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Normandy and Brittany (France), August 2002

(Click the map above to see our route)

The plan was... no plans, let's get there and enjoy the enjoyable. Of course, general targets were the beaches of the D-Day landings and some coastal driving in Normandy and some landscapes in Brittany.

It takes roughly a 14 hour drive to Normandy so we split the trip into two days, we left home around 1pm the 8th and got not far from Macon, France, after crossing the Monte Bianco tunnel to France with ease. The Monte Bianco (Mount White)  is the highest mountain in the Alps and in Europe, and it is right at the border between Italy and France, there's a tunnel little shorter than 10 miles that goes to France. The following day we crossed Paris, seen the Eiffel tower and kept off downtown as very explicit signs did suggest to (terrible traffic, i tell you), and got to Normandy. We decided Caen was too big for our tastes, so went on to Bayeux, wonderful medieval town, under a pretty awful rain, and started looking for an hotel. It became evident pretty soon that everything was booked out, so we moved north to the coast and decided to chance our luck in Port-en-Bessin.

Port en Bessin

The town, very pretty, is the starting point of Omaha Beach. Under the same abnoxious rain, we shot for the best hotels in town and they were all booked out as well, so we decided to follow the signs to this "Manor Rooms" (I'm translating from french for your ease) even though it was taking us way out in the country and apparently in the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by sheeps, we started seeing some houses and the ruins of this old church right on the coast, then, few yards over, the road was at a dead end in the courtyard of an old Manor... maybe it was the time of day, the kilometers on our wheels, the rain or all of this, but this building   didn't look like an hotel, not even like a Bed & Breakfast, and we were starting getting the heck out of there when this lady showed up from the door and she waved at us... indicating maybe that was a B&B. So we got into the backyard and ended up loving the creepy feeling and the niceliness of this woman who gave us this old room   that had everything (sink, shower) but a toilet (ahrr-ehm, oh-kay, it was in the hallway, to be shared with other guests, or Zombies) for a cheapy price that included breakfast. The place was actually an old Manor built sometime around the 14th century. The place had highs and lows but it definitely meant RELEIF! we've got a room. So we went back to town for dinner and had a walk even though the weather was still bad. At the parking lot in the harbor Sherri spotted her future car , it's a TVR Tuscan, wrooomm! And the interiors were totally cool! We checked out the shops and picked a restaurant. Here they're great on seafood (duh), but it's really a pain to deal with French people because for the most they don't speak anything but french, and their menus too. We got lucky cause at the table next to ours there was this older couple from Paris that in few minutes told us everything about the town, the restaurant, the wines, Paris, we got invited at their house in Paris, we got invited the following day for aperitives at lunchtime, they made me taste their wine (from their glass, yuk), they made the translation with the waitress etc. etc. And all this with only one of them actually able to chew some english.They FINALLY left and let us have our dinner. In that area though, Americans are still something...we kept having people walking by stopping and cheering Sherri. I even have the impression that nobody there was actually drunk: amazing.

Anyway, after dinner we went to sleep, we were tired after the trip. Surprisingly there were no ghosts floating around in the Manor, only far noise was some probably extremely loud snorer that i suspect was a German.

The following morning we had breakfast in the lounge of the Manor with the other guests, there was a mom and daughter from Boston, MA who were very nice, they were taking a trip all over Europe, they'd been in italy before France and they said they kept regretting leaving the wonderful villa they stayed at in the Tuscany hills that were kissed by the sun every morning, nothing but rain in france so far (i was flattered but they just got lucky in italy). There was a German couple too, i bet the man was the aforementioned snorer, he didn't say a word but his wife was very nice and spoke a good english.

We stuffed ourselves up, packed and got ready to hit Omaha Beach. 

Omaha Beach

"Everybody who complains about going to work at 8 o'clock in the morning somewhere, should come here and look down to this stretch of beach, and consider what was asked of that generation, the dawn of June the 6th, 1944."

(Col. Barney Oldfield, USAF, ret.)

