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.