France Day 6: Versailles

My dad's not used to driving a turbo, nor a manual, so getting onto the highway is a squid-like process, gathering speed for a few seconds, and then slowing and coasting for a couple before repeating the process... This is the same way he tours.

The answer to yesterday's question is zero, because you forgot them all on your nightstand while packing. Today we went to Versailles as early as we could (while still partaking of the free breakfast - the poor-rich phenomenon at work) which involved driving through Paris traffic at it's best. It was much like high-speed beltway traffic around any major city in the north-east, except with the bonus of motorcycles passing you through slots less than a foot wider than themselves. So pretty fun, actually, made me miss driving / wish I had a bike. I saw one girl ride up to her office on the back of a motorcycle and kiss her boyfriend goodbye ... except the helmets were in the way, so it was sort of a football-helmet smash / kiss combo deal. Very cute.

Versailles was surprisingly easy to get into, smaller than expected, and more opulent than imagined. The line was long, but fast moving, and we were in to see the next line - for audioguides - in minutes. Protip: if you take earbuds to a museum you won't have to hold the audioguide up to your ear the whole time. If you take a splitter you and your partner can hear the same facts at the same times (convenient) and will have to walk like Siamese twins (inconvenient).

The two main things I leaned at Versailles were 1) How good marble looks, especially for fireplaces, and 2) It's so good to be king that it's worth it even if every meal turns into a watching-you-eat event for courtiers. I learned lots of other things about history and art and how easy it is to see over a sea of Japanese tourists, but I don't want to bore you. The hall of mirrors is worth pointing out as gem within the jewelry that is the palace. A row of windows echoed by a row of mirrors, passing cut-glass lamps and chandeliers as they go. Money can definately buy happiness, at least for an hour or two of wow-look-at-this.

After the main tour we (more quickly) did the apartments of the royal princesses, complete with cute libraries and hidden doors. This makes a great time to explain what I meant about my dad touring. He will jog across the courtyard to double check that there's no side-line that's any shorter, but then fall behind the rest of us even though we are walking slowly and listening to every audio entry.... but then he will speed-walk through the girly apartments before coming to a dead-stop to consult the maps and plan for 10 minutes.


The gardens were next, and they played music so that they could charge an additional entry fee. On the flip side, that meant they had one or two of the fountains dancing. We set off into the gardens amidst sprinkles of rain that mercifully disappeared before halting to examine the map. Again. We decided we'd head off to a cafe in the back corner for lunch, and I slipped around a bush to take a meandering route that would intersect them... except they doubled back and didn't walk the route they set off on. Needless to say, there was no intersecting. My brief look at the map gave me an inkling of where they were headed though, so I set off towards it, passing through some sweet faux-ruins. Seriously, my future wife should never let me own a house or we are going to have all sorts of stupid/awesome things going on. Anyways, my glance at the map was brief enough I confused the main lawn with the main canal that extends beyond it (and used to be part of the gardens), so I set off well beyond my goal, turning my shortcut into a two-mile long-cut. Getting back was a walk in the park.

Once I figured everything out I headed to where the cafe actually was, pausing to watch a fountain dance in a pond. They did spinny things, shooty things, and sweet mid-air collisions that looked like sorcery. As I watched, my family showed up, having finished their meal. We watched the fountains and headed off for the rest of the park.

Mom and I pealed off to visit the Trianons, smaller palaces built for the mistress of the king so she could get away from the hustle and bustle of Versailles. The larger of the two we visited was filled with a clothing exhibition, meaning I was the only guys and that we could skim the signs. It did have a cool room to show off all the malachite given to Napolean by Tsar Alexander, and a beautiful open-air marble hallway connecting the two halves. This left us enough time to check out the smaller palace, called the Petite Trianon. This was small enough we toured the entire building, which let us see kitchens and bathrooms, things hidden in the larger buildings. King Louis the 15th ordered a dining room in which the table lifted, fully set, from the kitchen, but he died before it was completed. We could still see the outline on the floor where it would have worked, though.

Our time expired, we headed back to meet the boys on the "train" - which had no rails and a diesel engine, but close enough, right? They had walked around some and gotten ice-cream. We took a family picture on the way out (our second of the day) and headed back to Paris.

Dad really wanted to drive the Arc de Triumph, so we let him. It was scary at times, since incoming traffic has the right of way. But he didn't stall it anywhere scary and didn't hit any of the scooters flying in off the side streets and swerving through, so no worries. We'd finished Versailles faster than expected though, so we had time to do one more thing in Paris. Sacré-Cœur it was!

Sacré-Cœur is one of the newer churches in Paris, built around the turn of the last century (1900ish) as an optimistic gesture during a recession. The church is pretty, but standard, inside, but it's built on a hill so you can see all of Paris from the front steps. OR you can go up inside and see more (than all!) from the dome! So Ethan, dad, and I did just that. I think it was probably the most fun out of all the church climbs. The spiral staircases are tighter and take some unexpected turns, plus you get spit out onto the roof where you can look at the side-spires and how one would get up them (hop a fence and climb through a few inches of birdpoo. I didn't, because my ex thinks I'll get myself arrested in France and I;m trying to prove her wrong). Then we went up a yet-tighter spiral (300 steps in all) and emerged into a ring around the dome. It was beautiful. The view from the arc was clearer and closer, but here you looked past columns and over domes from a height above all but the tip of Eiffel's tower.




