' but she actually wore it every single day.

Journal: I fell asleep on the way back to Bayeux, but I did wake up when it started snowing. It was a full on snow/sleet storm that we drove through. When we got back we ate lunch that my mom bought at a market and walked over to the Bayeux Tapestry. This was a 1000 year old tapestry that is nearly 70 meters long. It is embroidered with the story of how William, Duke of Normandy became the king of England and is centered around the Battle of Hastings that occurred on October 14, 1066. It was about how Harold was sent to tell William that one of them was to become King of England after Edward died. (We could never tell who was supposed to be king.) Harold went off course and had to be rescued by William. William made Harold swear loyalty to him and returned to England. Harold didn’t keep his oath and ascended the throne after Edward died. William invaded and barely won the Battle of Hastings, but in doing so killed Harold and became kind of England. It was really remarkable and crazy long. There was a cool audioguide that went along with it so we could understand it better. They had a museum about it too, which was pretty remarkable.

            Next we went to visit the Bayeux cathedral, which was pretty typical of a gothic cathedral in Europe. It was raining pretty good when we came out of that, so we got some food (kebabs that we recommended by the Guinns who both served their missions in France), and ate at our hotel. I video chatted with Ellie and John some more. Miriam and Mom fell asleep so we went to bed after that. 

The next day we were again late getting up so we booked it to the Hotel Churchill again and met our tour guide to see the Normandy beaches and learn about the D-day invasion. We started out by riding out to see the battlements. They were essentially bunkers with these massive guns that would shoot humongous shells six miles out to sea. They were designed to fire against incoming boats. I thought this whole tour was really interesting. The main thing I took away was that it really was a miracle that the Allied invasion worked. Basically if the German forces had put together any kind of organized counter attack, Operation Overlord would have failed.

            The Allied forces had put together a really convincing false story of an upcoming invasion to somewhere else along the English Channel. They had sent Patten over to the supposed site, and thoroughly convinced the Nazi’s that the invasion would take place there. So when the invasion did happen and the Nazi’s saw 6,000 boats coming, they still didn’t believe this was a main invasion and thought it was some kind of ruse.

             I think this is interesting because the Allied forces had done some pre-invasion bombing of the area to take out the defenses. Unfortunately because of the bad weather, they didn’t hit very many of the targets. To make matters worse they thought that they had taken out the defenses so the people went in blind.

            We went to Omaha Beach which is called ‘Bloody Omaha’ because so many soldiers were slaughtered there. There were a lot of defenses on the beach that were exposed at low tide, so they invaded at low tide. They thought that the main defenses were taken out by the bombing so they first sent in a team of engineers to dismantle the mines and such. They were just mowed down by the machine guns in the bunkers that were meant to shoot along the beach. They were sitting ducks on the long beach.

            The invasion took place on June 6, 1944. They meant to invade a couple of days before that but because of the bad weather they couldn’t do it. This was a blessing and a curse. It kept them hidden because of the fog and rough seas, but the soldiers were really sea sick and very weak. They took pills to help with the sea sickness, but recent research showed that these pills would actually make the sickness worse rather than help it. 

Here we are on Omaha Beach. It was really poignant to me that there was a young family playing with a kite right next to us.

Next we went to the American cemetery where more than 9000 soldiers are buried. We saw a humongous wall of names of soldiers that were missing in action (their bodies were never recovered). We saw a monument of the youth rising above the war. There were so many headstones (crosses and stars of David). They keep it up so no matter what angle you are looking at, the headstones are in a row. We saw Teddy Roosevelt’s grave. His had golden writing because he was given the medal of honor. I fed Miriam in a little chapel, which was a little awkward, and we continued on our tour.

            Next we saw a coast guard monument and saw how there were so many German bunkers everywhere. They occupied this area of France for 4 years and really fortified it. One thing that we learned about was the harbors. They apparently tried to do an invasion in an area that had a harbor before that failed miserably. So they invaded in an area that didn’t have a good harbor. In order to deal with this they invented a transportable harbor. They built different pieces all over the country, brought it together, built it, and sunk it. All so the Nazi’s wouldn’t see it coming. Apparently it was quite the work of engineering because it was designed to work with the tides, so it could be used 24/7. Unfortunately one of the two that they made was destroyed quickly in a storm. (They used sunken ships as a break water, which didn’t do a very good job.)

            The last place we visited was the Point du Hoc where we saw the craters from all of the bombing. They really targeted this area because they saw a lot of the big 6 mile cannons in their reconnaissance, but they were actually just telephone poles that were designed to look like canons. The real ones were hidden, but for some reason the Germans never really put together a defense and didn’t fire them.

            This was also the place where the army rangers scaled the cliffs to take over the defenses. Once again they thought the bombs had taken most of it out, but they had a big fight on their hands. They had heavy casualties. About 2/3 died. We went down in the bunkers and saw the bullet holes all over the walls and saw where it was burned out. We also saw the bunkers that were blown up by the rangers. There were crazy big chunks of cement all over. 

            There was also para troopers that were sent over to attack from the back, but I guess the Nazi’s had made swamps out of the fields, so it was really hard for them to get through it.

            It is just amazing that the invasion worked.

            That really was an amazing tour. I loved learning about all of the WWII sites. We actually gave the car seat that we used for Miriam to the tour guide since we wouldn’t need it the rest of the trip. We bought it off KSL for $10 just for those two days in Normandy. Boy I was glad to not have to carry it around with us the rest of the trip. 

After that we went to the Point du Hoc where Army rangers scaled the cliffs in order to take over the Nazi's bunkers.

You can see all of the craters left by the bombs. I love history and really ate up learning about this. If you want a quick lesson on D-day, give me a call. :)

Unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to eat breakfast during the tour (the van said no eating or drinking) so we were pretty starving by 2 when it ended. We kind of took our time about picking a place to eat, which made me pretty grumpy. Finally we decided on an Italian place where I tried the beef veal with carrots. My, oh my it was delicious. We got there right when it was closing after lunch so we were pretty much the only customers. The only thing was that it sure was a production to take all those layers on and off every time. Miriam had a blow out too. (Always at the most opportune time.)

            After that we looked at a store where they made homemade lace. It was so amazing. They had a bunch of spools of thread and would wind them around a bunch of different push pins. It looked so intricate and time consuming. Even the smallest thing to buy was super expensive. The item would have a note by it saying how many hours it took to make it. They were always at least three days.

            After that we went to an apple cider maker. Of course, most of it was alcoholic, but we got some plain apple juice. The apple cider in Normandy is really famous. Delicious!

            After that we headed back to the Lion D’Or Hotel to pick up our bags and make our way back to the train station. We had to change trains in Caen (pronounced Cahn). Then we took that train back to Paris. There was a really grumpy man that sat across from us on the train. He argued with a boy scout and was pretty vocal about the kid needing to make room for other people. I actually don’t know if that was what he was saying, but that was what it looked like. He also put his foot on top of my mom’s. Pretty hilarious.