Tuesday, July 7

Today was a test of our tolerance for crowds.

Our reservations were for 10:30, and we expected it to take about an hour to get there, so we left at about 9:00. The Metro was packed with morning rush-hour traffic. Our route had us change from the Metro to the RER at Invalides station. At that station, there are gates on the platform such that both the train’s doors and the platform gates have to open. Unfortunately, the platform gates at our door were out of order, so we couldn’t debark, and the train wasn’t stopped long enough for us to push our way to a different door. So we had to go one stop further, then backtrack.

Our next task was to find our way to the RER train. We must have looked confused, as very quickly a young Parisienne asked if we needed help. More support for my belief that the French get a bad rap in the rudeness department.

Naturally, the RER train (a double-decker much like one I rode in Chicago) was packed, with almost all passengers staying on until the end of the line at Versailles. From the train to the palace, navigation was trivial – just follow the crowd.

Even being half an hour early, the line for 10:30 entry was quite long. We have to wait on a cobblestone plaza with no shade. We were still a few hours before the hottest time of day, but it was already getting uncomfortable. There are three lines here: one for the 10:00, our 10:30 line, and one for 11:00. You really must want to be at the head of the line if you’re willing to stand in the sun for an hour.

Once we were let inside, it was simply a matter of following the tide of the sea of humanity. But that’s the wrong metaphor. It’s more a river than a sea. We are swept along from room to room, covering more than half a mile, by my guess. After touring only a small part of the interior of the Palace, we went out into the gardens. The scale of the place is difficult to grasp.

I was somewhat prepared for what I saw. When I was in high school, I went on a trip to the Soviet Union with my Russian language teacher. There, we visited the Hermitage Museum, which is the second-largest art museum behind the Louvre. The Hermitage used to be the Tsar’s Winter Palace and was patterned after Versailles. We were told that if we looked at a work of art for 30 seconds, it would take 117 years to make it through. It may not have been 30 seconds or 117 years, but those numbers are close enough to give the scale.

One of the first rooms we visited was the Chapel. The King worshipped there every day he was in residence. The organ is still used today for special events and masses. I didn’t know until we left that there’s also a church on the site. It’s not as big as Notre Dame or the other medieval churches I’ve visited, but I guess when you’re King, having both a chapel and a church at your house is de rigueur.

The most famous room in the palace is the Gallery of Mirrors. It may be the most famous room in any palace. It’s not quite the length of a football field, but it’s narrower. The ceiling is decorated with thirty large panels depicting the important events in the Sun King’s reign. It is perhaps also best known for a few important political events. The Armistice of Versailles was signed here, ending the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. This document should not be confused with the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I. That wasn’t signed in the Gallery of Mirrors, but in a rail car, the Compiègne Wagon. What might Hitler have done to the Gallery of Mirrors had the treaty been signed there?

I can’t say if the Palace of Versailles has as much art in it as the Hermitage, but from what I can tell, the Hermitage is slightly larger. So, if you could access the entire palace and view each piece of art for a few seconds, you’d be done sometime around the start of the next century.

The best word I can think of to describe the place is “obscene”. This place, the building and the grounds, are built on the slavery of an entire nation. Each room is a work of art, filled with dozens of works of art. The ceilings are murals, the walls covered with paintings, the spaces filled with statues and ornate furnishings. Each object of art is the result of hundreds or thousands of hours of effort. It is mind-boggling. What sort of ego would one have to have to employ an entire nation to build, furnish, and maintain his house? Keep in mind, this wasn’t his only palace. The Louvre was one of his homes – it’s bigger than the Winter Palace, bigger than Versailles – and he had at least half a dozen others. Clearly, it’s good to be King.

The gardens are quite lovely, but we didn’t get to see them at their best. I don’t know if it has to do with the heat or if there are water conservation measures in effect, but none of the fountains were operating, and there weren’t many flowers in bloom. There was an abundance of gardeners at work, and the Chestnut Grove is undergoing restoration.

We ate lunch at one of the restaurants in the garden. We were a captive audience and paid prices worthy of an F1 race or an NFL game.

We left the grounds a bit before 2:00 and were back on the crowded RER train, followed by the crowded Metro. When I say “crowded”, I find it hard to avoid the cliché of “packed in like sardines”. It was bad enough that Genae said, “Never again!” and so we’ll be taking a taxi to the airport tomorrow rather than taking another ride on the RER, dragging our luggage.

Back at the hotel, I took a nap before we ventured out for dinner. At the restaurant we chose, our waiter had only a few words of English, but he was friendly and cheerful, and we had little difficulty communicating. Is this an advantage or disadvantage to picking a hotel that’s not in tourist central?

As I was writing my notes of the day, it was 10:00 pm and not yet sunset. We still haven’t gotten accustomed to climbing into bed before dark. We’re both ready to go home. It’s been a long trip, with most of our days packed with activities. I’d say we’re looking forward to some well-deserved relaxation, but Genae is already anticipating several loads of laundry and some grocery shopping because we have no produce in the house.

In any event, we’re off to the airport in the morning for a long airplane ride home.

Wednesday, July 8

Everything on the return trip went according to plan. The taxi, although much more expensive than mass transit, was quick and comfortable. We bought some sandwiches and snacks for the flight, anticipating we’d have service much like our flight over. They darken the cabin, even though it’s a daylight flight the entire way, and I don’t want to be “that guy” who has his reading light on, disturbing the other passengers, so I watched three movies (one good one, one bad one that was funny, and one that was just bad).

I wasn’t sure whether I’d like the guided tour of Normandy. If we hadn’t used our “free day” to go back to the invasion beaches, I would have been disappointed. But I enjoyed the places we visited that I’d never have come up with. We both enjoyed it enough that we’re considering going on another one in a year or two. Perhaps one that is more focused on scenic beauty than on churches and museums.

As to our self-guided visit to Paris, I enjoyed it, too. Having no (or few) specific plans and making it up as you go may not be the best way to see the world, but it works for me. There’s no direct correlation between this and hiking off trail, but I think both stimulate the same part of my brain. I seem to enjoy answering the questions “Where do I want to go next?” and “How do I get there?”

So, how thorough a job of seeing France did we do? Of the 20 most visited attractions (according to tripsavvy.com) in France, we managed to hit 5 of them:

• 3 – Eiffel Tower
• 4 – Château de Versailles
• 8 – National Museum of Natural History
• 11 – Omaha Beach American Cemetery
• 17 – Mont St-Michel

Not bad for a 10-day trip, I think.

Monday, July 6

Anyone who has made it this far into our trip to France may be able to guess what is on today’s agenda. If you’re tempted to skip to the next entry – wait. I’m going to bore you with so much more than just another church and another museum. Lots of photos this time.