As I'm sure you can tell, I really liked it. I should probably find a job cleaning cathedral gutters or something. We headed down and met with the others who'd been wandering the art markets. There was some cool art, silhouettes free-handed by men with tiny scissors, 3d art on faux 3d backgrounds to fool your eyes, and portraits of every type. We bought naught save a few postcards, got in our car, and headed towards our hotel.

And then away from, and towards again, and then away from but not moving, and then towards but in a bus-only lane. And then no-way because we stalled, and then through the ghetto. It was rush-hour in Paris, and it was a wreck (or was the wreck ahead of us?). Our only saving grace was a GPS and the fact that most people were trying to escape the city, not cross it. Really though, it was a better commercial for scooters than anything else ever could be, seeing them skirt past traffic like rats fleeing a flood. Our unintentional tour included about 50 churches, the Egyptian obelisk where they beheaded everyone, and the Parthenon*, which is now a church. *Not that Parthenon, the other Parthenon.

Eventually we got to the hotel (boring), rested, and went out to get dinner. Italian food served by a pixie-ish waiter at a table far away from the smokers out front. Good food and plenty of it. After dinner we went for a walk to see the American Church (closed, but we "saw" it) and the Trocadero - which is not just a bar in Philly but also a fountainy place where the longboarders hang out. One boarder jumped 3 1/2 feet off his board over a fence and then landed back on his board which had rolled beneath it. We waited 15 minutes but didn't get a repeat, so we walked home crossing under the Eiffel tower, buying another whirly-glowy-bird (for Ethan), and getting a free glowing tower! Well, free to us. All the tower-hawkers came sprinting across and one dropped a tower and his bag of stuff, police at full (but slower - they're never gonna catch a 20y/o african) tilt behind him. After he dropped his stuff he disappeared into the woods, leaving the police a bag of stuff and us a tower! Go team!

Ethan played with his shooty thing and we watched the lights and waved off hawkers. There is a special 1am lightshow, so I must set off into the night. Au Revoir.

Photos of Trianon and Sacre Cour by me, all the rest by Ethan with no direction.

France Day 5: We do (all of) Paris

Background Music

We woke up @ 7:30 to get an early start on the day. You know, make up for yesterday, beat the crowds, etc etc. A quick and by-now standard breakfast at the hotel later and we set out for Notre Dame, with the goal of climbing the tower before the line grew uncontrollably.

The trip from our hotel to Notre Dame was eventful in-and-of itself. We took the metro to our transfer, and then walked in circles until we realized it didn't connect because of track construction (thank goodness the notice had pictures). But they had a shuttle bus that got us close so we made it, just a little later than anticipated. And I finally found a Milton quote that fit: "confounded Chaos roared, / And felt tenfold confusion in their fall / Through his wild Anarchy." That's almost exactly Parisian subways during construction, even the locals had trouble figuring out where we should go.

By this time the line to climb was pretty long, and my parents were a little frazzled, so we just took the free tour (no line) of Notre Dame instead. It's big inside. Pretty too. I'd say larger interior volume than MSM, but less pretty, and far less awesome. Because it was a holy day, we also got to see mass while we toured, which gave it a surreal feel - we took pictures of stained glass windows while opposite a velvet rope a bishop bishoped.

After a few minutes debating it was decided that we'd get in line and do the tower while we were here (Woooo! That was very near the top of my France list). Us boys stood in line where our parents went out to buy multi-museum-passes. That way we didn't have to pay separately for the climb and saved a few Euro. Which is important, as it's becoming rapidly apparent to me that we are the poorest well-off people I know. Not always a bad thing, but neither always a good thing. After about an hour of talking to the Floridians in front of us and various excursions by various members of our party we finally got in to the tower and immediately upwards. We waited in a holding room / gift shop with an amazing lacework spiral staircase, and then headed up to the first level. After quite a while in a (non-lacework) spiral staircase we stepped out on to the roof of the main chapel, eye-level with the gargoyles and on-level with the bell towers.




We took a few pictures and admired the view of the inside of the courtyards when we were given a hurry-up: they were going to be closing the access to see the big bell in less than five minutes. 25+/22+/18+ years of traveling with this family had taught us well, and we all set off at top-speed, melting through the crowd and toward the bell-tower. Past a small door and up some rickety wooden steps was Emmanuel, their largest bell at just over 13 tons. It was rung only on special occasions, but today was a holy day and we were in luck. We quickly took a few pictures and went to wait outside to experience the fabled F (Plain f, though the boat tour said f#) in all it's rolling glory. It was loud. Not F1 loud or rock-concert-loud, but still loud. We listened to it as it was joined by bells in the sister tower until they gradually faded out. Even more fascinating than feeling the gonging blows in your chest was watching the carillion move: the wooden structure ("Absolutely No Smoking!") within the stone tower flexed and swayed several inches with each swing of the bell.

