Day 5 – Normandy

Today was a somewhat somber day so your Ramblers apologize for the tone of this entry.

We visited the American Cemetery at Normandy, Omaha Beach and Pointe du Hoc.  The visitor center at the cemetery is excellent, and frankly every American should visit this place once in their lives. The enormity of the task to take the beaches and cliffs there is hard to fathom.  The D-Day landing took place at low tide so many of the underwater obstacles and traps could be avoided by allied landing craft. However, that decision resulted in the troops having to traverse a much wider beach before any cover was available.  Your Ramblers stood on that beach at low tide and it is the widest beach we have ever seen. It is probably 150-200 meters from the water line (landing craft did not make it that far) to the first dunes.  A steep hill immediately follows the dune line.  [Rambler Hance’s thoughts:  If I had been standing where I was 69 years, 1 month and 11 days prior, the three most likely outcomes for me were 1) I was dead already, 2) on my way to being dead rather soon or 3) about to have a close personal encounter with a projectile.] The opening scene of Saving Private Ryan seems a little more real, except I think the filmmaker did not do justice to how wide the beach actually was. I was also looking at it sans two levels of barbed wire, a tank trap trench, land mines and about a million rounds of flying lead looking for a home.

Standing on Omaha Beach

Halfway Across

With all of the above stated, the beach and surrounding areas are beautiful. We visited on a gloriously sunny day, the water was blue, the cliffs and hillsides green and the arc of the coastline reminded us of parts of California with its abrupt elevation change, cool water and low humidity summer weather.

After traipsing on the beach, your Ramblers climbed a hill that looked down on Omaha Beach and visited the remains of some German pillboxes and cement bunkers/gun placements along with a memorial to the 1^st Army Infantry Division l (the Big Red 1) and a memorial to the combat engineers of both the Army and Navy.  The engineers were among the first ashore with the job of blowing holes in the obstacles the Germans had placed on the beach to widen the road, so to speak, for tanks, men and machines.  Needless to say, at that moment in time, it was probably the most dangerous place on earth.    From on high, with that big wide beach below and the man made traps and obstacles strategically placed it is hard for these non-military experts to imagine a more perfectly designed killing field.

Big Red 1 Memorial

Combat Engineer Memorial

German View of Omaha

Standing on Top of German Bunker Overlooking Omaha Beach

After we left Omaha Beach, we walked to the American Cemetery and exhibition center. It is very well done--it tells individual stories and gives a sense of statistics of the landing undertaking; the preparation, equipment and mistakes made.   The cemetery is a little hard to take, frankly, due to the number of graves present (that would be 9,387).  If you visit to see a specific grave, consult the directory for its location because we could not ascertain a system of burial.

Sculpture called "Spirit of American Youth"

Rambler Jane in front of the reflecting pool

Inside the chapel

Rows and rows of markers

After leaving the cemetery, we traveled down the road a few kilometers to Pointe du Hoc.  Pointe du Hoc was a strategic point in the allied landing plans because it contained (or at least it was thought to contain) several large German guns.  Positioned as it was between the American beaches, Omaha and Utah, it was necessary to take it out in order to prevent it raining death on the American landing zones.  A group of American Rangers, who were specifically trained for this task, landed at this site and using special climbing gear, climbed and fought their way up a sheer cliff and took the position. When the Rangers arrived, the guns sought were not there, but they continued inland several kilometers, located the guns, and destroyed them.  They then stayed there, holding a key road for several days until reinforcements arrived.  As Bill Rafterty would say, “Onions”.  We did a walk around, and the area was left largely as it was that day sans any armaments. The landscape is littered with dozens of craters 10 feet or so deep left by bombs, rolled barbed wire lines the face of the cliff, and the German bunkers and gun placements are numerous.  A visitor can still see large chunks of the very thick concrete walls of the German positions blasted away and imagine shells of all types hitting the structure. We also went into one bunker where clearly a fire had taken place.  Whether from an explosion and subsequent fire or from Rangers using flamethrowers, those small concrete rooms would have been hell on earth either way.

Ranger Memorial

Rambler Jane with a shot up to coast towards Utah Beach

Backside and the Way to Enter Bunker

Notice Large Chunks of Concrete Missing

Looking Out from a Machine Gun (We Think) Bunker

After the somber morning we drove our little car back into Port-en-Bessin-Huppain to find a little lunch and refreshment to lighten the mood. We found a wonderful little place with patio dining and split a grilled ham and cheese sandwich (cheese on the outside of the bread??), a dozen Normandy oysters and two Coca-Cola Lights (Diet Coke), again in the green bottle.  The oysters were top notch.  And by top notch, I mean Eastern Shore seaside, salty goodness top notch.

