Bonjour. Well first off I would like to apologize for the lateness of this post. We don’t have internet in our Gite. As this is the case, throughout the day yesterday I was trying to connect to free wireless connections along the roadway as we travelled. None to be found. Apparently everyone here secures their connection so the neighbours can’t steal it. So by the time you are reading this you may see more than just one post put up on the same day.
I didn’t write this post last night after our day’s travels, as it was 2 am and I had only finished putting the pictures together. I feel I do my best writing late at night when the brain is tired and my sense of funny is warped beyond that of the average person. But I felt a little sleep was in order, so bare with me. So as I sit here typing, music is playing, mom is making an omelet, dad is burning toast and Carolyn is… well I’m not sure what she is really doing.
Yesterday morning started out with Carolyn and I sitting downstairs in the kitchen, the shower running upstairs and an odd plunk, plunk kind of sound. After a few minutes of hearing this we started to realize that it sounded like water dripping. Sure enough we looked up and saw water coming through the wood ceiling just behind us and dripping onto the large armoire. Poor shower design directly above us, and wood slat floors upstairs lead to this problem. Nothing we could really do for this problem other than use a pail to catch the daily, we will leave the pail up there to collect water and take it down right before we leave.
Both Carolyn and her dad were feeling a little poorly, so we were not going to push the envelope and try to fit in too much. First thing in the morning we had a diplomatic meeting to take part in. Apparently the people in the little town (Rubercy) which holds our Gite had heard that the extraordinarily famous Dr. Roth was coming from Canada. In fact he is so famous that the Mayor of the town, Mr. Mariette, personally paid us a visit. Now we learned that being the Mayor here has, just like American Express commercial says, “has its privileges”. It appears that in this area when you are mayor, you also have the key to the local church. Upon hearing that Dr. Roth wished to visit said church, he personally came, greeted us and showed us inside. The church, Notre Dame, isn’t being used for services anymore; the community uses it for weddings, concerts and baptisms. One interesting piece of trivia we learned was that the community recently replaced the roof at a cost of 54,000 E to help preserve it. From the mayor, we learned that one term in office is 6 years at a time and he has held it now for 9 years. The whole experience was, as Carolyn said, a true Rick Steves (get in with the locals) experience. We had a leisurely breakfast and visit before letting Carolyn take a wee nap, to try nip her encroaching cold in the bud. Once she got up from the nap, we set out on our mission of visiting the Canadian landing beaches of WWII.
Yesterday’s word to remember was rain. The day’s weather kind of went like this: rain, wind, rain, wind, wind, wind, rain, hurricane, typhoon, more rain and more wind. We tried to gage our exits from the car based of the distances small animals were being blown across the roadways.
Our first stop of the day should have been of no surprise to me. I was casually driving down the narrow streets of a quaint little town. The streets here were so tight that had we put our hands out each side of the car, we could have picked the pockets of the pedestrians. When all of a sudden Carolyn in all her wisdom cried out “Oh my goodness, stop the car!” Hmmm. I saw the sign, Antiques. Does the word, old useless junk come to mind? So turn around I did. To my surprise I was only partially right. Some of the items were actually very well built and carved, but the state of the building was far less impressive. It kind of looked like a storage shed, and everything inside was covered in years of dust. Carolyn found some old broaches and prayer cards that she just had to have. Yes it was a deal according to her, and really isn’t that all that matters in the end.
We reached Juno Beach later in the afternoon. There really wasn’t anything to see on the beach anymore, but the museum we went through was very well done. I myself learned a bunch of new things about the D-day landings and the war that I had never been taught in school. Having arrived later in the day made the visit feel rushed as there were many videos to watch and items to read and look at. There was only one problem in the museum that Dad and I really felt needed to be fixed to show Canadian history in its purest form. The last part of the exhibit was about post war times in Canada. One part showed our national sports, curling, lacrosse and of course the fastest game on earth, hockey. The issue we had was with the artifact that was displayed. A hockey puck was displayed on the wall, but it wasn’t of the NHL, it was an official puck from the Memorial Cup in 1992 in Ontario. What? It would have been better just to have a plain black rubber disc. For those of us who consider our pride in hockey to be a great source of national identity, the exclusion of the NHL mention, for a junior league mention seemed a grand oversight.