Our musical interlude over, we headed up to the top of the bell tower, stuck our head out the mesh, took in the view, and headed down a dizzying amount of spiral steps. Spinning while descending can help if you hit it just right, but if (/when) you misjudge the rotation it can also make you much dizzier.

Done with Notre Dame, we headed onward to another church, Sainte Chapelle, conveniently close. Our magic multi-pass let us skip the line and we headed into the lower of the two churches, a beautifully carved and painted room. It was a startling contrast to Notre Dame, one that only increased as we ascended a short spiral staircase to the upper church, which was more an excuse to abuse vibrant colors in glass and paint than anything else. There were a baker's dozen stained glass windows, all set with scores of scenes each, telling bible stories in lead and glass.

Done, for now, with churches we headed off to the Louve. We grabbed lunch (uninspiring hotdogs almost saved by the baguettes they came in) and ate on the banks of the river and made our way in. The Lourve is huge. We came in the back entrance and tried to find a shortcut... which ended up being the members-only entrance after my mom sweet-talked the guard. In French. I was impressed too.


The Lourve was also chaos, but this chaos flowed. By flowing with the chaos we made our way from beneath the glass pyramid up two levels to the Mona Lisa, which is, in person, less enticing than in the pictures. It's certainly an experience though, and she does have an intriguing smile, but go for the people-watching more than for a look at something better seen in reproductions. I'd steal different art for myself, such as Antonio Corradin's Femme Voilée, a statue of a woman wearing a veil so well-carved it was hard to believe he hadn't chiseled transparency into marble. We briefly looked at some of the paintings we recognized (some by Suzanne Valadon, a few portraits of Napolean, and straight from my Euro textbook Liberty Leading her People), then we went through the statue hall to see Venus de Milo, which is another statue more famous for the stories around it - dating from ~120BC but discovered by a peasant in 1870 - than for being outstanding (at least, outstanding within a room of masterpieces). While we were there I figured we might as well see everything they looted from Egypt, so we speed-walked past some sweet sphinxes and Ramses II, pausing occasionally to admire. The palace itself is gorgeous, let alone everything in it. We didn't do it justice at all.

After the Lourve our legs were prettymuch dead... but we never let that stop us before, so why start now? On to Napoleon's Tomb! Our path brought us in the museum side, so we wandered through looking at literally several hundred cannons. Also guns, 15? suits of armor that Louis the 13th had growing up (that could almost nestle Russian-doll style), swords, samurai armor, and assorted stabbing and slashing implements. My favorite part was a cannon five meters long - almost a rifle for cannon balls. Mom liked the intricate brass cannons bought from Algiers in 1870 and immediately placed in the museum, covered muzzle to tail delicate script. The rest of the boys... were standing around too much, so I'll just make up some stuff... Um, the Silver-inlaid rifles for Adam, the pre-ww2 tank for Ethan, and the horse-armor (vaguely dragonesque) for Dad. Good choices, all of you.



Once the more museumly-inclined caught up with us we went to the other side to check out Napoleon's Tomb itself. It was awe-inspiring. I need to get myself disowned by my country and then poisoned so that they'll take over a church for me.

Where as the other churches today went overly-simple or overly-complex, Napoleon's tomb struck a balance that made it all the more pleasing. The stained glass windows were single, strong colors, lighting certain caskets blue and throwing an orange radiance onto the black-marble-and-gold altar. The paintings were large enough to see clearly, and few enough that one could admire each of them without them feeling stale... and the casket was grandiose as only Napoleon could pull off. His body was in a tin casket, which was then layered successively out to seven layers ending in a huge block of red-velvet marble, looking like a fancy squat bathtub with a cover, only large enough to contain a car, or two of the little French cars. All this on an equally large block of green marble, on a marble floor set with names of battles he won, surrounded by 12' statues of Grecian goddesses watching over him. My awe was inspired.

By this time we had walked somewhat near to the hotel, and we needed dinner, so we kept on towards base with our eyes open for a good place to eat. About two blocks from home we found a great place and had a great dinner like we weren't poor! Steak, lamb, chicken, crepes, and half a bottle of wine took away the pain in our legs and reinvigorated us to finish strong. So instead of the hotel, we set off for the metro, transferred to another train, and all the timing was perfect and construction elsewhere. We came up at the traffic circle surrounding the Arc de Triomphe, walked the long way around, took the underground passageway, and set off up the - want to guess? - spiral staircase. This was an open spiral though, which kept it novel and made for interesting photos (and an attempt by Ethan to slide all the way down it later).

At the top we had our best views yet of the Eiffel tower, the arc de office-building , and tower cranes. We're lucky I'm afraid of French prison. After taking in the sites and taking the requisite photos I started videotaping traffic, hoping someone would crash. No one did, but not for trying - traffic within the circle has to yield to entering traffic, so the side streets will shoot in. Combined with a lack of clear lanes and kamikaze bikes makes for a lot of fun. We did spot some sweet cars though. A Murcielago, a brand new top-of-the-line Ferrari, Maserati, Morgan, Lotus, lots of Porches and a surprising number of Aston Martins. That made up for the ticket price (if we had paid it instead of skipping the line with our magic-passes) in itself.