Awesomeness!

After lunch we retreated to our hotel/chateau to catch up on blog entries and email, and plan dinner.

We located dinner with the help of the hotel staff. We wanted seafood, after walking the waterfront in Port-en-Bessin-Huppain and tasting our oysters.  We selected Fleur de Sel and got a street side seat. Rambler Jane got the salmon steak and Rambler Hance got the seafood platter (steamed) with sea snails, prawns, a crab (something like Dungeness), snails, shrimp, mussels and very small langoustines.  It was pretty good but frankly was the most nondescript meal so far. The seafood platter was steamed but cold (think cocktail shrimp temp but for everything). It would have been better hot but wasn’t bad.  Rambler rating: 3 stars. After dinner we retreated to our room to prepare for tomorrow's train trip to Paris, which meant turning in the rental car and saying a bittersweet goodbye to Gabrielle, our GPS.

See you tomorrow.

Until then, au revoir and keep rambling.

Day 4 - The Road to Port-en-Bessin-Huppain

Day 4 dawned with your Ramblers yet again slow to rise. Could be the jet lag still lingering or the wine or both, who knows. Anyhoo, we got on the road about 10am after first hitting up the local artisan boulanger (which means baker, and every town has the same sign) for some awesome croissants and some bottled water for breakfast. We pointed Gabrielle towards our destination and off we went in search of 250 kilometers of French countryside and interstate.  Making good time, we decided to stop in Le Mans (yes, the race is named for the town) to take a quick look-see at Cathédrale St-Julien du Mans in Cité Plantagenêt. The cathedral construction began in 1080 and went through several phases, taking over 500 years to complete. One of the stained glass window panes, dating back from the twelve century, is actually the oldest stained glass still standing in the world.  It is impressive and still in use.

After our visit to the cathedral, we hit the highway again; shortly thereafter we started getting a little hungry (and our Volvo was in need of gazole (diesel). We pulled off when we saw signs for the same and ended up in a combo outlet mall park and Costco-type hyper market called Cora. After determining that foreign gas pumps do not like foreign credit cards (your Ramblers had the same experience in Canada) we got in the cash line, put 20 euros worth of gazole in the tank (so as not to bleed off all the cash on hand) and then went to pay. As luck would have it, the humans will take foreign credit cards (just like Canada) and we paid for our diesel on plastic. We then ventured into the Cora, which is like a super large grocery market to buy a few supplies and some cheap lunch. The Rambler shopping list  included a new razor for Rambler Hance, who broke the one he brought, some bottled water, a box of croissants, a package of ham and some packaged sliced cheese (which is not easy to find in France unless it is swiss cheese) and a sweet treat for Rambler Jane. We proceeded to the checkout line only to get behind a woman apparently was shopping to feed Napoleon's army, and after waiting were told in French we needed a Cora card to be in that line and to go to the cash line. (The cash line was the one we initially avoided because the sign above it showed the outline of a pregnant woman and a wheelchair, neither of which applied to us.)  So off we went. When we proceeded to pay, we asked if we could pay with a credit card and the cashier said "oui" but then Rambler Hance realized he had left the credit card at the gas station drive-up window of the Cora metropolis. We paid cash for our purchases and hurried back over to cash booth at the gas station; fortunately, the cashier happily recognized us and handed over our card.

After a short picnic in the Cora parking lot, we were back on the road to Port-en-Bessin-Huppain and our next abode at Chateau La Cheneviere.  This hotel is close to all the Normandy visitation points and is very nice. We had an exceptional dinner (our 25th anniversary and Rambler rating: 5 stars) and the hotel was aware of our anniversary (thanks to our travel agent, Dale) and gave us several benefits, including a free aperitif and a bottle of Pommeau de Normandie.

Chateau La Cheneviere: Side View

Main View

Dinner Pic 

Rambler Jane displaying our anniversary number

After dinner and some decafe it was midnight (another meal pushing 3 hours long) and time to hit the hay because tomorrow we visit the D-Day sites Omaha Beach and Pointe du Hoc.

Until then, au revoir and keep rambling.

Day 3 - Loire Valley Time Travel

Day 3 and we are in the flow--well, except for the sleep thing.  Today's event was an arranged tour with Loire Valley Time Travel in a very lovely and unique vehicle named Celestine.  Celestine's human helpers, Simon and Susan, were our escorts for the day.  They picked us up at our hotel promptly at 9am and off we went to Chateau Chenonceau, which is built across a river and is spectacular. The chateau dates from the early 1500s, and if the walls could talk, they would tell quite the story--full of love, intrigue, mistresses, vengeful kings, war and so on.

