Mark above the beaches of Normandy at Pointe du Hoc, where dislodging German guns was one of the top priorities for D-Day

While technically we’d been to Normandy before – Mark was in Mont St. Michel decades ago, and Monet’s house in Giverny is in Normandy – neither of us had ever been to the D-Day beaches and all that Battle of Normandy stuff. So, once we’d cancelled our trip to Ireland to stay in France, it made sense to go an experience that part of history.

We based ourselves in Caen, a classic Norman city just nine miles inland from the English Channel. While we went there because of its relatively central location for the D-Day invasion, Caen (pronounced something like kaan) actually has two claims to historic fame: besides its central position in the Battle of Normandy, Caen was also where William the Conqueror built a key castle for the defense of Normandy in 1060, just a few years before he conquered England. The castle still stands as one of the largest medieval fortresses in Western Europe, and William himself is buried in Caen’s beautiful Church of St. Stephen.

William the Conqueror’s castle, built about 1060

Our stop in Caen was brief – just two days – and most of that was dedicated to the whole Battle of Normandy experience. We did take time, though, to walk through the castle (which was nice but not really that interesting) and through the Church of St. Stephen. We did the latter on the morning of our departure, since we had an hour or so to kill before our train to Rouen. What a fantastic experience! There was pretty heavy early morning fog that gave the thousand-year-old buildings (St. Stephen is adjacent to an old abbey also built by William the Conqueror) a wonderfully eerie feeling. Sometimes you just get lucky.

The fog-covered St. Stephen’s Church, where William the Conqueror is buried

Meanwhile, there were two pieces to exploring the history of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. First up was the Memorial of Caen (also sometimes called the Memorial for Peace), a museum about World War II with an obvious emphasis on the Battle for Normandy. It was great museum: clear, comprehensive, and honest. I found its message somewhat confused, though that could have been just me. On the one hand it made clear the brutality and fundamental evil of the Nazis, both in their attempt to subdue Europe and of course in the racial war against Jews. At the same time, though, it seemed to try to make the case that war itself is wrong and evil and to be avoided at all costs. One might think that the pictures of Neville Chamberlain in Munich would have put that idea to rest.

This striking photo of Germans hanging young Soviet resisters was a powerful piece of propaganda for the Soviets, showing how evil the Germans were and how brave the resisters were. What they didn’t reveal until 1996 was that the woman killed here was Jewish. I mean, how could you make a Jew an heroic figure?

At the same time I was curious how the museum would deal with the French collaborators, Marshal Pétain and so on who had made a pact with the devil to rule unoccupied France. The museum didn’t shy away at all from acknowledging the role those French played in supporting Hitler, observing that Pétain explicitly believed collaboration was important so France would have a seat at the table once a victorious Hitler ruled Europe.

The big event, of course, was a tour of the Normandy beaches. Since we don’t have a car (YAY!) we booked a tour through the museum and, though we don’t usually like being part of a horde, it turned out pretty good. In the English-speaking group along with us there was only an extended family of nine (a spry 80-year-old woman, her kids and grandkids) and one quiet Spaniard so it wasn’t too big a group.

Omaha Beach

Everyone knows the basics here. On June 6, 1944 the Allies launched the largest seaborne invasion in history as ultimately a million Allied troops would be committed to the Battle of Normandy. To say the least, it was a big deal. I was glad, though, that both the museum and the beach tour emphasized not just the landing itself and those first days of fighting, but the entire Battle of Normandy, something that I knew little of. That it wasn’t just the heroism and bravery of those who landed initially, but the brutal fighting that went on for weeks to take towns like Caen and St. Lo, along with the massive destruction wrought as the Germans held out and the Allies pushed forward slowly. Being there, obviously, makes it more alive than it ever is in a history book.

And then, on top of all that, to discover that Omaha Beach is really a beach … a huge beach, quite deep and stretching for miles. When you go there today there are lots of families out enjoying the sun and the sand. As though it were just any beach which, to the locals I suppose, it is.

The American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer

The two-day stop in Caen was not enough. It was a cute town with some great history that would have been fun to explore. And we just stumbled onto a great restaurant with some of the best steak tartare and escargot we’ve had here in France. The weather is perfect, and traveling by train around here just adds to the joy. The only downside was a hotel malfunction. We booked an Ibis Style hotel, cheap but the number one rated hotel in Caen on TripAdvisor. We got to the hotel and they didn’t have a reservation. We showed them the email and they explained that we’d reserved the other Ibis Style hotel in town, the one rated 31 out of 41 hotels. Ugh. Oh well, it was only two days. And as much as we liked Caen we’d already made hotel reservations in Rouen so now it’s up there for a couple days before heading back to Paris.