The final scheduled activity was a stroll down the Champs-Élysée. We stopped in a few stores... ok, two stores: Peugot, who had a sweet beach-buggy-warthog-thing, and Mercedes, who had a SLS in matte gray that was stunning, as all SLS are.

Eventually the road stopped going downhill and we decided enough was enough and hopped on the metro (for free, thanks to ticket machines skipping into I'm-confused-so-ride-free mode) for a quick trip back to the hotel. Me and Adam went out to see the Eiffel Tower dance, had a few beers ("How much?" "3 euro." "How about two euro?" "Two for five?" "Two for four?" "Ok! Two... for five."), bought a glowing helicopter toy (black light LEDs, a rubber band, and UV blades), and, together with the canadians nearby, played with it. It was much more fun than it should be.

Today we walked over 6 miles, plus waiting in lines and climbing steps. Join us tomorrow when I will attempt to discover how much Tylenol one can take in a former royal palace.

All photos except the last two by Ethan.

France Day 4: To Paris

We slept in today, which was alright by me. We took our time getting breakfast (Bread and chocolate croissants) and then hit the road back to Paris. I slept part of the way, and played the hold-your-breath-through-tunnels games with Ethan. The tunnels were all short of my max (minute-forty-five, thanks for asking), but I did manage to last three quick ones in succession! That's gotta be worth something, but I have no idea what.

Paris! We considered seeing the catacombs but the line stretched out the door, down the street, and around the corner. We decided we didn't need to see bones that much. If you really want to read about bones stacked up, I've got you covered.

We went to the hotel instead. It's a really nice hotel a few blocks from the Champs de Mars, which is like the Mall in Washington, a large field for doing whatever-you-want, pointing down to the Eiffel Tower! In fact, we can even see the top half of the tower from our room window. We walked down to the tower just to see what was up, and ended up buying tickets from a booth off to the side and walking right up, all but skipping the line. We walked up to the Primer Etage, which is 180' and 360 steps high. Mom wasn't sure if she'd make it. We wandered around reading the signs and seeing the sites. Then mom all-but-dragged us off to the Deuxième Etage. The second level was another 180' and 360 steps, making it the highest structure I've climbed, even though buying a ticket made it feel a bit like cheating. It was still really fun, and the skeletal infra-structure-esque construction adds to the airy effect of it, magnifying it's already grandiose nature. Not as sweet as last night, but still really really cool, and only $5! The second level was worth the climb; we could see all the buildings more distinctly, even seeing the arc in the Arc de Triomphe.


We slacked for a while waiting for mom to finish with the upper level, taking stupid pictures and spotting our hotel, etc etc. Then we headed down to the bottom. We ate ice-cream and headed out to the tour-boats on the Seine (which I forgot to spit in). Our timing was perfect and we walked right on, finding some of the last seats mere minutes before the boat set off. We saw the Louvre, the Assembly National, sailed around Notre Dame and under the most romantic bridge in Paris. I think we sailed under that one four or five times, at least according to the guide. Said guide spoke at least 4 languages, and knew bits of at 4 (or more) more judging by today's performance.









After the tour we set off to find dinner. We were torn between a straight-home route and a 3 mile walking tour of the city, but we settled on a short river-walk and back to the hotel. Crossing the bridge, we saw two or three guys hustling with 3 card monte. Even harder than following the marked coaster was determining who was working with him. Was it the man who just won 100€, or was it the guy who blew fifty on an obvious mistake? Needless to say, we didn't play. Along the river we took a few pretty pictures of the tower, and had one of the family taken before crossing back to head towards our hotel, looking for dinner. Sort of. Mom was determined to eat, cheaply, in the Rue Claire district, which meant skipping the first few promising restaurants and then walking in a circle and away from our hotel. We ended up paying very reasonable prices at a pizza place we only walked past once. I can't complain.

As we walked back to our hotel Adam says "Hey, it's only 8 minutes till the hour, we should check out the light-show." Great idea! So we did. We sat on the mall with thousands of other tourists and watched children shoot glowy-helicopters into the air (They are pretty sweet, I might have to get one) and then watched as strobes shimmered over the tower for five minutes. Made for great pictures, and I'm pretty sure Ethan took some sweet ones.

And since tomorrow's plans start early, so has our night. G'night!

Shots 1&4 by Ethan, 2 by me, and 3 by other tourist.

France Day 3: Normandy and Mont-St-Michel

Today was a good day. We started off with a light breakfast from our B&B, and then set off for the Paratrooper museum down the street. It was trying to rain, but never got much further than mist, which seems to be normal in France.

The Paratrooper museum was pretty cool. In addition to the standard tanks and anti-air guns, they had a collection of rarer toys weapons, including a war-scooter, a WACO glider you could walk through, and a Douglass c-47 you could walk over. One of my favorites was a magnetic shaped charge designed to be slapped onto the side of a tank. Clever and ballsy. Ethan was more impressed by the sheer volume of guns, including many he loved from video games.