We went down to the beach at Saint Laurent Sur Mer. The weather was very windy and rainy.  In that point there's not much to see, , you just *try* to imagine what all those pebbles have seen and it kinda gets you when you think they are the same pebbles of that 6th of June, 1944. We collected some of them and decided to take the road to the American Cemetery and Memorial.There are several things to see along the way, one of those is the monument to the 1st. Division Inf.. Even in the bad weather, the coast is beautiful and we could feel *that*, some kind of eternal silence or woe, together with some peaceful feeling of triumph.  We entered the Cemetery and Memorial , it's the biggest American cemetery that is outside the US, the same where they filmed the beginning and the end of the movie Saving Private Ryan  . All those white little things in the background of the picture are Crosses, or David's Stars, and each of them is an American soldier who has fought and given his life for the freedom of all of us.

Next destination was Utah Beach; we decided to stop at one of the Museums about WWII, it actually had a lot of stuff that was found in place . This is actually one of the boats used during the landing . Inside they had all the kind of items from both American and German sides; these are american cigarettes and miscellanea, these are Nazi weapons , and the following are American Weapons . Objects from WWII are still found nowadays on the beach, they had some knives, or parts of guns, that were found on year 2001.

Utah Beach

There is a Cape, between Omaha and Utah, called Pointe du Hoc, where the Nazis had dangerous cannons and various fortifications that could have been a problem during the landing. It was the task of 200 Rangers to destroy those cannons. Those guys had to face the strongholds below, it is not hard to imagine how bad it must have been. They succeeded and were rescued a couple of days after D-Day by the forces that had landed meantime. Only 90 of them had survived.

Utah beach is for the most sand; there is another Museum that we decided we didn't need to visit and some other commemorative monuments. This house, of typical Norman architecture, faces the Channel some place around Vierville sur Mer, between the two beaches. A little over there's a wonderful Hotel with breathtaking view on the Sea. Yes, we stopped and asked. Yes, it was booked out :(

The day had been long and full of emotions, and we were starting feeling tired. We wanted to stop and spend the night at Saint Mere Eglise, a town a little in the inland, that's where they parachuted a lot of soldiers to support the landing from the land side, there is still an American parachute that got stuck in the main church belfry. Everything was booked out, so we took the decision to leave the touristic route and try our luck in Carentan. The town looked deserted and the few hotels we tried were all booked anyway. I have a mental note about a gorgeous B&B they had there, with a wonderful park, classic furniture, a swimming pool... booked out as well, of course. So we decided to keep going on the way to our future destination (Mont Saint Michel), hoping to find something (at that point, anything) on the way. As a matter of fact, few miles after Carentan we found another one of those hand written notes saying "Rooms"; we followed it and ended up in the front yard of the weirdest french couple. These people basically rented rooms in their house as they were. They were very nice though, and they had a good view on the country from their front balcony that they had put up some umbrellas and bar tables, we were tired and so we decided to spend the night there. This time, the bedroom had a sink and a toilet, but not a shower; for that you had to go to a shared bathroom in the hall. Oh well. The room was fine but the rest of the house was pretty dirty. The man didn't speak a lick of english but was trying to communicate, when he saw me pull out a bottle of wine he rushed getting a glass for me to drink it more comfortably (i guess the thought that that glass was filthy had never crossed his mind). There was a couple of english people who were spending the ngiht there too; they were travelling by bike and they were very nice, despite their accent that was hard to understand to me. They, too, had ended up there out of desperation and the threat of rain, that people on a bike like less than us on a car.

Before it got too late, we went back to Carentan to have dinner at a restaurant. The only one that appealed us was booked out (figures), so we chanced a Creperie, for Sherri to experience her first Crepe (however they spell it, it sounds exactly the way you wicked minds thought though). She didn't like that (figures), i myself had a wonderful dinner between a cheeses crepe and a mushrooms/nuts/ham one. We went back to the room pretty early, and had few drinks in the patio with the english couple before crashing to bed.