Our day wasn’t planned, other than wanting to visit Notre Dame. Otherwise, we made it up as we went.

Although planned, our visit to Notre Dame wasn’t well planned. You can go online and make reservations to visit Notre Dame, so that’s what we did. However, they were all sold out. They allow as many as 15,000 reservations a day, yet between 30 and 35,000 people pass through the doors every day. Since less than half the visitors have reservations, we figured we’d get in, but expected we might have to wait in a long queue.

Every large city these days has a homeless population. Small towns and villages may also have unhoused people, but I haven’t noticed any in any of the places we visited in Normandy. No doubt, residents of Denver know where the homeless tend to congregate, and if tourists don’t travel through those areas, they’d be invisible. The same, I’m sure, is true of all other cities. On our walk from the Metro station to Notre Dame, we walked through one of those areas. It struck me as a bit incongruous to find what looked like semi-permanent accommodations for the unhoused just a block away from Notre Dame in one direction and a few blocks from the Louvre in another. I didn’t expect it.

Anyway, we walked up to Notre Dame at 8:15 to find no line at all.

We could only wander through a small part of the church. We’re not sure if that was because that’s as much as can be visited now, or if it was because we got there during a service. If this had been my first visit to a Gothic cathedral, I’d probably have been disappointed. Having been inside a few now, perhaps I’m getting jaded. It’s a beautiful building and an impressive feat of engineering for its time. But is its fame due to it being above the rest, or is it just because it’s famous? I wonder if I was more impressed with the St Michael & St Gudula Cathedral in Brussels because it’s more impressive, or because I saw it first.

Even though Notre Dame is open, it is still being renovated after the fire. There is still quite a bit of scaffolding on its south side, a crane hovers over it, and there are shipping containers stacked up next to it. When we first walked in, I thought I caught a strong, momentary whiff of smoke, but that may be my imagination.

Fifteen minutes after walking in, we walked out.

We hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, so finding a boulangerie was next. This is not a difficult task. What’s difficult is choosing exactly how to bust the diet. I picked a deadly-looking pastry covered with raspberries. I had these in Brussels last year, but today’s had more raspberries. If it’s covered in raspberries, it’s gotta be healthy, right? Right?

Now we had to settle on our next tourist destination. Genae was in France for a few weeks in high school and had already been to the Eiffel Tower. Initially, she wasn’t too keen on going again, but it didn’t take much effort on my part to get her to go, so we hopped back on the Metro.

We were thinking that, because we hadn’t planned and thus hadn’t bought tickets, we wouldn’t be able to ride the elevator up. Genae certainly wasn’t going to take the stairs. Again, we were pleasantly surprised that planning wasn’t required. We took the elevator up, wandered around a bit, took in the views, and wondered repeatedly, “What building is that?” before taking the stairs down to the next level. It’s theoretically possible to climb to the summit, but it’s closed. I don’t know if that’s temporary or not. The lower level is full of trinket shops and restaurants.

On our trip down the stairs, we spotted a group of engineers with hard hats and binoculars inspecting the structure. I also noticed that the stairs going up are more worn than the stairs going down (walking on the right side, that is). I’d have guessed it would be the other way around. Don’t more visitors walk down than up?

Back on terra firma at 11:15, it was again time to figure out our next stop. While up in the tower, we saw the cruise boats on the Seine. Why don’t we take a cruise? Google Maps has some unexpected behavior. When we asked it to direct us to a cruise company, it said we could go 4.2 miles to find one. When I searched “night cruise”, it said one was a bit over a mile away. Instead, we crossed the street west of the tower and bought tickets for the boats right at the foot of the tower. With departures every thirty minutes, and, again, with no pre-purchased reservations, we walked up, bought tickets, and after a five-minute wait, boarded a boat.

The boat goes up the river, turns around above the Île de la Cité, then turns around to go back down the river on the other side of the two islands. The kids’ thing with moving the hands up and down, palms up, and saying “six seven” is still big here, it seems, as somebody did it on every bridge we sailed under. I still don’t get it.

There are 37 bridges over the Seine in Paris. All have names that are somewhat more poetic or informative than, say, “23rd Street Bridge”. I snapped pics of all that we sailed beneath, but two in particular caught my attention. The first was Pont Alexandre III, completed in 1900. It is named after the Russian tsar, and his son, Nicholas II, laid the foundation stone. The bridge is widely regarded as the most ornate, extravagant bridge in the city and has been classified as a French monument historique since 1975.

The other one that caught my eye was the Pont Neuf. That means “new bridge”. It’s an ironic name, though, as it’s the oldest standing bridge in the city. Construction was completed in 1607. When we passed under it, I wasn’t sure which bridge it is. It’s currently wrapped with part of a large art installation. The temporary inflatable piece, known as La Caverne du Pont Neuf, was initially due to open in June, but the vast trompe l’oeil canvas was torn during a recent storm.

As I have lived most of my life in Colorado, where we have no navigable waterways, I was a bit surprised to see cargo barges on the Seine. When I think of river cargo, I think of the Mississippi, or Missouri, or Ohio Rivers and the giant barges. The Seine isn’t very big compared to those rivers, and it has all these old, ornate, low bridges. Nonetheless, there’s a fair amount of barge traffic on the Seine, including container ships and bulk cargo. Cities were built on rivers because of transportation. Why shouldn’t that still be true, Dave?

I had a short conversation with the guy seated next to me. He’s visiting from Melbourne. More precisely, he’s visiting London. He and his family were here in Paris for the day – they woke up in London and will go back to sleep in London. That makes for a short visit to Paris. Talk about a whirlwind tour.

Now that it’s one o’clock, it’s time for lunch. We decided to grab some ham and cheese baguettes and eat in the park at the foot of the tower.

While noshing on our tasty sandwiches, we asked ourselves two questions. First, facetiously, could we see all the sights in Paris in one day, and, second, seriously, what’s next on the hit parade?

How did tourists do the tourist thing before the internet? Okay, sure, they planned ahead, unlike me. A few minutes of searching resulted in some interesting possibilities. Unfortunately, the first two that we selected, the Catacombs and the Musée d’Orsay, were no-goes as it’s Monday and they’re closed. I couldn’t ver well subject Genae to another military museum, so I let her decide. The heat of the day had set in (Paris is undergoing another heat wave), so someplace air-conditioned was required. She quickly decided we should check out the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle.

So, after another trip on the Metro and a short walk, we found ourselves at the front door. The first thing we noticed is that the line for people without tickets is closed. Uh oh. Did our lack of planning send us on a wasted trip? When we asked, we were told to buy tickets online. This took about two minutes, and two minutes more got us into the air-conditioning.