After we saw the museum (and the art gallery) we walked out into the back field they let reenactors use. We saw their motorcycle/halftrack combo, their jeeps, and over by their tents they had a table with guns laid out. Which means we got the chance to handle all of their guns, including a Thompson, a Garand, and a colt pistol - the real-steel version of the airsoft pistol Ethan nearly bought the week before. While we were hefting and working the mechanisms on the guns, one of the reenactors started doing laps on the half-track-bike, and was joined by another in the jeep. It was great.

After we finished at the museum we picked up lunch at yesterdays bakery, and then wandered around town looking at tourist information / antique shops. In one of the stores they even had butterfly knives that weren't the ubiquitous terrible ones! I spent a month unsuccessfully searching the black markets of Peru and Bolivia... it turns out I'd gone to the wrong content. The price was right and my French was sufficient (ex: "Monsieur, the knife?"), so now I have two things to keep me out of museums.


Thus we finished in St-Mer-Eglise, and set off to Utah beach, the other American invasion Beach on D-Day. Utah beach is basically a museum on the beach, with the only other evidence of the invasion being streets named after soldiers lost securing the beachhead. During D-day, tides and currents conspired to bring American troops in a mile off-target. Finding much weaker resistance than expected, they quickly brought in all their troops with a minimum (~200) of casualties. We had lunch overlooking the beach, wandered around (literally around) the museum admiring their bomber, and then stepped inside to use their bathroom. In addition to the bomber, they also have a very cool mobile bomb, sort of a remote-control tank half the size of your bed, filled with high-explosive. The films of it in deployment were (fear) inspiring.

[click though for ultra-high-res panorama]

Utah conquered, we set off to Pointe-du-Hoc, taking some fun back roads that made me glad we brought the GPS, if only so that I could watch my mother's face when it sent us down probably-correct shortcuts. Point-du-hoc is great. Imagine a field of concrete caves set on a grass-covered moonscape, festooned with barb-wire. That's exactly what it was. Five German 155mm artillery guns that covered both Omaha and Utah beaches were shelled by battleships into submission... except instead of destroying the guns they put 20' craters on every side of them and scared the Germans into pulling their guns back into the treeline. Then, on D-Day, 255 rangers scaled the 100' cliff under gunfire and grenades to attack the bunkers. After finding the bunkers empty they snuck into the woods, came across the artillery, and destroyed it in stealth. Their task accomplished, they radioed in for reinforcements, but they had taken so long they were presumed dead, and their reinforcements had already been sent to Omaha beach. They were forced to withstand two days of counterattacks... losing half their men. By the time they were relieved there were only 90 left fit to fight. Us boys, on the other hand, spend our day stepping over barbwire and groping blindly through pitch-black bunkers. Ethan recognized the bunker on the tip - the one initially assaulted - from Call of Duty. I got myself muddy in one ill-advised bunker and stung by nettles taking a picture of another. Like I said, it was a good day.



Back in the car and in cleaner pants we went back to Omaha beach, with the goal of actually going down to the beach this time. And we did! We found a place we could park nearer the coast and walked across the large (low tide) expanse to the water. On the way back we climbed upon the mulberry that had washed ashore, relieving dad's regret at having skipped doing so at Arromanches. The D-Day beaches completed, it was time for us to step further back in history. I slept my way there.


We checked into our next hotel and drove out to Mont St Michel, arriving as everyone else was leaving. MSM is a town on a small rocky island topped by a 1000-year-old monastery. Awesome, no? It looks like what Disney World is trying to be, and made our 400 year-old hotel seem downright modern. We wandered around the tidal mud, checking out a small chapel, before being called back by a security guard in a comically small red hat. The tide was coming in sooner than we expected. In fact, as he whistled I could see a 4" wave traveling back up the bay at the pace of a brisk walk. Dad double-checked our parking place (and it's above-sea-level-status) with the security guard and we went up the back gate. Mom really really wanted to see the tide come in so we briskly walked up-up-up the Mountain and halfway back down the other side to the ramparts. It was worth it to watch the mud-flats disappear. (As seen in the animated picture - click!) You could pick out specific "islands" and watch as they flooded, visibly shrinking before your eyes. Then the islets were gone and the rain was back, so we went off to find dinner.

We ordered Ham omelets (the traditional pilgrims-meal for the past half-millenia), a fancy salad, and a crepe for dessert. While we waited for our food (which was a while, we were on french time) dad told us that when he was here with mom the waiter misunderstood him and brought food different than what he ordered. Then they brought us food different from our order. Salmon, instead of Jambon. It was still good, as was dessert. The only ungood part was outside, where it was still raining. We set off to tour the abbey and cathedral regardless. It was sweet. The rain and the evening hour gave everything a gloomy look, and the lighting on it all teetered between clever and awe-inspiring. One of the first rooms was lit only by candles ringing the columns and light tinting its way in through the stained glass. We wove through the cathedral, slowly working our way up and consistently in awe of how cool the building(s?) is(were?). One room had a 20 foot hamster wheel in which three pairs of prisoners took turns cranking supplies up a 80° elevator. Another support pillars for the tower, each fifteen feet across (rebuilt after a collapse with the "No kill like overkill" rule). Others held twin fireplaces tall enough to stand in, and wide enough to sleep Goliath. The castle-complex is so sprawling and intricate that it would take me a week to learn the layout and I'd probably overlook entire rooms. That said, it's a challenge I'd love to take.

