Normandy to the nord (north)

After consuming a pan au chocolat for petit dejeuner (breakfast), we headed out for Normandy and sites of WWll.  It was about a 5 hour ride.  We had a small dejeuner (lunch) at a gas stop.  Don’t ask.  It was just convenient and we had a lot of sights to see so we could afford to get lost again.  Je suis perdu!!  (I am lost).  We arrived at Caen where the museum for the war is located.  It was a fabulous museum and we spent about three plus hours there and still didn’t see everything.  Then it was off to our chateau which was about one and one half hours away.  Wow.  We were blown away.  Some pictures follow.

Our suite!!  Ray is in our l’chambre (bedroom) and Ryan in his l’chambre.

Le salon (the living room).  Pictures on the wall are of the now-owners’ great aunt and uncle.  The chateau has been in the family since Louie XlV according to Simon, the owner.

Then we went to dinner.  Watch this movie!!

When we returned from the dinner the second night, we saw two storks on the top of the tower over our suite!!  As you can see it was too dark to film.  More later.

The first picture is Ryan at Utah beach.  The picture below is of some of  the holes left from the bombing at Omaha.  Can’t figure out how to turn the picture so in the movie, you’ll have to turn your head 180 degrees!!

July 21 in France

Today, we visited one of the largest chateau’s in the French countryside of the Loire valley.  Chambord.  The picture above is a relief  of a salamander.

Francis I took every opportunity to embellish the Château de Chambord with the letter  “F” and also with a stylized Salamander, his emblematic animal. Still today, you will see these F’s and salamanders around the castle, especially on the decorated vaults of the third floor. As the symbol of fire and cold, the salamander was François’ chosen symbol. This animal could live in the fire without being consumed, but it could also extinguish the fire due to the exceptional coldness of its body. In the medieval iconography the salamander represents &quot;the just who never loses God’s confidence in the middle of tribulations.&quot; Franç</span><span class=”style_4″>ois the First adapted this motto for himself: &quot;I live among it and extinguish it&quot;.  The Château was completed in 1547 and contains 440 rooms, 84 staircases, 365 fireplaces (one for each day of the year). It also has stables to accommodate 1200 horses. The domain is surrounded by 32 km of walls, protecting more than 12,000 acres of woods which is a huge hunting reserve whose surface equals that of

So that’s the story.  Besides the chateau, the other interesting thing that happened was getting lost.  Je’ suis perdu!!!  (translation, I’m lost).  We seem to specialize in this particular activity.  We made a wrong turn and it’s not to easy to right the wrong because the roads here are very narrow and there a few places to turn around…plus we thought we could find out way out without a map!!  Well, we did find out way out and we took a very interesting route.  We were the only car on the road…for miles!!   Do I have pictures?  No because we were already late in the day and wanted to get a few hours at the chateau.  Happy to report it all worked out!!

Incidentally, Francis was the first king of France and ruled in the late 1400’s, early 1500’s.  So, this place is old.  And enormous.  These guys had serious money.  And it was seen by Louis X1V who had to out do it by building Versailles!!!

Came home and made omelets for dinner.  With red wine, cheese and bread!!  C’est bon!!  And now we are planning tomorrow.  Our plan is to head for Normandy and visit the beaches, a war memorial museum or two and check in at a “small” chateau for two nights!!

Château de l’Isle-Marie is the place.  More later.

A Few Photos from France

Ray decided not to buy this car as they wouldn’t include free shipping.  This is at the Munich airport.

Below is a picture of a peach parfait I had for dessert at a local restaurant in La Ferte St. Albin, the town we are calling home.

The exterior of the home in which we are staying. (above left) The building to the right of the garage is home to four parakeets!!

The legume jardin (the vegetable garden)!!  We snip lettuces, h’aricots verts, zucchini, thyme, clives, parsley and strawberries.  The tomatoes are ripening.