Next, we progressed through the countryside to a lunch spot in Montrichard. We arrived a little before noon, so naturally no one was there.  This place was a family run relais-style restaurant frequented by carpenters, plumbers, electricians and the like for lunch. Susan explained that if you have more than 6 employees in France, the workers have to be provided a lunch voucher and lunch typically takes 90 minutes.  These type of places typically have a fixed price menu that provides patrons an entree (an entree in France is served at the beginning of a mean--think high end salad bar), one of a few main courses, a small carafe of wine, and dessert with cheese.  Imagine any local small town restaurant where the patrons are regulars and that is where we were. Of course, we did not stick out at all (ha). The food was basic but very good and we rate it 4 stars on the Rambler scale (again, we will need to rescale for France at the end of the trip).

After our hearty lunch, we headed off to tour some local caves where mushrooms are grown commercially. The caves were originally carved out in the mining of limestone blocks for building, but as other stones and construction methods came into prominence, the family began to use the caves to grow button mushrooms. At one time they had 500 workers, but the Dutch figured out a way to accelerate the growth of mushrooms and undercut them on the price. The French view is the Dutch method pumps the 'shrooms up with water and so when cooked they shrivel like crazy (they do) and they don't keep nearly as long.  Now, the family has 6 workers and they grow far fewer but exotic mushrooms with much higher prices.  Here are several pictures of some of the 'shrooms:

Shitake. These are beaten on and dropped to simulate the earthquakes prominent in Japan which they need to grow

Oyster mushrooms

Decorative mushrooms for a chef in Paris

After parading around in the 52 degree caves for an hour, we set off to the first of two winery tours. The first was Domaine de la Chaise in appelation controlee Touraine. We were scheduled to meet with the wine maker (Christophe Devault)  but he had a bad case of the flu so his lovely wife gave us the tour and a tasting of several of their wines. Unlike his father and grandfather before him, Christophe is trying to market his wine under his name rather than selling grapes and wine via the local cooperative, where it would be labeled vin de France.  We bought a nice bottle of Tradition, which is a blend of two reds for a whopping 5 euros.  Here is his wife posing with a bottle.

Mrs. Christophe

We hit up another chateau (Chateau Amboise) next, but just for the long distance look-see and to get a cold drink. Driving across the French countryside in Celestine was pretty cool, but a nice Coke sure hit the spot.  Another point about the French and their food: The only Cokes we have been served thus far have been in 33ml green bottles.  Your Ramblers whole-heartedly agree that the green bottled Coke is the best Coke.

To wrap up our day of touring, we returned to Rochecorbon to visit another winery, this one in a cave and a small family affair named Chateau Gaudrelle. It is in the appellation controlee Vouvray and the only grape grown in this appellation is the Chenin Blanc.  We had a thorough tour from a very enthusiastic young man named Charles.  They make a lot of sparkling wine at this vineyard and the process is quite involved.  We really liked several of their wines and bought a case to ship home. Here are some pictures.

60k sparking wine bottles in process

Bottles tagged to be sent to appellation for testing

Charles - he loves his job

Finally, Susan, Simon and Celestine returned us to our hotel and we said our goodbyes and took a few photos.  Next, we set off to find dinner with an emphasis on quick. We drove a few miles down the street to the town of Vouvray and spied a pizza place and thought "that has to be quick". For once we were right, and after a quick (1 hr) dinner we headed home to bed, preparing to head out tomorrow for Port-en-Bessin-Houpain on the Normandy coast.

Your Ramblers and Celestine

Until then au revoir and keep rambling.

P.S.  The current bottles-of-wine-to-days-traveled ratio is slightly below one, but your Ramblers are up to the task and we are working hard to raise it.

Day 2 - Dragging a Little and A Royal Abbey

Day 2 dawned bright and late for your jet-lagged Ramblers. After a very full Day 1.5, the crew did not manage to crawl out of bed until 10am. After puttering around, eating our local croissants and generally moving slowly, we hit the road around noon and asked Gabrielle to take us to Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud. The Abbaye was about an hour away by car, so we set out to drive across more French countryside to reach it. Given our late start, we detoured into Tours Centre (the center of Tours, and to Gabrielle's dismay) and had a little lunch at a local brasserie. Tours is a lovely small city of about one hundred thousand people.

Here is the beautiful fountain in the center of town.

And of course, what would a meal be without pictures?

The French can make even a simple salad look like a work of art.