Finally, we made our way through a cramped winding stairway and came out in the cathedral itself, a stunning cross-shaped building with vaulted ceilings five stories higher (maybe more), towering above an already-vertical city. My favorite part was the balcony in front of the cathedral. As large as most parking-lots, the balcony offered great views of the tower, the cloister, and the water surrounding the island. Above everything as it was, including the switchbacks of the road below, it felt like Tolkien's castle of Minas Tirith in Gondor, an illusion heightened by the harpist playing inside and the storm playing outside. It might be is the coolest place I have ever legally been.

The next room was a cloister, a courtyard surrounded by a twin-row of magnificently lit arches offering another view of the spires stabbing upward into the fog. Then a dining room and an endless spiral staircase finished the tour, and we made our way down the narrow cobblestone streets, through another chapel, across the drawbridge, and into the clouded night.

The first image and the animation were shot by me. All of the other photos were taken by Ethan. The photos at Mont-St-Michelle except the last were directed by me. Between his skills and my eye for what's photogenic we're great.

France: Day 2: More Normandy

First off, as promised, the ebrake:
FWOOSH! [Ethan says jetfighters say SHEEOOOOoooooow, not FWOOSH. Shows what he knows]


Moving on: We woke up in Arromanches and had breakfast in the hotel. Orange juice, a croissont, and tea, coffea, or hot chocolate. After switching the car out of Russian and stalling it three times, we went out to see the Bayoux tapestry before the crowds showed up. The Bayoux tapestry was embroidered in the 11th Century to commemorate William the Bastard's 1066 transformation into William the Conqueror. Our favorite scenes were looting the corpses (Brice), the bishop slapping Harold's fiancee' (Ethan), and Harold's death by eye-arrow (Adam). A close second for all of us was another lord's escape via rappel.

After viewing the tapestry, we looked at a few exhibits on life and castle design in the middle ages and then watched an informative film, filling in some of the blanks the audio-tour left us with. For example, the entire tapestry was done with four types of stitching and ten colors. Also, just because you can afford goofy haircuts doesn't mean your actors know how to fight.

While we were in Bayoux we went to the cathedral, with towers on each end, one lacy and airy, the other solid, square, and fortified. The interior of the cathedral was pretty standard, the exception being the small crypt that was filled in and lost for two centuries starting in the 1300s. Afterwards we walked through town and dad veered off for a tapisserie for a doughnut. He had no luck.

We headed back to Arromanches for lunch, which consisted of random items bought from a groceries store and a patisserie (Bakery - dad was only one transposition off) and eaten atop an old machine-gun emplacement above the town. The view and the food were great: I love sea-cliffs and fresh French bread.

Our afternoon's entertainment started with a 20-minute film that one-upped Imax by stretching around all 360 degrees. The film was a mix of period recordings, shown a few at a time, and modern video of the area shot in every direction at once. The best images were those shot via helicopter, ending with a moving shot that swooped up over the cliffs of Omaha to show the cemetery...

...Which just happens to be where we went next, sort of. Actually not at all, but wouldn't that be convenient. Instead we walked down a steep and windy quarter-mile hill that made me wonder how many people in our soap-box club would put it into the wall and made our way to the museum on the beach... which we aborted after getting into line and realizing none of us was super-excited for it. So my father and I took the tourist-train back up top, while the rest of them checked the stock at the military supply store.

[Ethan: We proceeded, "Farrell style," to drive around in our little X-lax to discover the public bathrooms that were mentioned on a signpost. After three minutes of driving around a camper parking lot and narrowly scraping through some gaps with less than an inch of clearance to either side, we finally gave up. When exiting, Brice saw a pair of Siamese-urinals stuck halfway behind a doorway. In France it is apparently acceptable to pull over, walk to the back corner of your car, turn away from the road, and relieve yourself - as we have seen multiple times so far this trip. This, being slightly better, was capitalized on by the males in the family. Mom went for the stall until she discovered it amounted to a pot on the floor with no seat and no tissue (we later found out what happened to the paper, look down to the part on St Mere Eglise).]

Then we headed off in the direction of the cemetery... and stopped early at the shore battery outside of town. There were 4 bunkers each with a 5" gun. The first of them was entirely destroyed. We overheard a tour guide explain how: after the mulberry harbor was set up by the allies they repurposed the bunkers as anti-aircraft platforms. While manning the platform, one British officer was cooking himself a cup of tea and dropped his fire-starter into one of the air-vents, where it fell into the magazine. The resulting explosion cracked the roof, blew the back wall across the street, and spread gun parts forward across the field, some of which still lay where they embedded themselves. The rest of the guns were more intact and explorable, and we even got a stranger to take a picture of our family! There were some other strangers in it, but we'll just photoshop them out. After swinging through a few smaller rooms disconnected from the guns we headed out, past half an ancient church THAT THEY WOULDN'T STOP FOR to the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial - another site my dad has wanted to see for his entire life.