After leaving the museum we headed to the Canadian cemetery. It is very small in comparison to the American cemetery, but very well maintained all the same. The head stones were actually all being replaced as a way to preserve them from the erosion they had succumbed to over time. Due to the rain and wind, we stayed only a short time before leaving.
GPS be our guide. This was the day “she” was to get back at us. Having programmed Bayeux as our next destination, “she” wanted us to turn left out of the parking lot we were in. Now having just come from the right, this confused all of us, but who is about to argue with GPS, the computer age’s answer to the map? After turning left, it became immediately obvious that we were going in the wrong direction when within about 100 meters our friendly Ms. GPS came back with “perform a legal U-turn in 800 meters.” I felt like I was being punked. With nowhere to turn now, I drove on to the next round-about, a large one. It was built up so high in the middle it was not possible to see anything on the other side of it. Now up to this point “she” had always told us what to do once we entered a round-about (ie – “leave round about at the 2nd road”), but not this time. If Carolyn had not recognized the road we just came on, I would have gone around this thing at least one more time. But we made it and headed for home.
Leaving the beach I found that my windshield was forever fogging up due to the humidity inside the car. There didn’t seem to be a dial on the heater that could adjust where the air would blow. However, BMW was kind enough to have two buttons installed. One for rear defrost (every car I have ever been in has that one) and one for the front. The rear window had the usual defrost lines running through it, but not so for the front, due to the obvious obstruction of view it could cause. We already had a light breeze blowing on our bodies from the vents as Carolyn pressed the button. Now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that BMW wants to clear the window as fast as it can for you, but when the button went click, we may as well have just torn the top off the car and opened our mouths to catch bugs in our teeth. A surge of air, fast enough to rip the glued hair off a bald man’s head poured forth from the vents. Within seconds the window was cleared the button was shut off and we were peeling our eye lids off of our foreheads.
Feeling famished by this point, food was next on the agenda for all four of us. It was put to a vote, eat at home or eat out. The vote turned into more of a dictatorship when I voted for eating out and dad went along with me. After only two votes being cast it was decided that going to a restaurant was just the thing to finish off the day right. I turned to the GPS and asked it for suggestions for restaurants, Carolyn looked in Rick Steves’ travel book, and Rick won out. We headed back to Bayeux. GPS coordinates in place, it lead us on a winding path straight down a little alleyway to a small, but cozy little shop. Carolyn and her mom hopped out as the men stayed in the car to look for parking. I saw one on a side street and decided to try and get back to it. Good luck. Around and around I went, eventually finding the restaurant again on my own, but still no parking. Carolyn was standing on the sidewalk as I drove past for the second time, telling her we would soon be there. We finally found parking went in and sat down. Yea! These menus had English on them. A few other English speaking groups were near us and we started to feel at home. Did I say at home? Well I don’t know about you, but in my home I have never had a meal consisting of stomach and foot stew (one of the more interesting menu choices). Between the four of us we found two different dishes that appealed to the masses. Mom and I had the fillet of pork with mash potatoes and dad and Carolyn had the chicken stew in raspberry/ vinegar sauce. The pork came out first, looking and smelling incredible. Next the chicken arrived. Apparently it was very tasty, but when it was set on the table and closer visual inspection was made by the patriarch of the table, his response was as follows, “Not my idea of a good time.” You could almost see his taste buds diving for cover behind his teeth.
After dinner, a short walk down the street had us looking at a night time view of the Bayeux Cathedral. Standing in the rain we got some nice shots of the church all lit up. When we left I realized that this was the first time I would be driving in the dark through these narrow country lanes. I mentioned something about this to the others about how nice it was to have the GPS showing me the way instead of trying to read street signs in the dark. Well mom must have been feeling extra close to this device as for no apparent reason she referred to it as Alice. So Alice it is. Stay turned tomorrow for another great adventure as Dad and Carolyn sniffle, mom boils something over on the kitchen stove and I decide to hike a mountain side.