The museum in Caen did not try to whitewash France’s collaboration with Hitler. This photo of Marshal Pétain, the hero of Verdun, meeting with Hitler tells it all.

It’s worth remembering that Hitler first came to power in an election. This poster – “Our Last Hope: HITLER” it says – evokes other strong man candidates, like a guy who says “I alone can fix it.”

Pointe du Hoc, where President Reagan commemorated the 40th anniversary of D-Day

Another church in Caen shrouded in fog. It looks as though the back of the church was bombed out in the Battle of Normandy and was never replaced.

As the fog was lifting we got this view of St. Stephan’s. There were flags of many countries in front of City Hall, perhaps in recognition of the role played by the Allies in freeing Caen.

The Men’s Abbey, built by William the Conqueror and now CIty Hall, on the left, with St. Stephan’s church on the right

The tomb of William the Conqueror

The peaceful Orne river running through Caen

Fabulous steak tartare – with a little layer of carpaccio over it, in case you don’t have enough raw beef – at a restaurant we stumbled onto without the help of TripAdvisor

And one last shot from the American cemetery, lest we forget the sacrifices made

The summer beach of Paris along the Seine

Instead of Ireland, we’re in Paris. And as an added bonus we’re free of the car! When we arrived we had 12 days before our flight to Minneapolis and a reservation for just the first three days. Would we spend all 12 days in Paris or be a little adventurous? After a little research we chose semi-adventurous: three days in Paris, four days in Normandy, then we’ll come back for five more days in Paris.

And yes, there’s never enough Paris. Food, wine, parks, museums … plenty to do while enjoying the city. Coincidentally, our three-day stay matched perfectly the El Hindi three-day stay in Paris before returning to Virginia, so we got to spend a bit more time with them. There’s not necessarily a lot new to say about Paris or a lot of new pictures to post, but it’s always beautiful. Always.

Lunch with the El Hindis, awaiting the steak tartare

You’re not really supposed to like Paris in August. It’s hot, the Parisians have all left on holiday, and everything is closed. Our experience was quite different. The weather was just about perfect, plenty of restaurants were open, and the crowds were relatively thin. And the beach!

For years we’ve read about how Paris turns the right bank of the Seine into a beach for one month every summer but we’ve never seen it in action until now. Sure enough they close down what is usually a roadway along the river, truck in a whole bunch of sand, set out chairs and hammocks, and voilà you have a beach. Not a swimming beach, mind you; the Seine wouldn’t be so nice to swim in. But a nice sandy, lay-in-the-sun-or-shade-and-read-or-whatever beach.

I went down there one morning while Mark, Jeanne, and Leigh were touring the Pompidou Center (Paris’s fabulous modern art museum; they loved it). Initially it was unclear to me how it all worked; there were chairs set out but who did you pay? How much? Did you rent the chairs by the hour? By the day? With such a limited space and number of chairs, it seemed they could charge just about anything they wanted. Turns out it was all much simpler than that: if you saw an empty chair (or if you were early and really lucky like I was, a hammock) you took it. Stayed as long as you wanted. For free.

My beach. In Paris!

So there you are, for all the time we’ve spent in Paris you can still experience something new.

Our last night in Paris was something close to magical. We were staying on the Right Bank while Jeanne & Jamal were on the Left. We crossed the river to join them for dinner and while walking back the bells of Notre Dame were pealing as a procession was headed up the river and into the church to celebrate the start of the Feast of the Assumption (Mary’s assumption into heaven) which was the following day. Beautiful. Now it’s on to Normandy for a few days.

Our hotel provided us a half bottle of champagne on ice for our first night. So I went out to buy a couple little appetizers and Mark & I had a fabulous little pre-dinner moment.

From the moment Mark & I saw his self portrait in Genoa (on loan from the Detroit Institute of Art) we have loved Otto Dix. Or at least some of his work. Here, in a piece from the Pompidou Center, he portrays the journalist Sylvia von Harden as an emancipated woman in 1920s Berlin.