The Cemetary was American soil, contained over 9000 bodies, and had another 1500 names listed for those whose "resting place is known only to God. This is their memorial, the whole world their sepulcher." We wandered the perimeter, admiring the perfectly manicured lawn and the dedication of those who sacrificed so much. We then went to the museum, but as I skipped it since the the museum (like all American museums) had a metal detector which disagreed with our cheese-cutting knife, I'll let Ethan tell that part.

[Ethan: Right, so you come in American style (through a checkpoint/metal detector) and marvel at the uncharacteristic modernity of the building. I guess the French had a good influence on us primitives in some way (although not through military strategy, or we'd be speaking German here). All the displays are free standing/hanging with very fun geometric shapes, glass walls, open-ness, and a sweet infinity pool-into-Atlantic that you couldn't get too close to. After that, we meandered through some well chosen quotes about courage, inspiration, and sacrifice that should be on a poster somewhere, and looked up "FARRELL" in the WWII KIA directory. (5 names, one of them one June 6). Continuing downstairs, you walk into an informative video about certain brave people and their stories about how they sacrificed for us (prominent theme, if you couldn't guess). Then we took the quick "Mom's-done-learning-about-war" tour through the weapons - all of which, I'm proud to say, I can name - and walked out next to a solemn M1-Garand stuck point down in the ground with a helmet on top (so close to accidentally getting an amazing pic with my face reflected in the glass in front of the helmet).]


After the cemetery we went to our hotel, in St Mere Eglise, where we would spend our night. We checked into our hotel, watched some stupid internet videos on french tv, (If you're not in the USA, this link should work) and walked out to dinner. The restaurant we intended to eat at was closed, so we headed out to buy sandwiches elsewhere, which is quickly becoming SOP. I grabbed a local sausage sandwich from the market, and the rest stopped by a bakery. After dinner we wandered through the market (bought some more cider) and visited the chapel that made the town famous.









The same time that paratroopers were taking Pegasus Bridge, John Steele was parachuting into St-Mere-Eglise when air currents from a burning house diverted his course and stranded him on the church steeple, where he survived by playing dead. They now commemorate the event by hanging a mock paratrooper off the bell tower all summer long, and with some very unorthodox stained glass windows showing an angel, the Virgin Mary holding Jesus, and paratroopers in full gear descending upon the town. [Ethan: Best church ever.]










As we exited the square past some of Mom's favorite public restrooms, we saw a minivan that, well, have you ever left the bathroom with paper stuck to your foot? Me neither, but it's a comic trope suddenly come to life. We continued the long way home past some sheep [Ethan: only a block from the town square] and a spring that was started Moses-style when a thirsty monk tapped his staff on the ground. Then we crashed for the night to journal, drink, and watch epic meal time.

France: Day 0&1: Normandy

Our flight was at 5.30 PM, which means we got to the airport at 3. After boarding, unboarding for a broken radar unit (Fellow passenger: "You know, I've got a GPS they can use. I'll go let them know."), and reboarding, we finally left around 9. That was fine by me, since I had no desire to arrive in France at 6am and Paradise Lost to keep me busy. I thought about using a quote from Milton to start every Journal Entry, but it turns out the entire poem takes place in Hell, so maybe not. Dad had took Tylenol PM before boarding, so the delay hit him hardest.

We left, and flew over our local power plant that Ethan and I had admired days previous from Sugarloaf, and then made a tour of the east coast - Baltimore, Philly (including someone hitting us with a green laser pointer), Trenton, and New York. I spent a long time on that last one trying to figure out which bridge was which but ultimately couldn't tell from our distance.

We had our choice of music stations, but my choice (Dance/Trance) was glitchy, like a record player with a sticky belt. Similarly, we had a choice of movies, unless you wanted to watch Thor - which had a similar tick. I watched Arthur and Source Code instead (couldn't sleep), and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of each. I eventually fell asleep around 1.00 (eastern time), curled into an impossible position in my seat.

Only to be awoken at 7.30. But instead of 6 1/2 hours later, this was the french 7.30. The youth group seated amongst us (except for Adam who'd sweet-talked his way into more legroom) decided they needed to document every portion of the trip, including attempting to sleep, w/ flash photographs. My first thought upon awaking was that I'd found a place to use a Milton quote. I spent the rest of the flight trying to sleep and looking out the window for evidence of London burning, both unsuccessfully.

As we flew over France dad started pointing out the general Normandy beaches from the air and on the GPS, and the French countryside is beautiful. Little hamlets with cute churches surrounded by farmland. The airport is fun too, with conveyor belts carrying us at changing angles through tunnels, and bouncy conveyor belts through clear sky tunnels, like a modernized Jacobs ladder or a McDonald's play palace for the exceedingly lazy.