On the way to Mont Saint Michel

The following morning we had one of the most horrendous breakfasts ever, poor Cecile (our host), she was trying to be nice but whoa!

We left around 11am to go south-west, get to the coast again, and make the coastal drive to Mont Saint Michele.

We stopped in the town of Coutances and we took some time to visit it;  the Cathedral was humongous and absolutely beautiful. This is the main square in front of the cathedral, you can see another old church in the background. Talk about religious people here.

The Cathedral is a sample of Norman Gothic style, here's part of the facade , even from the back it looks good: . We had a walk around, enjoying the neatness of the place, , until we decided to leave and head to a little castle right outside the town . We took a break and paid a visit to castle and park, it was nice. There was a pictures exhibition going on inside.. I walked up one of the towers through these narrow steps , and enjoyed the view. Then we reached the coast, and enjoyed the show of an entire town go out in the water when the tide is low, to fish for mussels, shrimps and oysters. Kinda funny to see all those boats in the dry. We spent some time in secondary roads, behind huge trucks carrying mussels, until we realized we were in the Mont Saint Michel bay cause, even if we were some 15 miles away, we could see the citadel from there.

Mont Saint Michel

The last part of the coastal drive was beautiful. The countryside is awesome, and the houses and architecture just gets more picturesque. When we felt we were getting close enough, we started looking for an hotel, and chanced some very good ones in the country. No luck. Mont Saint Michel is one of the biggest touristic attractions in France, its position in the water, with just this little narrow road surrounded by the sea to get there , is just awesome. We crossed this road and it was so crowded, but still we spotted several hotels and decided to try them out. Of course, they are a lot more expensive here and they are crowded. But this time we got lucky, after a couple of attempts we found one that was very good and they had a free room for the night. We finally could relax and we decided we'd stay there for two nights. Of course, the same room was not available, so we tried the Mercure hotel and, unbelievable, they had a room for the following night. So we booked that and got settled (the Mercure is just 100 yards from the hotel we were staying). We went for a walk and it started raining pretty bad (we're lucky as you see), so we decided there was only one thing left to do to make the rain stop: finally buy umbrellas. But it was around 8pm, stores were closed, so we just decided to go back to the hotel and enjoy the restaurant. And boy, what a dinner! We had Champagne and all the kind of good French food (yummm i had some great seasnails hard to forget). At dinner we were surrounded by italians, there was a nice older couple from Romagna that filled us in about the Abbey and best times to go for the visit etc. etc. We happened to be there the night that the high tide was at its highest in the year. So, after dinner, we took a walk to check the tide coming in. There were thousand people doing the same, but actually it was so dark you couldn't tell what da heck was going on with the water. So we went back to the hotel and settled for the night.

The following day we moved our stuff to the other hotel, went shopping, bought umbrellas in a wonderful shiny sunny day, bought some cider and calvados, went to the room (that was the best of the whole trip, with a beautiful view on a green park on the back window) and got some rest. We had planned our visit to the Mont the following day (it's better to get there early in the morning). Later that day we went for a short trip to the towns around our location; we enjoyed the countryside once more, we went back to a bigger town for some shopping and we stopped at an all american restaurant called Buffalo Grill (it's a chain they have there), had a great steak dinner and headed back to the Mont. It was still early enough to go play Minigolf and so we did, and i tell you that Texan woman kicked my butt at that game...hmphrrr!

The following day we left the hotel around 10am and joined the line to the Abbey. After parking not too far, this is the scene you face, pretty cool. We entered the little island and there's like a little medieval town inside, crowded like hell, but also simply beautiful. We did the 100,000 steps to go up to the Abbey/Castle/Prison/Stronghold, and really enjoyed the building.. The Abbey has this wonderful chiostrum (is that an english word?) inside, and even a mill, among other. Sherri was in a shopping mood while i was starving, we finally went for lunch and i had mussels, goood ones. Our plan for the day was to leave Mont Saint Michel and visit the coast a little longer to the northern Cape we decided we'd touch. We had decided, by now, that we didn't really need to visit the west coast too, basically cause we were missing our baby-kittens terribly and we both felt like the vacation had really worked for us. SO we left the island and drove to the other side of the Bay, to Cancale, where Oysters are the big thing. We crossed the town of Saint Malo, famous touristic place (too crowded for my tastes of that day), and we kept following the coast, which is very pretty . You enter fishermen's towns,  you see ancient windmills and all that. 