Here we are with our niece Leigh outside the Château d’Amboise

Our second stop in the Loire Valley was Amboise, right on the river. Today it’s a cute, quiet, and quaint town of perhaps 14,000 people but it was once the home of the French royal court, particularly under Francis I. Mary, Queen of Scots, grew up here, as did Charles VIII of France who ruled from 1483 until his death in 1498 (from hitting his head on the lintel of a door here!). And no less than Leonardo da Vinci spent the last few years of his life here, welcomed by Francis I who put the great Renaissance mind up at a manor house just a very short walk from his Château.

We had a lovely and modestly lazy visit here. Actually, for me and Mark it wasn’t particularly lazy at all; we’ve gotten pretty good at taking our tourist stops easy. This was our brief visit with Mark’s sister Jeanne and her family, though, and they’d been pretty aggressive with their time in Paris and Normandy, so for them it was a bit of a break. In all there were three major things to see in Amboise:

1. Clos Lucé was Leonardo da Vinci’s official residence for the last three years of his life, from 1516 to 1519; it is believed that he finished the Mona Lisa here. Today it is a museum with period furniture in a bunch of rooms open for tour and, more interesting for most, a lot of his inventions on display. I have to admit, it wasn’t really for me. Presumably I just don’t have enough of a scientific, mechanical, or engineering bent to appreciate it. It’s really popular, though, and lots of other people love it so my relative boredom probably has more to do with me than with the actual merits of the property itself.

2. Château d’Amboise, just a few hundred yards from Clos Lucé and connected by an underground tunnel, was a favored royal residence during much of the 15th and 16th centuries. I loved touring the Château and found the scale far more comfortable than some of the huge castles we’ve seen. And – this is big – Leonardo da Vinci is buried here in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert. With this visit, Mark has now seen the burial places of all four Ninja Turtles (Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello). How many people can say that??

3. Finally, the Château de Chenonceau is just a few miles up the road from Amboise. Spanning the River Cher (contrary to common belief, the river was not named for the great American chanteuse of the same name) the Château is one of the most famous in the Loire Valley. I love part of the history. When Henry II inherited the crown from Francis I (da Vinci’s patron), he gave the Château to his favorite mistress Diane de Poitiers, a woman 20 years his senior. She laid beautiful gardens and built the part of the building that spans the river but, when Henry died from a wound incurred during a jousting match his widow Catherine de Medici, who’d never really taken to her husband’s mistress, wasted no time in evicting poor Diane. Catherine then laid out her own gardens and to this day there are competing gardens to stroll through. Those crazy Medicis!

Beyond those were the big attractions in Amboise we discovered a fabulous little restaurant, Chez Bruno, directly across from the Château d’Amboise in a touristy area where you just wouldn’t expect great quality. It was good enough, though, that we had lunch there twice and dinner once in our three-night stop. And a great bar/café across the river where we could have Negronis while admiring an evening view of the Château That, and of course the chance to visit with the various El Hindis made it a great stop.

The Château, while sitting having cocktails across the river

From here the plan was to return the car in Paris and fly to Ireland for our last 12 days in Europe. Over the last few weeks, though, instead of researching what we wanted to do in Ireland and where we wanted to go, we were having fun with the Germains in Italy. Not until Amboise did we realize that we had no plans, no reservations, nothing for Ireland. We discovered the country was kind of booked up so at the last minute – literally the day before we were supposed to go there – we canceled our flight and decided to stay in France. Our flight back to the States was supposed to go from Dublin to Paris and then on to Minneapolis, so we just canceled the Dublin-Paris leg and will fly directly from Paris.

How’s that for spontaneous? In a perfect world we would have extended our car rental for a few days and driven to Normandy before heading to Paris but in case you haven’t noticed this is not a perfect world. Good, but not perfect. We were unable to talk to anyone who could extend our car rental without first returning it to Charles de Gaulle airport, so instead we just decided to return the damned thing and spend a few days in Paris. How bad could that be?

Leigh, as though she were being held captive in the castle

Here we are with the El Hindis: Mark, Jeanne, me, Leigh, Jamal, and Jamal

Me & Jeanne

The Château de Chenonceau spanning the River Cher

Me & Leigh inside a maze in the Château de Chenonceau. It’s not quite so difficult when you can see over the hedge….

Mark and Jeanne at the Château d’Amboise

The Château d’Amboise on its own

One more shot of that château reflecting in the Loire

And the two traveloholics enjoying Amboise