It was seven o'clock Tuesday morning and we were all standing
outside of Mary and Phil's apartment waiting for the taxi cab that we'd ordered
using the Internet. He arrived right on the dot of seven and we were off
on our adventure to Normandy for two days and one night. Best of all the
rain has stopped and we're expecting mostly wind for today when we arrive in
the north.
Soon we were at the Gare Saint Lazare train
station and headed towards the office for assistance for handicapped that I'd found
on Saturday when I purchased the tickets. We'd been told to arrive about
an hour early if we wanted to use the service and we were at least an hour
early and they had us wait in their waiting room until the team of three
arrived to facilitate Phil's train adventure. We were along for the
ride. First we headed for the toilets so that everyone could use the
facilities before getting on the train. Then we were off to the
platform for our train. They punched our tickets for all of us and
handled Phil in the wheelchair. Mary, using the cane, had to hustle to
keep up with them.
It was amazing; we had our own car! There was
a lift to put Phil on the train without his having to get out of his
chair. The car is designed for up to three wheelchairs and their
caregivers. It had electrical outlets for us to charge our phones and a
handicapped bathroom. We occasionally had people coming through from
other cars but we mostly had it to ourselves for the two hour journey.
Plus they put us on early so we didn't have to wait in the
station.
We saw sunshine, rain, sunshine, rain and finally
sunshine in Caen. Along the way we went through the towns of Mante,
Evreux Normandi, Bernay, and Lisieux before arriving in Caen. We were
very excited seeing Lisieux as we could see the Basilica from the train.
Mary and I spent hours there on our trip in 2009 to see the home of St. Theresa
of Lisieux and the Basilica. Lisieux is the second town of Pilgrimage in
France, the other is Lourdes in the South of France.
We had people waiting for us when we arrived in Caen to
take Phil off of the train and into the station. We crossed the
street and picked up our rental car at Enterprise Rental Service. We
have a black Citeron with GPS...this time build-in. She finally got
us out of Caen and over to the Caen Memorial, but not without lots of
U-Turns!
It was about noon when we arrived at the War Memorial
Museum. We spent about two hours there before heading back out on
the road about two o'clock to find the Arromanches Les Bains on the
coast. This is the area where they built huge floating docks to unload
equipment right after the invasion. It worked beautiful for a short time
and then a major storm tore it apart. Today pieces are stuck in the sand,
some close and more off in the distance. At low tide you can actually
walk to some of the ones close to shore.
A fun note: while there we walked to a store so
that Mary could find a key chain for their travel tree; and Jim handed me a
bottle of liquor to purchase made from apples as that is very popular in this area of
France. It is called Calvados. I was surprised when the clerk said forty two euros.
Wow...Jim is springing for a really good bottle. Only later when he
opened it in the hotel room and discovered it was forty proof did I mention the
price...he was shocked....he thought it was two euros! Not sure just how
we'll drink it all before we leave for home on Friday. We may leave it
for our manager of our apartment.
Leaving there we drove further west along the beach
to the Batterie de Longues; a group of four huge concrete buildings that each
housed a gun that could shoot two miles out into the water. Jim didn't
remember that we'd seen these in 2012; but it was still fun to see them
again. We have good friends who live in Florida who just posted a photo
at this site on Facebook a few days ago. They stopped here during a
cruise! Small world. It would have been fun to accidentally
see the Hermans here. We've done that more than once during our years of
traveling.
By this time it was nearing four o'clock so we
decided to head for our hotel outside of Bayeux for the night. We had
some problems with the GPS and actually ended up using an app on my phone to
get us to the Hotel. But it's clean and close to the highway for
tomorrow. We walked next door and had an early dinner before playing two
hands of our favorite game in the lobby. I've been busy with two days of
journals to do. But, love to do it while it's fresh in my mind. We
had rain just as we arrived at the hotel. Hoping for sunshine tomorrow as
we visit the American Cemetery.
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