Normandy Road Trip

Last year, if you asked me where I thought I'd be spending my spring break, I would never in a million years guess that I would be road tripping through northern France with my parents. But life has a funny way of sending us through twists and turns, and somehow, I often find myself in these incredible places, wondering how on earth I managed to pull it off. It's like The Talking Heads sang, "And you may find yourself in another part of the world...and you may ask yourself how did I get here?" Well, I don't really care how I got here; I'm just happy to be there. And honestly, our entire spring break trip felt like this, including our last few amazing days in Normandy.

On April 10th, we left our river cruise boat and headed to the train station bright and early to catch a train to Paris, where we would then catch another connection to Trouville. But in Paris, we needed to take a taxi from one train station to the other. Our driver was great (and so handsome!). He even stopped and took our picture in front of Moulin Rouge on the way by.

Blurry Paris from the taxi. Luckily, I was able to visit Paris properly in September.

Paris

Finally, we arrived in Trouville, only to realize our rental car office wasn't located in the train station despite what my parent's travel agent told them. Once we sorted out where it was, we made our way to the office. And this is what we found: 

A gas station with a Hertz office.  There's our van/car on the left.

We somehow kept managing to accumulate more and more stuff with each
country we visited. 

It took my parents a while to figure out all the car stuff, but once we had the keys, we set off for our great adventure. Although Pops was a great driver, we did encounter a few challenges...like very narrow road and very fast speed limits, a complicated reverse button, and of course the fact that all the road signs and the GPS were in French (luckily I figured out how to switch the GPS to English). Still, we managed to make it to our first hotel in Honfleur just fine.  Honfleur is a gorgeous little port town and such a cute place to visit. We had a walk around and grabbed an early supper in town before the rain started to pour down. 

Clark Griswold drives the Puegot

Where we had our supper. These ladies were drinking tea and painting the harbor. 

The restaurant 

My cool sleeper chair bed.

Honfleur at night.

The next morning, we were up and at 'em pretty early, and after a nice breakfast (with real brewed coffee!!!), we set out for Le Mont St. Michele. We didn't have an agenda, really, and were hoping to make a stop or two along the way. The first stop we made was at an awesome rest stop. Yes, I know that sounds weird. But European rest stops are often really great places with not only a gas station but also restaurants and good gift shops.

My mom had a great book about the Normandy area, and as we passed road signs, she would look up whatever we drove by and read us about it. So many of the cute towns sounded really interesting. We finally decided to stop in Villedieu-les-Poeles, which is a neat little town famous for it's copper. The day was gorgeous, and we really enjoyed strolling up and down the streets of the town. We even stopped in at a truly local cafe for some lunch. The friendly proprietor spoke some English and was happy to welcome us to his cafe, even though it was before noon and much to early for the rest of his patrons to be eating (they were drinking coffee with liqueur instead and seemed quite curious about who we were). They turned on the kitchens for us, and all three of us enjoyed a really great lunch before heading back to the car for the final part of our journey to Le Mont St. Michele. 

The Captain 

I really liked all the road signs they had up with neat illustrations of
the towns and attractions you were passing. 

Is that gorgeous or what?

Villedieu-les-Poeles

My lunch

Dad's lunch

Mom's lunch 

Our new favorite cafe

Back in the car, we were treated to more stunning views of gorgeous countryside, adorable little villages and quaint country roads along the way. 

Our first view of Le Mont St. Michele

Once we arrived at Le Mont St. Michele, it was a major hassle to sort out where we were supposed to go. Actually, once we figured out how easy it was, we were frustrated by how hard it had been. But never being there before, we definitely made things far more complicated than they need to be. Still, we managed to park the car in the correct lot, make our way to our hotel and even explore the rock a bit. Le Mont St. Michele is a gorgeous ancient monastery built on a giant rock out on the end of a thin jetty. Normal people can't drive up to it, so you have to park in a lot and take a shuttle to the rock itself. As you can see in these photos, it is absolutely one of the most amazing structures and most unique places on earth.

The gate into the little village at the base of the monastery.

The famous Le Mere Poulard

The little shops in the village

We ended up staying off the rock itself in this amazingly huge "room" that was more like a condo than a hotel room. I had my own large bedroom upstairs with a separate bathroom. It was divine! And check out our amazing view!

Not a bad view, is it? 

The big room upstairs.

Down the hallway on the main floor

View of Le Mont St Michele from our balcony 

We were all incredibly tired by this point and decided to pop next door to the grocery store to pick up some cheeses, salami, crackers and wine for a little French picnic in the room so we could enjoy our view and watch the sunset behind Le Mont St Michele. It was a perfect, simple, gorgeous night.

The next morning, we got up and headed back out to the rock so my dad and I could hike up to the cathedral while my mom shopped. You can see here the weather was pretty stormy, but we didn't let that stop us!

