Euro 2011 Day 9

May 22 2011 Day 9
First a few more pictures from the Chateau we camped at last night. Great playground, by the way.

 

I got on the internet for the first time since DC at the chateau to try posting a blog post and check where nearby churches were and found one on the way to Mont Saint Michel, but it didn’t start until 1120am. So we slept in a little and took time to enjoy our warm croissants and pain-au-chocolate (croissant with chocolate chips) with a light drizzle coming down outside the tent. So far the only rain we’ve had. The drizzle lasted less than an hour and we got packed up and headed to Countences (Point B)for sacrament meeting.

  The meeting house (a retrofitted shop) was nestled a corner of a square that used to be the fish market which sat between two grand cathedrals, choir practice happened to be going on in one…just a few people, nothing grand. The LDS branch was tiny!! Just 25 members on the rolls of which about 15 are active. There were about 15 people in the tiny little chapel including us, another visiting American couple (from American Fork, UT) and a senior missionary couple from Idaho. The senior couple were the speakers, the Sister went first and barely spoke any French so the Branch President translated for her. Her husband had both worked and served as a missionary previously in France and spoke pretty fluently. The kids were pretty good (they don’t understand much even when it is in English) and ended up playing with the other kids present who were similar ages in the row behind us.


After church we drove toward Mont-Saint-Michel (Point C) which you could see rising ghostily from the bay even miles away. The tides are huge here (up to a 50 foot swing) and so when the tide is out there is an enormous tidal plain. On the parts that rarely get water there were sheep grazing peacefully with nothing but the wind around them and the island abbey fortress in the distance.

We parked a 5 minute walk away (no room for cars inside) and walked in playing tracking games in the wet sand with Henry. The island basically consists of walls surrounding a single main street (up to 15 feet wide in some places!) that winds it’s way up the abbey.


 

Henry jumping from one of the walls
 
Cool Old elevator system to get stuff up to the Abbey.       We explored the street and played on the ramparts but skipped the actual abbey (seen lots of free churches…why pay 12 euros a person to see another just because it’s on an island). On the way down we got ice cream before heading to Dinan.

Dinan (Point D) is a cute town in Brittany that is located as far up the Ranges river as sea ships could travel so it thrived as a trading town, but didn’t grow a whole lot once some bridges got built. We followed a Rick Steves walking tour through town with a stop to climb the old bell-tower for amazing views of the city with it’s slate roof tiles.
 

Anna and Lizzy climbing up through the trapdoor to the belltower lookout. 

Henry kept his ears covered because the bell sounds at the top of the hour and it was 5 to.
   In the old days you paid property taxes (guess they had them back then too) based on the sq footage of the ground level, so clever merchants built larger upper levels for some tax-free space so much of the town resembles Pisa. 
  On the steep walk down to the port we decided to attempt a sit-down meal with the kids and ordered gallettes and crepes which were just ok, the griddle needed to be cleaned or something, but the rustic restaurant with the owners dogs circling (ala my old dog Kirby) for table scraps was fun. After dinner we stopped for a bit more ice cream before heading south to the Loire. We camped that night in Angers (Point E) More poppies on the way.

Euro 2011 Day 8

May 21 2011

With the exception of a few perfect snow days skiing, I don’t think I’ve had a more pleasant morning than this one in my life. We slept in ‘til about 0830, actually, the church bells rang at 0700, but after giving Anna her shot we both snuggled back up in our sleeping bags until 0830, when I remembered that super-suave French accent man had said that the local bakery delivered hot croissants to the office at 0830 and that was enough to get me up. We were pretty much out of clean clothes so I started some laundry and picked up some croissants (half with chocolate) which were perfect. Anna had gotten cold in the night and not slept well, so I wandered around the campground/chateau grounds with the kids talking to the chickens and ducks with them.

The sun was out and it had really warmed up to perfect day temperature. After showering (this place had a few family shower rooms)and packing up we rented some bikes and biked around the campground (I had promised Lizzy who kept reminding us with “Bike?”….”Bike?”….”Bike?”. ) After the ride we set out with a plan to stop by the nearby village for lunch.

The village of Blangy-la-Chateau turned to be unspeakably cute and we decided to just get something quick from the bakery. This bakery was the source of our perfect croissants a few hours earlier and basically is what every other bakery in the world tries to be like. There were all kinds of bread loaves on the back wall, baguettes sticking vertically out of a wooden bucket, buttery croissants and other bread specialties left of the counter and a full assortment of precisely prepared pastries on the other. Behind the counter was a 60 year old French baker-ess who didn’t speak any English. Being a bread person, this was heaven. We got a loaf of bread, a half-baguette length thing with ham and cheese baked into it and a slice of blackberry crumble. We decided to head back to the Chateau and had lunch on the lawn in front. While we were eating the owners girls (who live in the chateau…yes, we both considered the possibility of Teleradiology from a Norman Chateau) who were about a year older than Lizzy and Henry came out and played with them. Overall it was just one of those places you never want to leave and I’m pretty sure we’ll be back.

(the picture doesn’t do it justice…so I stole the one below from the web)

 

After lunch we drove a ways North to the Normandy beaches. Patches of bright red poppies showed up along the highways and the margins of the fields. The American Cemetery at Omaha beach (B on the map below) was everything is should be as a memorial to the dead. It focused on the lives of the soldiers, their strengths and their contributions in a modern visitors center with lots of video and audio. The 10,600 perfectly aligned crossed sitting atop the bluff overlooking Omaha Beach, which France has given to the US, was a beautiful and fitting tribute to those brave men.

