Normandy

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(Click on any linked picture to see a larger version)
 
 Thursday, June 29:  Our last few days in the Olde Country.  With slightly bigger car on the right side of the road, we headed west toward the Normandy coast.  By the time we left Versaille, it was evening.  Then we started to look for a hotel.  And we looked, and looked, and drove, and looked, and stopped, and drove- arriving at last  around 2 am.
 
Friday was largely a travel day, but we did manage to swing through some quaint towns, a historic old mill, and atop  some rugged cliff-sided peninsulas adorned  with castles and light houses at their summits.  We stopped and picniced at one, Cape Ferheh.
 Picnicing atop Cape Ferheh The rugged cliff terrain
     

Saturday we started by exploring the twin towns of St. Dinard and St. Malo.  St. Malo is a centuries-old walled city on the sea.  
 Cathedral spire  The main Cathedral at Mt. St. Michel  Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!
     
Next, we drove a few miles north to the amazing Mt. St. Michel, a fairy tale looking castle/village/cathedral built on a tiny hill of land which becomes an island at high tide.  A very defensible position in olden times.
 Mt. St. Michel    
     
A German bunker at Omaha Beach

 

 Sunset over the Atlantic at Normandy
Rounding out the day, we arrived at the Omaha beach area, site of D-day in WWII, just in time to take a brief, frigid swim (Scott, that is), and catch a magnificent sunset.
 Brrrrrrrr  Actually, it was even prettier than this in person
   

A town on the way across Normandy. Chantilly
 On Sunday, we headed back east, stopping at a Calvados apple brandy distillery (kinda like a winery), and then trucking through the rain to Chantilly and Giverny, two royal palaces on the outskirts of Paris. 
   
In Monet's gardens
     
Giverny was the home of Monet.  We toured his home and gardens in the drizzling rain.  Our final adventure, on the way to a hotel near the airport, was to get caught in a massive mob/traffic jam in Paris.  It was the night they one the world cup in soccer.  And we thought they were just excited to see Americans.

And, that's it.  We came home.  A little more cultured, a little more engaged, a little more ready to go back.  

C'est la vie!
 

London Somerset, Devon Paris Normandy

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