I was quite impressed. The grand gallery is essentially a giant atrium. The floor of the atrium is filled with all the animals one would find in the African savannah. The walkways on each floor that go around the atrium had exhibits covering a variety of topics includig moths, moose, and what Paris looked like before it was Paris. The exhibits are cleverly done, and even though this museum didn’t have English text on any of the descriptive signs, we didn’t feel short-changed. A couple of times while we were there, the lights flashed and thunder boomed, simulating a storm (without precipitation, of course).

Done with the museum, we were pretty much running on empty. The temperature was 94 and my Fitbit said I’d walked over 16,000 steps already. So we headed back to the hotel.

By now we’d become fairly competent at getting around on the Metro. We’d ridden on half a dozen different lines and used nearly twice as many stations. We’d ridden on three distinct wintages of trains: one where you had to open the doors by flicking a handle, one by pusing a button, and one where the doors opened automatically. We’d been in ancient stations and (seemingly) grand new ones. The last thing we learned was how to add fares to your Navigo cards. A friendly young Parisienne gave us a lesson. That stereotype about the French being snotty to tourists? Not at all true in our experience. Everyone had been friendly.

We grabbed some carry-out for dinner and ate in our room. We also managed a minimal amount of planning: we stopped at a boulangerie and bought tomorrow’s breakfast. Somehow, then, we have defininte plans for tomorrow. We’re going to the Palace of Versailles and already have tickets.

Sunday, July 5

The portion of our vacation with AHI Travel came to a close with the drive back to Paris. They dropped us off at CDG airport, where Rainer made sure we got on the correct train to get to our hotel. We’re staying in St. Denis, rather than downtown. I probably could have picked a better location, but this one met my two requirements: I could pay part of the cost with reward points, and it’s close to a Metro station.

Google said that when we got off the train, we should catch a bus. Rainer suggested we catch a taxi instead. Unfortunately, no taxis were to be found. And, through a lack of preparation, I didn’t have the Uber app installed on my phone. So we legged it. The weather wasn’t too hot, and we didn’t have to drag our suitcases very far, so it wasn’t bad.

After an early check-in at the hotel, we went in search of food. Google let us down again – we picked a place to eat a couple of blocks away, but when we got there, we saw it was under renovation. A few doors down, we spotted a little neighborhood pizza place where nobody spoke English. Pizza is a universal language, or close enough that we can manage without difficulty.

We were hoping to be able to find a place to relax and watch the F1 race. Last year in Brussels, I had no difficulty finding a sports bar that had the race on multiple screens. F1 is big in Europe, so how hard can it be? We couldn’t get it in our hotel room – F1 is on a premium channel, which we didn’t get. And the hotel bar wasn’t open yet. So much for Plan A. After a few minutes of thought, Genae suggested we visit the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre.

We headed off on our adventure – the first task was to figure out how the Metro works. We were too stupid to figure out how to recharge the Navigo cards we used on the train from the airport. Luckily, the agent at the service desk spoke enough English to do the task for us. That was nice, but it meant we still didn’t grasp how to do this on the kiosk. Yes, you can change the language on the kiosk to English, but there’s one little thing I couldn’t figure out without seeing it done. Navigating the subway itself wasn’t any different than BART or the DC Metro, except it’s all in French.

The Basilica sits atop the summit of the butte of Montmartre. It is the second most popular attraction in Paris behind the Eiffel Tower, so getting there was just a matter of following the giant crowd. Admission is free, but there was a long queue, surprise, surprise. I had a bit of a flashback to my Brussels trip last year. I was expecting to visit an ancient building, but it’s only about a century old, like the Basilica of the Sacred Heart there. Construction for the Paris one began about twenty years prior to the Brussels one, and they were both consecrated between the World Wars.

After touring the church, I spotted signs directing visitors to see the panoramic view from the dome. The one in Brussels had an elevator, so I told Genae they probably had one here. We bought our tickets to the top only to quickly discover that instead of an elevator, we’d be climbing a series of spiral staircases totaling 292 stairs. I could imagine Genae later telling the French gendarmes, “Honestly, officer, he slipped.” She was a good sport, though, and (I think) we both enjoyed the view.

Anyone who knows me well knows I’m a collector. I collect alpine lakes and race tracks, coins and currency, books and music. Having now visited two Basilicas of the Sacred Heart, one might wonder if I’ve just started another collection. There are, it seems, about twenty churches in the world called the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Surprisingly, six of them are in the US. But, no, as beautiful and interesting as these buildings are, I don’t think I need to collect them all.

Back in St. Denis for dinner, Genae spotted a Chinese restaurant that looked good to her. It’s called Le Panda Express. No, not the American fast food chain. When she was in Paris as a teenager, she ate Chinese, so it was natural that we maintain that tradition. Who doesn’t eat Chinese food in Paris?

Saturday, July 4

Today is a “free day.” That is, we had no planned group activities. We’d have the whole day to explore Honfleur. Genae and I had very few ideas of how to spend the time. So far, the only thing we’d come up with was to take a boat tour that would get us a good look at the Pont du Normandie. That would take us an hour.

As it turned out, though, we weren’t the only couple who felt rushed or short-changed on our visit to the invasion beaches on Tuesday. Someone requested a car and driver to take them back there on our free day. Word spread, and in the end thirteen of us split the cost of a small bus with a driver for a return trip there. The plan was to mount our own invasion of Utah Beach with a return to Omaha to visit the museum there.

The weather was fine, scattered clouds in blue skies. We arrived at Utah fairly quickly, using the highway that runs a few miles inland rather than the narrow roads and streets right adjacent to the beach, as we did earlier at Juno, Sword, and Gold beaches.

I don’t know for sure that it was low tide, but the water was a few hundred yards out from the dry sands. I walked as far out as I could without getting into the puddles about halfway between the sea and the dry sand. Here we encountered some harness racers. That is, trotting horses pulling 2-wheeled carts called “sulkies”. Most of them were running over the damp sand, but one was out in the water almost to the horse’s belly.

The museum here concentrates, as one might guess, on Utah Beach. There are a couple of landing craft on display, and one of only six surviving B-26 Marauders (the only one outside of America, on loan from the Bourget Air & Space Museum). There’s an exhibit dedicated to Easy Company’s attack on the German artillery position at Brecourt Manor, depicted in the second episode of Band of Brothers.

Done at Utah Beach, it was getting on lunchtime. Rather than trying to find a restaurant that could seat and feed us in a reasonable time, we stopped at a boulangerie, and Rainer bought their supply of ready-made sandwiches. We had a choice of four different kinds, each made of a baguette with meat and cheese. I had the camembert with ham. The bread was delicious. And each sandwich was less than 4€, a bargain. We munched lunch on the bus on the way to Omaha.