Yes, even a simple salad is beautifully prepared. Your Ramblers also got their first lesson in tipping en franchise.   After lunch, we pulled out and Gabrielle got us back on the path to the abbey. The amount of traffic on a French interstate on a holiday weekend was a sight to behold because....well....it wasn't there. I guess gas prices north of $6 a gallon, lots of tolls and a great passenger rail system have their impacts.  Charlie Munger would be proud of the incentive system at work.

Upon our arrival at the abbey, we got the English audio tour devices and set out to explore. The abbey is under rehabilitation but it has been around since 1101 so let's give it a break. Why explore this abbey?  Well, partly because Rambler Hance has some people way back in the West family tree buried there--Henry II Plantagenet and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine (according to the internet, "the Abbey Church was pillaged and looted by the Huguenots in 1562. There are stories that the royal remains were thrown into a nearby river and also that the monks reburied them in a secret location," but they were there at one time.)  Henry and his sons Richard the Lionheart and John of Lackland, who signed the Magna Carta, were all kings of England (now you know where Rambler Hance gets the 'tood').  The abbey was very successful and unusual for the times because men (monks) and women (nuns) were both housed there. Abbeys were quite the commercial enterprise and the Abbess (head was always a woman) had to be a shrewd business woman and politician to keep and feed several hundred people a day, and to maintain good relations with the local dignitaries, especially if they were important givers of money (similar to the job of a large university president today). After the French Revolution, many abbeys fell into disuse or were repurposed for other uses.  This one served as a French prison from the early 19th century until 1963 (the last prisoner left in 1985).  That obviously had a negative effect on some of the more beautiful components.  A major restoration project is underway.  Here are some pictures:

The effagies of Henry II Plantagenet and Eleanor of Aquitaine

The kitchen with Byzantine inspired architecture

The drive home was uneventful. Upon inquiry to the friendly hotel staff, we got dinner reservations at a local (Rochecorbon) restaurant. We ambled down the road and proceeded to walk into an empty restaurant. But not to fear, because French dining 101 says "no one is in a restaurant, and then all of a sudden it is full". Many restaurants are only open certain hours (11:30 -2:00 for lunch for example) and most customers show up at similar times. Once again, a we had a beautiful meal but a long meal.  (Rambler Darryl would be straining at the bit.) To interrupt patrons while they talk late in a meal with a bill or other questions is considered rude by the waiter as it interrupts the conversation; of course, by the end of our meal, we were playing games on our cell phones waiting for the bill to come. Your American Ramblers are still getting acquainted with the idea but it is happening slowly.  At the end of Day 2, we finally tracked down the waiter, got the bill and learned the second lesson in tipping en franchise. It is: THEY DON'T TIP unless the service was above and beyond. I guess we now know why the bartender practically jumped for joy, spouting "merci beaucoup" after your naive Ramblers left a 1 euro tip on a pair of 5 euro Coca-Colas.

Well, time for bed. Tomorrow is our tour with locals to several chateaus, a couple of wineries and a local French restaurant.

Until then, au revoir and keep rambling.

Day 1 to Day 2 - Cars, Planes and 3 Hour Dinners

Your intrepid Ramblers, circa 2013, set out for their latest ramble (silver anniversary ramble edition) on Friday at noon.  After final instructions to Director of Homeplace Security Jenna we hit the road to Dulles.   Luckily airlines can be counted on for one thing in these times - delayed or cancelled flights.  Happily (and thankfully) our flight was only delayed a minor amount. That extra time is always welcome when venturing into the traffic vortex known as Northern Virginia (why do you people live there?).  After hitting up Fredericksburg for some gas and Arby's grub we hit the real traffic. Thankfully it only slowed and never came to a dead stop (like the other side of I95).  We made it to Dulles by 2:20pm got parked and then did the underground maze wander that is the Dulles walkway system.  At this point we entered the equivalent of the airport twilight zone (cue the Rod Serling). We hit the Air France check-in desk (cue the theme song) and the Air France representative handed us a letter from the airline apologizing for the plane being late (who does this?), they also ably assisted us with the ticketing kiosk and kept the bag check line moving at a reasonable clip.  Just when that rare bit of airport magic seemed to be an aberration we hit the security area where the initial view of the line looked reasonable until realizing it snaked around a corner and seemed long but ok when an official TSA dude says "keep walking to the next security point" and you realize LOTS of people are converging on the same point.  Any seasoned airport navigator knows one phrase for this type of outcome (S**T). As countless of our fellow airport lemmings converged into a big line we noticed a lighted arrow that alternatively pointed left or right. When we arrived at the sorting hat  ...errrrrrrr lighted arrow our fate was designated to the right which sent us..wait for it... right back to where we started. As we approached the new line, the original one, with Rambler Hance cursing the genius of all things TSA and government run in general, a happy TSA agent (they do exist--contact Nassim Taleb about the follow-up to the Black Swan) appeared and began to tell us we have been selected to go through the TSA-PRE line. The wonders he prepared us for included keeping our shoes, jackets and belts on, keeping our laptops in our bags, and not taking our liquids bag out. There had to be a catch... retinal scan, finger printing, body cavity check, direct NSA email bcc, something.  But no, it was pure random TSA-generated advertising. Give the people a taste of breezing through airport security and they will run panting to sign up. THEY ARE RIGHT!  If any readers fly more than once or twice a year, run, do not walk, to your local TSA office and get signed up for TSA-PRE.  Now that we were sure we had somehow warped into some alternative universe of air travel pleasantness and efficiency we snapped back to the next Dulles maze - the train system.  Finally arriving at our gate and we again find lots of helpful Air France folks as well as a seating line system similar to what Southwest uses (albeit with assigned seats).  Rambler Jane had booked our travels in Premium Economy which to your author means 4-6 inches of leg room and nothing else. Oh no.. on Air France (my new favorite airline) it meant that plus a foot rest, leg support and a little pod similar to business class albeit without the ability to really lie down (that would be an issue later).  Here is Rambler Hance in his pod.