  (the edge of the cemetery…Omaha Beach is seen at the right edge)

We tried to get Henry to understand, as well as ourselves, just what courage it took to jump out of those boats or airplanes under heavy fire and fulfill your objective with chaos and death all around. I got a better idea of it by visiting, but just a glimpse, and I guess I don’t really want Henry to ever really understand what that experience is like.

After the cemetery we drove down to the beach and walked along a ways. The kids were tired and hungry by this point so we didn’t stay long. On the way home we gave into the desire for some familiarity and went to McDonalds for dinner. They must make a killing over here because the food cost more in Euro’s than in dollars even with a 1.5 conversion rate.

We had set up camp before hitting the cemetery at the Chateau de Martragny (C on the map) which was just beautiful in just about every way. I’ll just let the pictures describe it. I had to steal a rare quiet hour alone and sat at the edge of the reflecting pool catching up on the trip log while the sun set. I’m getting kind of close to accomplishing my professional goals—medical school, residency, etc—and wondered what kind of work oriented goals I would be setting after and having a little Chateau seems like a pretty good one right now.

 

(loved the little cottage)

 

Sigh…sad to leave this place too.   

Euro 2011 Day 7

May 20 2011 Day 7
Paris. Wow. Honestly, I started today with something of a “cheese-eating surrender monkey” opinion of the French, but I was totally impressed with Paris. When I drive down Provo Canyon, I often think to myself, if this canyon were anywhere in the country outside of the Mountain West it would be a National Park. Walking around Paris I thought the same thing about the buildings, in a city full of beautiful buildings, only the best make the tourist books.
We took a shuttle from our campground (no leering this morning, whew) to the metro where we figured out how to buy a ticket from the machine on only the third attempt and took it to the Louvre station. The building is immense and beautiful…except the modern art the Europeans feel they need to add to old things…not a fan of I.M. Pei’s pyramid, but they probably made him do it. We didn’t actually go in, parents with 2 and 6 year olds don’t get much out of huge, expensive museums. It’s going on the list of places to save for later.

From there we walked along the Seine to Notre Dame which has an average exterior, but the interior is probably the most impressive I have seen. I’m not sure exactly what it was, that made it so great, but I think it’s a combination of the scale (one of the largest and tallest), the interior design and the sun streaming through the stained glass windows. We sat in the chairs for 15 minutes (Lizzy had to go inspect a “Jesus” picture). Henry like the statue of St Denis on the outside holding his severed head in his hands.

After Notre Dame we walked to Luxembourg Gardens which were just beautiful and had the best kids playground I have ever seen. The zip-line, climbing ropes and sandbox were awesome along with sundry other playsets. Must not have the same type of lawyers in Europe as America. The kids didn’t want to leave after almost 1.5 hours, but we had enjoyed our time and had more to see.
 

I hadn’t realized the scale of things on the maps we’d looked at before. Most of the other towns we’d visited were pretty easy to walk 5-10 minutes between the sights, but Paris was much bigger. Even the normal buildings between the famous ones were well designed and decorated. Every street we walked on was pleasant. But we had walked enough at this point and hopped on the metro to Montmartre and the Sacre Cour basilica.
Luckily we chose to get off at a different station than the one Rick Steves recommended and thus unknowingly avoided surfacing from the Metro in the red light district. The basilica is on a steep hill just North of the river and there are a few hundred steps leading up which were a tough climb…Lizzy is big on doing steps all by herself right now and did almost two thirds of them before letting me carry her. Henry on the other hand took most of them at a run. At the top there was a mini concert on the steps and a bunch of Bangladeshi cheap souvenir vendors that would scatter when their lookout spotted the police almost like it was a game put on for the tourists.

After the cathedral we grabbed a ham and cheese crepe (cheapest calories in town, we’ve kind of given up enjoying sit down meals with the kids, rarely turns out well) which we enjoyed in front of a very talented bass playing street performer.

We wandered down the back side of the hill and took the Metro to the Arc de Triumph where we watched another street performer whose best trick was hopping on one hand in step with his music.

We then walked down the Champ de Elysses/ rue de diane to the Eifel tower. Lizzy had fallen asleep on the way and not wanting to repeat the previous night where she napped too late as we drove I rested in the park with her while Henry and Anna climbed the stairs to the second terrace or the Eifel Tower. Henry was a trooper and climbed up and down in record time. Much of the climb conversation consisted of how many scoops of ice cream such a feat deserved so once back on solid ground we quickly found an ice cream vendor and purchase 3 scoops—one for mom, two for Henry. Pistachio, Lemon, Chocolate.


Pretty much tucker-less at this point we headed back to the Blois de Bologne, picked up the car and headed Northwest towards the Normandy beaches. Driving to our campsite about 15 Km off the freeway we went for about a mile on this one lane road that was so completely tunneled in by trees I had to turn on the lights to see. We arrived to camp at the Chateau de Brevedent after sunset, the reception worker noticed me knocking at the office door and came out from the bar in the chateau to greet us. I started with my two-weeks worth of French, but his English was perfect, more than perfect actually, it was the kind of accent that make women swoon. Anna stayed in the car : ) , and we got camp set up in the chilly night.