Our tour coordinator, Rainer, who accompanied us on our “free day” trip and speaks six languages, for some reason struggles to say “Omaha”. It comes out “ohama”. After three or four attempts, he gets it. It is a source of amusement, not ridicule. A few folks kept saying, “Peyton Manning!” C’mon, people. Why would Europeans know who Peyton Manning is, or why he says “Omaha” so much?

At Omaha Beach, we visited the memorial on the beach before going to the Omaha Museum. “The Brave” was dedicated on June 6, 2004. People like to stand right next to it for photos, even though there’s a sign there saying to stay 3 meters away. I didn’t get any closer than that, but I can understand that most folks didn’t see the sign. I didn’t until Genae pointed it out to me.

Onward: up the beach exit road to the Omaha Beach Memorial Museum. I can hear you asking, “C’mon, Dave, another museum? How many D-Day museums are necessary?” That’s a fair question. The museums in the area are focused on events that happened in the immediate area, rather than covering the whole conflict. Aside from the historical differences at the beaches, each museum has a unique way of presenting things. The Omaha museum has a number of large dioramas demonstrating the equipment used by both sides. In addition, Omaha has a vast quantity of artifacts found in the area, both excavated from the land and found in the sea.

Every town in the area seems to have a Sherman tank parked in the town square or in the center of a traffic circle. There’s one in the parking lot of the Omaha museum. Both of today’s museums also had examples of German side arms, rifles, machine guns, and light artillery. No German tanks, though – no doubt they were all destroyed in combat. The Shermans are everywhere, though. We made nearly 50,000 of that single tank model, which is about the same as all German tank models combined.

Our second day at the beaches made up for the disappointment of Tuesday. We enjoyed our visit to the chateau and the apple farm and the rest, but our prime reason for going on this trip was to see the invasion beaches. This second day there made up for the shortfall. It was a good day.

We finished the day with the whole group over drinks, then our last group meal. Rainer was thoughtful enough to ask the restaurant if Genae could have a chicken dinner instead of the salmon. After dinner, Genae and I went in search of ice cream. We found some. My doctor won’t be happy with my next A1C results, I’m guessing.

Friday, July 3

We were back on the bus at eight this morning for our day’s travels.

First on the itinerary was the Caen Peace Memorial. As the name suggests, it’s located in the town of Caen. The town was extensively damaged during the Normandy campaign. About 35% was destroyed in combat (and more damaged), but some guidebooks give the figure as 70%. Having your city destroyed is a golden opportunity for urban renewal, so many damaged buildings were destroyed rather than repaired, and some undamaged buildings were torn down, as well.

I have issues with the rest of the name, Caen Peace Memorial. It’s a war museum. It’s a very nice war museum, which presents its material clearly and effectively. Exhibits are multimedia- artifacts, text, and videos. The exhibits are on the floor below the entry, reached on a wide spiral. As we descend, we are shown Hitler’s rise. The wall starts white, but as you descend, it turns light gray, then dark gray, and the texture goes from smooth to rough. Dark, rough times are ahead, no doubt. For the most part, it’s about the Normandy campaign. One large room is dedicated to the Holocaust. Another room covers the Pacific.

The museum is built on top of a large command bunker built by the Germans. General Wilhelm Richter’s headquarters staff (716th Infantry Division) directed operations from here during the campaign, occupying the bunker from June 5 to June 23. I was a bit disappointed – there’s very little of the bunker visible. Visitors navigate through what was a central corridor, but the passage is modern and comfortable, with several exhibits but no feeling that we’re in a bunker.

Our next stop was Les Vergers de Ducy. The estate is a large apple orchard that produces organic apple juice, hard ciders, pommeau, and calvados. After we learned a bit about how these products are made (and what they all are), we had a nice buffet-style lunch of chicken, potato salad, beets, carrots, a variety of local cheeses, with a tasty rice pudding for dessert. We also sampled all their products as well as a couple of jellies.

From there, we headed to Bayeux for a visit to the cathedral. Our guide was a wealth of information about the place – too much to retain it all. It’s of the same era as the cathedral I visited in Brussels. It was nice to have somebody telling me what I was looking at.

Construction began in the 11th century by William the Conqueror’s brother, who was made bishop at the age of 15. In the following centuries, it was expanded. Our guide explained many of the frescoes and friezes and stained glass. Each tells a story to the illiterate congregation, including the Last Supper to the resurrection in one fresco, to the assassination of Beckett in another. She kept calling them “comic strips”, which gets the point across, but there’s not a lot of comic content in these stories. Also, if you try to read them left-to-right, top-to-bottom, you’ll get the story backwards: most are read from the bottom up and alternate between left-right and right-left.

I think our visit there would have included a look at the Bayeux Tapestry if it had been on-site. It’s currently making its way to London for display in the British Museum. Our guide told us its story as well, while noting that it’s an embroidery, not a tapestry. Some wags, knowing the history of the British Museum, suggested the French might want to verify that the original was returned and not a copy.

Before returning to Honfleur, we had some time to wander through Bayeux. It’s a bit congested right now, as the town is hosting its annual Medieval Festival. We managed to find a patisserie, where we indulged in a treat called a Mont Blanc. It was decadent. If I lived in France, I’d balloon up to 400 pounds and die of diabetes. I find these little gems almost irresistible.

Thursday, July 2

Today, we went to Mont-Saint-Michel. We left the hotel at 7:30 am and didn’t return until 6:00 pm, which gave us four hours there. This is the farthest we’ll go from Honfleur on this tour. I noticed today that the Prime Meridian is about 30km west of Honfleur. Crossing the Prime Meridian just doesn’t have the same cachet as crossing the equator.

Mont-Saint-Michel is a bit overwhelming. Our guide did an excellent job of giving us the history of the place, but it’s like drinking from a firehose. I’ve retained only a small percentage of it. Trying to pay attention to her while looking at everything, trying to see as much as I can, is a recipe for overload.

The place is so widely known, I think everyone has a mental picture of it. It’s on a small, rocky island just offshore. The tide here is extreme. Our guide said nine meters; Wikipedia says fourteen. For most of a thousand years, you needed a boat to reach it at high tide but could walk there over the mud flats at low tide. Beware the quicksand, though! People are not allowed out on the mudflats without a guide, and children are taught how to spot quicksand.

All the stone for all the structures on the island came from other islands. Imagine, a thousand years ago, quarrying rock on that island, loading it on a boat, then carrying it to the top of this island to build the abbey. There are similar islands nearby, but I wonder if there was once one more island than there is today.

For a while, Mont-Saint-Michel was accessible by a causeway. That was recently removed and replaced by a bridge. The causeway interfered with the flow of water and was creating problems. We arrived not much after high tide, and by the time we left, the water was quite distant from the island. I would have loved to be able to walk on the mud flats.