 After we settled in it was a typical transatlantic flight - read a little, eat dinner, try to sleep, read/watch a movie, try to sleep a little more, have breakfast and before you know it 7 hours have past and you are landing.  One note on the plane. It was a new Airbus A380 the biggest and baddest plane in the sky right now. It had two decks of people and massive wings. Truly an engineering marvel.

Upon arrival in Paris is was foggy to our dismay but we found our way through Charles De Gaulle airport with relative ease (Rambler Hance's Travel Rule #10 - if you have seen one big international airport you have seen them all).  After hunting up our baggage and tracking down an ATM machine (le distributeur automatique  de billets) we headed off to Hertz. I have to admit, since joining the Hertz Gold Club I have been nothing but thrilled - until now. First, we did not get the Mercedes C Class we thought we had reserved, they tried to give us a Chevy van type SUV but we finally held out for the Volvo.  Hertz negative points for the experience.

Once we procured the car, a nav system and all the insurance required Rambler Hance did some quick math and determined your ramblers could have shipped one of their cars to France for half the price. But twenty-five years of love knows no bounds so off we went.  After circling the airport three times because Gabrielle (our French GPS voice) kept telling us to turn left we finally got the translation parsed and went straight, but tilted left, and exited the airport. Vive le France!.  Lets just say when 90% of the road signs are unintelligible a GPS is a wonderful thing.  As we cruised around the Paris beltway and headed southwast towards Tours here is one American's initial impressions: they farm in France - a lot, they are the kings of graffiti (Paris is littered with it and other towns can be as well) and the roads are top notch although the speed limit moves up and down all the time. Oh and the toll booths take credit cards but not mine evidently.  We stopped for a bladder break at one of the regular gas, food and facilities locations along the French equivalent of U.S. interstates and verified another of Rambler Hance's Travel Rules (#3) - that is even optically great looking French sandwiches bought at a Tigermart are mediocre at best.

After a three hour tour across southwestern France we arrived at Tours and Rochecorbon more explicitly.  We checked into the hotel and our cave room and then broke the cardinal rule of transatlantic flight, we took a nap rather than powering through until the normal local bedtime.  Some things can't be helped. A little exploring in the local town in search of a snack and a bottle of wine was largely uneventful and we retreated to our hotel for dinner at their four star restaurant.  Initial impressions of French dining: Presentation is VERY important as is food quality but dining is to the French what running was to the Greeks, a marathon not a sprint.  We were clearly the geeky American tourists because we took pictures of all our food and so far almost everyone we have encountered knows way more English than we know French. When in doubt we have found a pleasant bonjour and merci plus fingers for courting goes a long way.  Below is displayed some of the beautiful food we had our first night.  Rambler food rating a 5 star (U.S. scale) but we will rescale upon the visit to Paris. Stay tuned!

After eating all that food and spending 3 hours doing so it was time to hit the hay. With Day 1.5 in the books the tally was in:  400 km driven, 6200 km flown, awake for 36 hours, ate one incredible meal and your Ramblers had descended on France.

Tomorrow we are going to the Abbaye Royal de Fontevraud where my people the Plantagenet's are buried.

Until then au revoir and keep rambling.