I loved the little narrow streets of shops that lead up to the monastery. 

This was just the beginning of the steps...They seemed to go forever.
And when you made it to the base of the monastery, you still had more to
climb in order to get into all the neat parts of the structure. Although
exhausting, the climb was totally worth it. 

The view down from the outer wall. That's the road leading back to the mainland.

Old pulley wheel used to hoist up the stone and supplies. 

After we left Le Mont St Michele, we took a nice long drive to Caen for our last two nights in France. But on the way, we stopped in a village called Sainte-Mere-Eglise, which is famous as an airborne landing sight on D Day. If you've seen the film "The Longest Day," this is the town where the paratrooper got stuck on the church steeple and had to play dead to avoid being killed by the Nazis, who discovered him after two hours and took him prisoner. The town also had an incredibly Airborne Museum which was simply fascinating. From whole planes to secret diaries, they have so many artifacts from the war, and all of them tell backstories you would ordinarily never get to hear. We loved the museum and found the extra time it added to our journey to be well worth it.

The road sign for Sainte Mere-Eglise

At the Airborne Museum 

The famous church where the paratrooper landed

I can't even image how scary that would have been...

Once we finished with our stop at the museum, we set out for the last part of our drive to Caen. The drive was fine, overall, except driving in Caen ended up being a little more stressful than we bargained for. But Dad brilliantly got us to the hotel, and we somehow managed not to kill each other before checking in. After settling in the room, we needed to take the rental car back. And in true road trip fashion, what we thought would be an easy thing ended up being very, very difficult. The rental shop was down a random side street that didn't come up on our GPS, and it literally took us over two hours to find it...it was only 0.8 miles from the hotel...By the time we found the darn place, returned the car, and walked back to the hotel, Dad and I had had it. We all spent an easy night in the hotel so we could rest up for our last big adventure: our full-day D-Day tour.

Happy driver off to see some D-Day sites

We weren't really sure what to expect on our D-Day tour, but showed up early to the museum Le Memorial de Caen. It turned out that the other people signed up for the tour canceled, so it was just the three of us plus our amazing guide all day. He started out by taking us around the museum, explaining some thing and giving us lots of back stories not presented through the artifacts. I loved seeing the museum with him because it was like having our own personal teacher along the way! Later we had a nice lunch in the museum cafe, which turned out to be included in our tour ticket (what a nice surprise!). And finally, it was time for the real tour--five hours in a mini bus going from beach to beach with our guide and a driver. The day was incredible. We saw Pt. Du Hoc first. This is the first place the allies landed on D-Day. Next we saw Omaha Beach, which was primarily assigned to the Americans. Then, we visited the American D-Day cemetery where we were able to help fold the flags, which was one of the most patriotic moments of my life. And we ended the day at Gold Beach which is where we were able to see remainders of the big artificial harbor that was created to allow supplies and troops to come into Europe through the channel.

The path toward the cliff's edge and beach. There's a bunker.

Bunkers

Bunker

The tops of the cliffs are littered with massive bomb holes.

Here's our fabulous guide teaching us about the invasion.

On top of the cliffs where the men climbed up after storming the beach.

About to go down into a bunker

Inside the bunker 

Peeking through the lookout

Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach

At the American cemetery 

Lowering the flag

Folding the flag

Lowering the second flag with some American school kids

Dad knew just how to do it.

The second flag we helped fold, posed with the American school kids.

The American D-Day Cemetery is run by retired American military
personnel who come to Normandy to make their home among our fallen.
They even live on site.

All the trees and foliage at the cemetery are American plants collected
from all across the country to be planted here with our men.  

Map on the wall of the memorial, showing the progression of forces.

This wall wraps around the middle memorial. It carries the names of men
lost in action whose bodies are still not found.

Looking down at the remaining artificial harbor at Gold Beach. 

Bunkers on the cliffs above Gold Beach.

Looking down at Gold Beach 

Three big pieces of the artificial harbor that still remain 

More of the harbor

Here's a photo of what the harbor looked like after it was built in 1944.
See how rough the sea is (toward the bottom of the photo) and how calm
it is inside the walled harbor they built? This allowed them to bring boats
and ships up onto the beaches,  carrying men and supplies to refuel the
war efforts in Europe. The allies were able to construct the harbor within
just a few days of the invasion. Truly remarkable.

I've never been a big WWII buff, but this day, and this whole trip really, has actually made me very interested in learning more about the war. What stops me, though, is how heavy my heart feels after learning about these stories and seeing the hundreds of thousands of lives that were destroyed. And while exploring these haunting beaches, again and again I was reminded of the cost of freedom. In our own busy modern lives, it's easy to forget that freedom isn't free. I'm grateful for this day for reminding me of that.