Our guide told us France is the most visited nation in the world and that the Eiffel Tower is the most visited attraction in France and that Mont-Saint-Michel is the second most. [She was close. France is the most visited nation, but Disneyland Paris is the most visited attraction. The Eiffel Tower is 3rd, and Mont-Saint-Michel is 17th.] We had a long wait for a shuttle bus to take us from the parking lot to the island. Once there, we were swept through the place by the enormous crowd, ascending ramps and climbing stairs, past restaurants and gift shops as you climb.

Once in the abbey, you follow a single route through the enormous, labyrinthine structure, finally exiting through the gift shop (of course!). I can’t even come up with an estimate of how many people were there. I’m generally annoyed by big crowds. The whole island was crawling with people, but you could never see very many of them at the same time.

The place is an architectural and engineering marvel. Begun in the tenth century, before f=ma was a thing, before calculus was dreamt up, when Material Studies wasn’t a science but just trial and error applied over centuries. The oldest structure is at the top: it’s built from the top down!

It has the third-oldest Gothic arch in existence. Luckily, it was spared destruction in World War II. It was a tourist attraction for German soldiers, but off-limits to Allied soldiers except for a handful of American officers. Hemingway was here in 1944 and is said to have drunk all the alcohol in the place.

After the tour, we had time to visit the shops and grab a bite to eat. I had a crepe with egg, cheese, and “chorizo”. This is one of those many cultural differences, much like my experience with “BBQ burgers” in Belgium last year. The chorizo turned out to be more like pepperoni. The cheese was something like Swiss, the egg was sunny-side up, and the crepe wasn’t rolled up but had the edges folded over, making it square. I accompanied this with a (Belgian) beer. It was quite tasty.

Side note here. We looked for snacks at a small grocery store a couple of days ago. I spotted a jar of “BBQ sauce,” which looked to be the same stuff I experienced in Belgium. At Omaha Beach, I saw a place that claimed to have “authentic BBQ”. I was tempted to go inside to get the true story, but we didn’t have time. I’d be surprised to find anything like authentic BBQ sauce on this continent. No worries: I didn’t come here to have BBQ.

Wednesday, July 1

Another early day, today we boarded our bus at 8:00 for a trip to the village of Entretat, which lies about 50km north of Honfleur. This is a drive through rural France, avoiding the A roads (similar to US interstates). We begin, though, with a trip across the Pont du Normandie, which was the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world when it was constructed. It spans the Seine River near its mouth in the Atlantic.

Entretat is a scenic little village situated in a crease in the cliffs and bluffs that overlook the coast. Much like Arromanches, which we visited yesterday, it was largely untouched by the war. That doesn’t mean the buildings there are ancient – it has been subjected to large floods over the years. Still, many structures are a couple of centuries old. Some of them, though, are called “true fakes”. This describes some of the oldest buildings, which were built elsewhere, dismantled, shipped to Entretat, and reassembled here. They are truly old, but are fake because they’re not original to Entretat.

At the edge of the town, we disembarked from the bus and climbed onto a wheeled train that took us up to the heights to the east. We are here to see the view, a monument, and a church, but there are dairy cows here, and somebody started asking the guide questions about them. So we all walked up to the fence and learned about Normandy dairy cows. The guide said it was the first time anybody paid so much attention to the cows.

A few yards away from the cows, we find the Monument “L’Oiseau Blanc” – Nungesser et Coli. Charles Nungesser and François Coli were French World War I aces. In 1927, they attempted to be the first to fly non-stop from Paris to New York City. They disappeared not long after crossing the coast here. The monument consists of a concrete platform in the shape of an airplane, along with a triangular spire reaching westward.

Alongside the monument is the Cappelle Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde. This church is closed except for one day a year. It has a few interesting architectural details, including fish-head-shaped ornaments on the roof rafters. Both of these overlook the village and the limestone cliffs to the west. There’s a footpath from here down to the beach, which I’d have loved to take, but it was not on the cards.

After the train ride back down the hill, we walked through the streets to the waterfront. The buildings fronting the beach are all new since the Second World War. When the occupation began, the Germans demolished all the buildings along the beach and built fortifications, which are still in existence, including machine gun bunkers and anti-tank walls. France’s northern coast is lined with derelict bunkers and gun emplacements and anti-tank walls. They have no utility. They’re ugly. And they’re too big to economically demolish.

Naturally, I had to walk on the beach. It was blustery, not exactly beach weather. I was happy we brought our jackets. A guy in surfing pants and a hi-vis t-shirt went out into the water. Brrr.

The beach here is stone, inch or inch-and-a-half. This is what Omaha Beach was on D-Day. Today, Omaha Beach is sand, not a stone to be found. In the weeks after D-Day, the Allies used all the stone on Omaha Beach to make roads. If your military is going to fundamentally change the landscape, I think it’s better to use their beaches to build roads than to build indestructible, ugly, brutalist sculpture.

We retraced our steps through Entretat and embarked on the bus for our next stop: Chateau du Bec. I found the place fascinating. A fellow named Jeremy purchased it only three weeks ago. He had worked with the previous owner for several months, so he was quite familiar with the buildings, grounds, and operations.

The 10th-century chateau is, unusually, situated in a valley rather than on top of a hill. Tactically, it is critical to hold the high ground. But sometimes, other factors prevail. In this case, the chateau is on the site of some significant springs, the source of the local river.

Normandy has a lot of Viking history. Norman is “north men”. When the chateau was first built, it was fortified. This was a strategic location in the conflict between the King of France and the Vikings. A deal was struck such that the Vikings could have the area as long as they didn’t sail up the Seine and attack Paris.

The chateau was defortified centuries ago and has undergone a series of enhancements and extensions. The stone that made up the walls was used to add on to the main house as well as the outbuildings.

Before we went inside, Jeremy gave us a tour of the immediate grounds – the springs and a couple of the ponds. The grounds are kept wild, other than an area of lawn around the ponds where a few sculptures stand, including a five-foot-tall mouse looking with some trepidation at a similarly large mousetrap.

Inside, we were fed and entertained. Jeremy introduced us to Jerome, who gave us a demonstration of a pottery wheel and a lecture on porcelain, earthenware, and pottery. In the room where we mainly congregated, Patrick, a Senegalese musician, played his kora and sang. I declined the opportunity to throw a bowl on the wheel, but Patrick let me pick a couple of notes on his kora. It’s a home-made traditional African instrument, but with pickups for his amplifier.

The food was delightful. We had about a dozen different sorts of hors d’oeuvres. Jeremy described each one. One was a miniature hot dog, reimagined by a French chef. Another was in a little bowl made of hash brows. I liked some better than others, but I’d have any of them again. Delicious. We also had wine and champagne. The next course was cheese, 8 or 10 varieties, mostly local, with some bread and jams. Finally came the little desserts – one rum-flavored, one lemon, and a few chocolate. Again, I had one of each and will testify to their tastiness.