We got our bags, got our car (a Ford S-Max [Ethan: I call it the X-Lax] van, with very euro styling, sweet jet-fighter ebrake ((I'll grab a picture for y'all)), a turbo-diesel manual, and all the readouts in Russian. We couldn't talk the parents into anything from the fancy side of the menu.) and set off for Normandy.

I'd spent a few hours and gigs teaching our GPS about Europe, but when we turned it on it refused to believe we were in France, so once dad quit stalling the car (which was about when we quit applauding for it) we whipped out the maps and set off. The French countryside is even more beautiful from the ground, especially when the GPS finally accepts that you managed to cross an ocean and sends you off the beaten track on short? cuts through roundabouts and villes. And the cars are all different too. There are so many Citroens and Peugeots (cute little diesels, as Adam calls them), nigh-zero asian imports, and we even saw a Ferrari nuzzling a Lamborghini outside a restaurant.

I started pondering how glad I was that I took a week of French lessons, as they made understanding spoken french into a challenge, rather than a miracle not attempted, when jet-lag finally set in and I started to crash. I was awake for most of it though, and all the exciting parts. When "we" decided we didn't trust the GPS and pulled over to ask a farmer which way to go. We got some peaches that everyone loved, some less appreciated apricots, and a map thrown in for good measure. And when we pulled in to the credit-card-only toll-lane and had to figure out how to work reverse in highway traffic, for example (Some combination of pulling and twisting the gearshift. Or something.). At the same time we learned our car beeps frantically (think: bomb detonator) when large trucks approach the parking sensor in the rear bumper. And we learned that it's possible to trigger the "I'm parked, time to fold my mirrors in" by stalling with your flashers on.

But that was the end of the bad excitement and we moved on to the good excitement. Driving along our course to Normandy we came to the bridge over the Caen Canal - named Pegasus Bridge for the British paratroopers who captured it in one of the first acts - and the first victory - of D-Day. The towns in Normandy love D-day. Museums and monuments all over the place, streets named 6th of June, and one town even renamed itself after the general who came ashore there. [Ethan: Montgomery was already crazy enough, and didn't need a town named after him to bloat his ego any more. But they did.]

At Pegasus Bridge we had a picnic lunch and wandered through the free portion of the museum. Dad was super-excited. He's been reading about this for 40+ years and seeing it in person moved him to words. What they lacked in quality they made up for in quantity, sincerity, and genuinity.

After viewing the original bridge, glider, and reproduction glider through the fence (our family can be cheap) we headed out to Ouistreham, a town on Sword Beach that had a museum in a German bunker. We checked out the Landing Craft restored for Saving Private Ryan and headed inside. The bunker was built like a medieval castle, there was a trench around it, and to get in you had to come through a narrow tunnel with a machine-gun-nest pointing straight down it. A few days after D-Day it finally fell when British commandos blew the steel doors off with 10 pounds of high explosive. One of the Germans called down "Tommy, you can come up now" to which he responded "nah, you can come down." Surprisingly they did, and the entire bunker surrendered to the 3 man team that held them pinned. Other highlights from the museum include playing name-the-gun, deciphering the French and German signs, and testing out the communication system, which many of you are familiar with from pipes buried in playgrounds all around the world. I'm gonna try to talk my mom into letting me put one in our house.

After playing with the "cricket" chirpers in the gift-shop, our next stop was Juno beach, where I sleepily watched the rest of them march across the 100+ yd long tidal zone to kick at the water. I was more awake when we got a few miles further to check out another beach and a tank that had fallen into a crater, served as a bridge for the invading army, and been buried before being exhumed 30 years later for use as a monument.

Finally, it was time to check into our hotel - one where our reservations were slightly tenuous on account of having checked in over the phone in broken French. We kinda spiraled in on it, but found it without too much hassle, and we had rooms! Huzzah! I collapsed on a bed while the rest of them... I have no idea, I was out in a heartbeat. Anyways, I pushed my day's sleep past the hour-mark until being woken - with no idea where I was - for dinner.

We wandered down to the waterfront for dinner and decided on a pizza place. I ordered a Coke (sweet sweet stimulants), but when the waiter said we each had to order our own indivudual pizzas, our cheapitude won out. We paid for our drinks and left. I was feeling much more awake, so I was happy with our new plan to pick up a pizza from the carry-out place and picnic on the seawall. We ordered and set out to kill 20 minutes checking out the shops, including a rock-stall that Adam gave us all the inside details on. We even bought a bottle of hard cider from a guy selling them. At €2.50, it was cheaper than our cokes.

As we headed back to pick up our food the rain - which had been misting - picked up as well, so we ended up eating in, watching the fire swirl across the roof of the wood-fired oven and drinking home-made, but good, cider out of little plastic cups. It was a really good meal, more fun and probably better than the abandoned expensive place.

And now I'm still on caffeine, so I'm journaling, despite the fact that I've slept <7 hours the last two nights. Combined.