Cap Frehel

We finally got to Cap Frehel, which is a huge Cape with cliffs made of purple marble , that it was kind of late in the afternoon, knowing we still had to face the "find-a-hotel" game. We were getting good at that, so we indulged on the cliffs ,  enjoyed the beautiful views   and the singing of the seagulls. Here's a reckless texan seagull at the edge of the cliff.  The Cape was our last destionation on the coast; we said our bye bye to the Ocean and went back south. We decided if things got bad with the search of an hotel, we'd drive to a bigger town, maybe even Rennes, and get a motel. After few attemps on the road, we stopped at an hotel that was booked out but, even if the woman couldn't speak a word in english, she looked up a different hotel for us, made a couple of calls, found the room, drew a little map on how to get there and said her au-revoir. I wasn't that happy of following the map to one more Nowhere and possibily get to a place we didn't like and we didn't know the price of, but we didn't have much choice so we followed the map. To make the story short, we ended up in a little town called Saint Jacut, had to follow a car in the middle of another nowhere to what appeared to be a private house, but it was actually a beautiful Villa arranged as an hotel and it was located right on the sea. We had an authentic french dinner at the owners' Restaurant (all the other people there looked french and we had the hardest time to communicate, but it was all good) This was the view from the balcony of the Villa.

Celtic Myth

The following day we had a good breakfast and left to start the way home. We wanted to visit the Forest of Paimplont (formerly Brocelandie), which is, according to Medieval songs, the place where Merlin the Sorcerer had retired from the world to meditate. Legends say that, in that Forest, Lancelot and some other Knights of the round table had been looking for the Holy Grail.

Merlin moved there but he didn't consider that, in the middle of the Forest, the fairy Vivian had a castle (this is what is left of it): stories say that the two were caught by lust and probably Merlin didn't have all that time left to meditate. The Celtic Myth here is very big, allegedly this is the Tomb of Merlin. The old rock is covered with little notes written by, i imagine, learning wizards of our days. A little after the Tomb, which they say it's the most accredited to be the real one, you walk in the forest , and get lost as the Legend suggests, to reach the Fountain of Youth.. My friend Bughi says i should have taken a bidet-bath there, jeeesh. We actually touched the water and felt like 20 years younger, Sherri made a back jump with upside-down rotation that really surprised me. And she landed on only one foot! Amazing.

People come here at night and they do some kind of rituals, this is a natural arena that they use for that reason.

After that walk in the forest, we went to visit the main town (Paimplot), which is just a little village, in the middle of the Forest. The town is very beautiful , we got some souvenirs and a Celtic music CD.

And then we started the long ride home. We went South to Nantes, through secondary roads, and from there West, avoiding Paris accurately. We actually went through the Loire Castles area, we saw some 10 castles on the way. I was trying to skip the highway until around Lyon, but after several hours driving, and knowing we'd probably want to stop for the night even though earlier (i think it all started visiting Merlin's Tomb) we had said we could make a single non-stop long drive home, knowing we might need a motel we decided to catch the highway not far from Clermont-Ferrand and we eventually stopped, around 11pm and some 10 hours in a row driving, in Saint Etienne. We saw some hotels from the highway, exited and enjoyed a wonderful motel of a chain called B&B (our destiny for this trip, evidently). The following day, August the 15th, we faced the White Mountain tunnel with fears of finding traffic: well NOBODY was there, too cool!  We made a stop in Courmayeur, a wonderful italian town very famous as ski resort in the winter, ,and then drove all the way to Padova, to hug and pet our little ones that were so happy to see us. But that's a different story.