Jeremy was quite personable. I managed to chat with him a few times during the nearly four hours we were there. I asked some general questions about the upkeep involved in maintaining such a structure. He chuckled, said he didn’t really know much about repointing stone and rendering the exterior walls, and concluded with, “It’s a little scary, but that’s how you know you’re alive!” His face lit up.

Jeremy’s final treat for us was some home-made limoncello. The woman he bought the chateau from lives in Sicily and has a lemon orchard. She sent him 75 kilos of lemons, and he used some of them to make a batch of this digestif. I’m a simple man – generally, beer is my only alcoholic treat. Here, on restaurant menus, I see apéritifs and digestifs. An apéritif is an alcoholic beverage usually served before a meal to stimulate the appetite, while a digestif is served after a meal, traditionally believed to aid digestion. Limoncello is a digestif.

I admit I was disappointed yesterday with not getting enough time on the D-Day beaches. If I had planned the trip myself, I’d have been sure to spend more time there. On the other hand, I’d never have been able to come up with today’s activities. Today was quite enjoyable and is a big offset for yesterday’s disappointment.

Back in Honfleur, we were on our own for dinner. We went to a place that one of the other couples in the group recommended. Genae had a chicken dish while I had beef carpaccio. I didn’t really know what I was ordering, and that’s part of the appeal. I thought it was a dinner salad; the menu said arugula, beef, and shaved parmesan. It turns out it’s typically an appetizer, and I didn’t realize the beef would be raw. Adventures in dining! Afterward, we wandered through the old part of town until we found some ice cream for dessert.

One little side note. I love seeing all the cars we don’t have here. I’m not a fan of giant SUVs and pickup trucks, so I enjoy seeing the smaller cars. One I kept seeing is a little two-seater. I saw a few of them, all in a sort of primer gray. Walking down the sidewalk, we came across three teenagers getting out of one. I didn’t see how they were all in it, but it must have been a tight (and unlawful?) fit. I asked them if it’s electric. They didn’t speak any English, so one got his phone out and typed into a translator app. It took him a few tries to craft his answer, which was, “It runs on sperm.” It is, indeed, an electric vehicle, a Citroën Ami. I asked Rainer if, perhaps, the kid had made a typo, but he shook his head and smiled. They were having some fun with me.

Tuesday, June 30

This morning, we piled into our tour bus at 8:00 and headed to the D-Day beaches. We had looked at the weather report and decided we’d be comfortable in shorts and wouldn’t need our jackets. Although Paris had been suffering through a heat wave, here on the Normandy coast, it was a different world.

We picked up our tour guide on the way.

Our first stop would be Pegasus Bridge, about 3 or 3.5 miles inland from the easternmost landing beach, Sword. This bridge over the Caen Canal was an important target in the D-Day invasion. If captured successfully, it would limit the effectiveness of any German counterattack. British glider-borne forces made the attack, and this was the location of the first combat casualties of Operation Overlord.

As we drove east, it started to sprinkle, and the skies ahead grew darker. The bus has an LED display that alternates between the current time and the outside temperature. The temperature was slowly going down as we drove. By the time we got to Pegasus Bridge, the weather was fairly nasty. On the “good” side, we didn’t even get off the bus there: we parked on the side of the road while our guide told us the story.

There’s a museum there inside the bunker the Germans made to defend the bridge. The 1944 bridge no longer carries the road – it has been moved and is now a museum piece. Around the old bridge are other war machines – a Horsa glider, a tank, a truck, an artillery piece. Although I’m personally more interested in the American landing beaches than the sites of British and Canadian battles, it would have been nice to get a closer look at the old bunker.

After a few minutes, we were on the road to Arromanches. This little town sits right on the water in a crease between the bluffs that run along the shore here. To get here, we drove through the little tourist beach villages that have been built up along Sword and Juno beaches. Arromanches is in the Gold Beach sector. On our drive, we saw quite a few memorials, statues, and war machines, but we didn’t stop. No doubt, British or Canadian tourists on similar tours would get to stop at some of them.

I’ve read quite a bit about D-Day and knew the name Arromanches, but I couldn’t have told you what happened there. The town was spared bombardment and survived the war almost untouched, still featuring 18th- and 19th-century houses.

Arromanches is significant because it is where one of the Mulberrys was built. When the invasion was planned, the Allies knew that it would be an extended period of time before any port city could be captured, and that it might take weeks to get any captured port into working condition. The answer, then, was for the Allies to bring their own port. That’s what the Mulberrys were. We toured a nice museum devoted to the one that was constructed here, the remains of which are still not far offshore.

After the museum, we had lunch at a restaurant next door: cod with rice and a nice sauce. Dessert was two scoops of sherbet – one mango and one raspberry. I enjoyed the meal, but Genae found it less than satisfying. By the time we finished lunch, the weather had changed – it was now sunny and warmer, with a few high clouds. This change raised our spirits considerably.

From Arromanches, we proceeded to Pointe du Hoc. This is a militarily significant promontory between Omaha and Utah Beaches. Omaha Beach is 7km long, and at the western end, there’s a 16km stretch of cliffs that cannot be assaulted. Pointe du Hoc is on one of these cliffs and has a commanding view. It’s an ideal spot for big guns. Any German guns here needed to be put out of action, or casualties would be punishing.

This was a job for the Rangers. They scaled the cliffs using rocket-powered grappling hooks and ladders borrowed from the London Fire Department. When they gained the top, they discovered that the German artillery had been moved. All that was there were some telephone poles masquerading as guns, and some concrete emplacements that were still under construction. The Rangers held the high ground against repeated German counterattacks, suffering heavy losses.

The entire area is cratered by enormous shell holes. Paths for visitors wind between the craters. The concrete casemates are partially destroyed, but visitors can go down into the most intact one. I got a bit behind the group because of my compulsion to visit all these bunkers. Trying to catch back up, I passed other tour groups and caught snippets of their spiels. Each was telling a different story. There are many ways to tell the story of the combat here, and all can be true, but none can be complete.

Our last destination for the day was the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach. We timed it so that we’d get to see the flag-lowering ceremony. On the way there, we drove on the road right along a section of Omaha Beach, where we made a quick stop. I ran out toward the water. The tide was out – but I don’t know how low low tide is. The tide on D-Day would have been farther out than low tide today, and hours earlier. I tried to imagine how I’d have felt had I been part of it. My imagination failed completely. I regularly hike with a 35-pound pack, but I don’t run with it. Soldiers getting off the Higgins boats carried three times that weight and were running into Hell. The road that exits the beach and leads to the top of the bluffs looked like it was a mile away, surrounded by the remains of bunkers on the beach. If I had been here, would fear have paralyzed me, or driven me toward the exit road? The thought boggles.

We arrived at the cemetery a few minutes before the flag-lowering. I’d always believed that the cemetery was American land. It is not. We are in France, and this is French land. The cemetery, though, is administered by Americans. It was moving to be here for the flag-lowering, but that also meant our time was quite limited. After checking out the monument here, reminiscent of the one at the Punch Bowl in Hawai’i with its mosaic campaign maps and rosters of the fallen, we visited the museum there. Genae and I were the last visitors allowed in, and we went through the exhibits too quickly.

Our activities for the day complete, we returned to the hotel just before 7 after sitting a while in Caen’s rush hour traffic.

For dinner, we went back to the pizza place where we had lunch yesterday. “Pizza place” doesn’t do it justice – it’s a nice, little Italian restaurant with much more than pizza. After being disappointed with today’s lunch, Genae wanted to get some comfort food. I had the carbonara and a beer. We had recommended the place to a couple of other tour members, and when we got there, we were the fifth couple from the group to arrive. Rainer would have been so disappointed in us! For dessert, we split a chocolate mousse. Again, it was all very tasty.

Overall, I thought the day was a mixed bag. Aside from issues with the weather, we felt rushed. We drove past several places I’d have liked to investigate, and the places we did visit, we’d have liked to have had more time. I guess this is just how some of these sorts of group trips are.

Monday, June 29

I woke up at 1:11 to piss. I didn’t fall back asleep for nearly four hours. Instead of a good night’s sleep, I had two 2-hour naps. This, after 2 minutes the night before.

When we went down for breakfast, we saw that the boat right in front of the hotel was the center of quite a bit of attention. About three hours earlier, there was a fire in the kitchen. The fire was out, but there were still eleven or twelve emergency vehicles on the scene. The street in front of the hotel was closed, and it’s the main route into town.

Later, we learned that there were about 120 guests on the boat. These boats run tours up the Seine to Paris. There were no injuries, but everyone’s vacations were ruined. This is high tourist season in Honfleur, and I’m sure they had difficulty finding accommodations with all the hotels booked up. That fire ruined the vacations of those 120 people.

We get breakfast in the hotel every morning, in a reserved dining room. The breakfast buffet was pretty good. Scrambled eggs, poached eggs, sausage, bacon, cereal, oatmeal, breads, pastries, crepes, cheeses, cold cuts, fruit, and more. I like crispy bacon, and here it was not at all crispy.

Genae was a bit behind me getting breakfast. While I was eating, she was doing her hair. She brought a curling iron with her, but it didn’t like French electricity and melted. Our adapters only adapt the plugs – not the voltage. If converting a curling iron into a Dali-esque sculpture is the worst thing that happens to us, this trip will be a success.

After breakfast, we had a guided walking tour of old-town Honfleur. One of the first things we learned was the population and the number of annual visitors. Those were both very close to the numbers for Estes Park, but Honfleur entertains that many tourists without being the gateway to a large national park.

Honfleur sits on the south side of the Seine estuary. It’s an historic village and port, but it hasn’t been important for ages, what with Le Havre, France’s fourth busiest port, just to the north.

Old town Honfleur struck me as a small-town version of old-town Brussels – smaller, less ornate buildings on narrower streets. Honfleur is a port, though, so an inner harbor substitutes for the big square. The port serves two fishing boats, some day-trip boats, and the river tour boats parked in front of our hotel.

Our tour took us to the Church of St. Catherine, a wooden structure built in the 15th Century. It was doubled in size at one point. Notably, because of the risk of lightning, the bell tower, also made of wood, was across the street. That way, if the belfry took a lightning strike, the church wouldn’t burn. The steeple features a lightning rod in the form of a cat with its tail up.

We stumbled upon a caramel shop, where we bought over 9€ of caramels – your basic caramel flavor, plus strawberry-vanilla, raspberry, blueberry, coffee, licorice, apple, and maybe a dozen more.

For lunch, we asked Rainer if the pizza place a couple of doors down from the hotel was any good. He shook his head and directed us to a place two blocks the other way. He was disappointed that we were looking for Italian food in France, but we’ll get enough French food during the week, no doubt. I had pizza a couple of times in Belgium; why not have it here? I had the four cheese, which was tasty, if difficult to eat. Here, like in Belgium, they don’t slice your pizza, but give you a steak knife and a fork. I had a nice local beer, so the meal was a success.

After lunch, we set off towards the ocean. This led us past the locks between the basins and the inner harbor of Honfluer and the estuary, and to the Jardin des Personnalités (Garden of Personalities). It’s a beautiful park that commemorates many of the notable figures in Honfleur’s past – Erik Satie (pianist and composer), Claude Monet (painter and founder of Impressionism), Eugène Boudin (painter), Charles Baudelaire (poet), Samuel de Champlain (explorer), and a dozen others. Not all the figures were from Honfleur (Monet was from Le Havre), and not all of them lived in Honfleur during their lives. But Honfleur was in some way important to them, and they are important to Honfleur.

In the garden, each personality was represented by a bust in a little themed garden-within-a-garden. You move down a path with these little scenarios on both sides, with Monet’s at the end, on a little peninsula in a large pond full of lilies, large goldfish, and ducks. I thought this was particularly apt, and yet, somehow, managed not to get a photo.

Done with the garden, we walked along the seawall to its end, where we arrived at the beach. We didn’t venture far down the beach. The tide was out. Most people were walking on the dry sand, some were digging in the wet sand for clams, or mussels, or whatever they were looking for, and one was packing up his kayak on a little trailer he pulled behind him for the walk to the parking lot. Nobody was swimming – that was prohibited, at least where we were.

On the way back to town, we stopped for a few minutes on a shady park bench to relax. This was serendipitous – after a few minutes, two boats approached the lock. It was hard to tell until they were in the lock that the ocean was a couple of feet higher than the harbor. This is the first time I’ve watched a lock operate. I was entertained, but I’m not so sure about Genae.

On the way back to the hotel, we made a slight detour to the Ferris wheel. It’s not a thrill ride, but it’s big enough to give us a nice view of the town and the Pont de Normandie, the large cable-stayed bridge that spans the Seine.

At 5:30, back at the hotel, we sat in our breakfast room for a lecture about the French Resistance during the war. This was given by the same gal who gave us our tour of Old Town. I’ve read quite a bit about the war and was not expecting to learn much, but it was an interesting and informative talk. In the wrap-up, she told us the story of her grandfather, who was arrested and sent to a camp in Ukraine from which he escaped and returned home before the war ended. He had been arrested more than once, escaped more than once, and undergone torture. For his troubles, the French government awarded him a pension equivalent to about 100€ a year. Thank you for your service!

Dinner was another group affair. Genae had low expectations, but was treated very well. The salad was salmon – a bit like tuna salad, with toast and greens. When Genae said she didn’t want it, Rainer had them bring her a garden salad. This restaurant was known for its fish, so, again, Genae was not expecting to enjoy it. When the servers brought out our plates, I first thought it was salmon steak. Instead, it was ham steak with potatoes. Very tasty. Dessert was an apple pastry. Delicious. (This area is known for its apples. More on that later.) Three of our group didn’t make it to dinner. Rainer asked the servers to bring out three more desserts, one of which Genae and I split. Yes, I’m way off my diet, but I’m enjoying it.

I’ve been getting flyers in the mail from the Roaming Buffs, an alumni-associated travel group, for ages. I almost always glance at them in a “where am I not going to go next?” sort of way. Pretty pictures of exotic places with prices that are out of our reach. I would love to go to any number of those places, but I don’t think I’m a If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium kind of traveler.

I did take that sort of trip when I went to the Soviet Union when I was in high school with my Russian language teacher. There were 38 of us kids, wrangled by 4 adults. The only way to manage such a group is on a guided tour. On the other hand, my Belgium trip was pretty much the exact opposite of a guided tour, no real plan, figuring out restaurants and subways on my own.

When I got back home from my Belgium trip last year, the latest Roaming Buffs brochure was on the counter. “Hey, Dave, let’s go to France next year.”

So, here we are. It’s a 9-day guided tour of Normandy. We fly round-trip direct from Denver to Paris on Air France. Since we fly out of Paris, why not spend a couple of nights there? We bought the airline tickets, then Air France sent me an email telling me that they’d canceled our return flight and booked us for the next day, so we’ll be there a third night.

Saturday, June 27, and Sunday, June 28 (Days 1 and 2)

Our flight is scheduled to depart at 5:40. Genae wants to follow the rules and get to the airport three hours early. That’s the kind of rule I historically tended to violate, as I’m not a big fan of hanging out in airports. But I complied (without protest), and Michael dropped us off at 2:40.

Before we even found where to drop off our checked bags, we stopped to get our passports and boarding passes out. I was shocked to see that the backpack compartment where I stowed my passport was unzipped. And the passport was not there. I had no doubt it was in that compartment, but I searched all the compartments three times. No joy. This is a great start to the trip.

I retraced my steps to where Michael dropped us off. Still no joy. So I phoned Michael. Hopefully, it fell out in the back of the car. Michael was being a good driver and not answering his phone when behind the wheel. I called him three times and sent him a text. Genae called him, and he still wasn’t answering.

I went to the Air France desk to see if our flight was on time. They said it was. I asked them how late we could check in, but over the course of the conversation got three different answers.

When I got back to the chairs where Genae was waiting, she said that she’d called Michael again and he’d finally answered. The passport was not in the car. So he had to go all the way home. He found it lying on the floor where I’d set our bags before we loaded the car. An hour after my initial panic, he was back at the airport to save the day. The only wrinkle was that I was waiting where he had dropped us off, but he made a wrong turn and was two levels down, so I had to run down to meet him before he was forced to make another lap.

Disaster averted, we went to the gate and waited to board. For some unknown reason, we did not board on time. Also, the PA system wasn’t working, so everybody piled up together at the same time rather than grouping by boarding zone. Chaos.

It was well after 6:00 before we took our seats. And waited. And waited. Finally, they pushed us away from the gate, and we taxied out to the runway, where we joined the queue for takeoff. Next, the pilot announced that the wind had changed and we needed to taxi to a different runway. Where we waited for some emergency vehicles to do something. In the end, it was after 7:15 before we took off.

Although I don’t fly much anymore, I have enough experience that my expectations for beverage and meal service aren’t very high. Still, Air France failed to meet my low expectations. I’m used to being able to get a whole can of soda to myself, but they were serving from 2-liter bottles, giving each passenger a tiny Dixie cup of about 3 ounces without a refill for a couple of hours. Yeesh. The dinner wasn’t bad – typical for airline food. The breakfast was disappointing. So it goes.

On my trip to Belgium last year, we departed a few minutes late, but the pilot burned some extra fuel to get us back on schedule. No such luck this time, and it looked like we weren’t taking the fastest route. A great circle route between Denver and Paris should have us going nearly to Hudson Bay, just south of Greenland, and over Ireland and England. Instead, we were flying almost due east. We later heard that, perhaps, we had avoided some bad weather along the shorter route.

My Fitbit tracks my sleep. When we got off the plane, I looked at what it had logged: a score of 40, whatever that means. Usually, my score is in the 80s. Whatever that means. I’m having a bit of trouble reconciling this. If sleeping 7 hours and 2 minutes gives me an 87 score, how did I score 40 by sleeping a whopping 2 minutes? Frankly, I’d have said I didn’t sleep at all.

We made our way through customs without incident, but we are disappointed that we didn’t get our passports stamped. Oh, well.

It was a three-hour drive from CDG to our hotel in Honfleur, including a stop at a highway rest stop. The toilets were free (nice surprise), and the vending machines were much more sophisticated than anything I’ve seen at home.

At the hotel, we had a meet-and-greet over beverages. This trip wasn’t put together by the Roaming Buffs, but by AHI, which, I believe, stands for Alumni Hospitality, Inc., or something to that effect. Our group was comprised of Roaming Buffs and Traveling Wildcats (Kansas State). Our tour coordinator was Rainer (pronounced “Rhine-er” rather than “rain-er”). He was born in the Netherlands but has lived in the south of France for quite some time. He speaks six languages. I wonder if he has a German accent in all of them.

The other travelers were, by and large, well-educated and successful. One couple brought their college-aged granddaughter along, and one woman was traveling solo; the rest were couples. We had a couple of doctors, a pilot, a farmer, and a private equity guy. Two of the guys were Vietnam vets. One guy was an avid birder; except when we were out for dinner, he wore binoculars strapped to his chest.

After our little get-together, we headed out to the restaurant. When feeding a large group like this, everybody gets the same meal. Tonight it was a salad (camembert cheese on toast, with strips of salmon and some greens) and what one of the other travelers called a “salmon burrito”. Dessert was half a dozen little treats. I don’t know what any of them were. Each was only a couple of bites, but all were delicious.

Genae’s not a big fan of salmon or cheese, so it was a less-than-ideal meal. We had limited control over menu selection. At all the group meals, everybody would be served the same dish.

Honfleur is at nearly 50° north latitude, so the sun doesn’t set until after 10, which is about when we returned to the hotel. I was looking forward to a good night’s sleep.

Here’s a group photo we took later in the week. Rainer is at the far left, giving us a thumbs-up.