Getting Ryan

Don’t you love those movies that begin in the middle or the end and work their way back to the beginning?  Pulp Fiction comes to mind.  Well, we had a Pulp Fiction kind of day in Paris.

As we were taking a bus back to the hotel at 12:30 a.m., we ended up having the only english language conversation with a couple from Boston.  How did we find out they were from Boston?  Ray mentioned that one time he was kicked off a train in Boston because it was late and at the end of  the line (but not quite where Ray wanted to go) and the train just stopped.  When he asked the train driver(?) why he was stopping there, the train driver said, “if you don’t get off this train, I’ll call the authorities” in a proper Bostonian accent.  The nice couple from Boston asked Ray if he had ill feelings about Boston.  Ray assured them that he did not.  By I digress.  The nice couple from Boston told us about their day and how they spent much of it lost in Paris, waiting for a bus that never arrived, going the wrong direction etc.  Their stories immediately put us in a mood of, well, vindication.  Alas, we too had such a day all because of a need for a new pair of shoes, which were told would be on sale.

So, we ended up on the bus in the middle of  the night because we were on the train from Paris going back to the hotel.  Only the train stopped several stations short of the airport and a nice man announced that it was the last station for the day.  Well, deja vu all over again!!!  Because we couldn’t think of how to ask why this was so in francais, we picked up my shoes and waddled off the train to a bus that was waiting for us nearby.  And that’s how we met the nice couple from Boston.

Now, all of that happened after we spent hours trying to find the RER train that stopped before we wanted it to while we were in Paris.  After purchasing the shoes, which I am actually almost mad about because they caused us much grief, we spent literally hours walking around trying to find a place to eat and the RER train.  Why didn’t we just look in our book to find a restaurant?  Well, we left the  book at the hotel.  And that’s not the half of it.  Should I continue?  I risk doing so because you might think we were …well, I’ll leave it at that.

Back to the search for train.  I convinced Ray that we should jump on the Metro (read “let’s try to make this fun”) get off at an unknown station and see what we can find in the way of a restaurant.  So, we approached the man behind the chain linked booth in the Metro (their subway system in Paris) and told him our plans in francais.  He recommended a stop so we bought the tickets and walked to the platform.  Only, we couldn’t exactly remember the stop (it started with an M) and we didn’t know if the approaching train would take us there.  So we went back up and asked for directions.  They gave us directions (in francais) and we went back down to the platform but we couldn’t figure out how to get where we were going.  And the words of Yogi Berra, “if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll wind up somewhere else”.  After much nashing of teeth, we decided that by leaving the subway and going literally nowhere, we were better off than the alternative.  So, we spent about 8 euro to wander around the station and leave from the same entrance we had entered, say about 45 minutes earlier.  Getting lost can cost you time.  But I digress.

I mean honestly.  Has anything remotely like that ever happened to you?  Well, if it hasn’t happened to you, it did happen to the nice couple from Boston.  And that made us feel a little better as I mentioned earlier.

Since my “plan” didn’t work out so well, you can imagine Ray’s reaction.  It wasn’t pretty.  So, I then put him in charge.  He found a restaurant on a corner very close to the Hunchback of Nortre Dame’s Bistro.  Well, that not be the exact name of the place but it is very close if my memory serves me well.  Opps, let’s not go there.  So we had a surprisingly good dinner.  Although, I was exhausted, my feel hurt (no I was not wearing my new shoes) and it was hot.  Oh, and it was about 10:30 p.m.  So, I just had a tomato tarte.  And a copious amount of wine.   When we finished eating, we asked for directions, this time in english.  The waitress told us where to go…politely.  We followed her directions and the entrance to the subway had a bright red light which we interrupted to mean “don’t go in”.  So, we wandered around looking for another entrance.  We turned a corner and there it was.  The cathedral sans the hunchback.

We searched and searched and could not find another entrance, so we stopped deux policiers and asked for directions.  They told us to go to the entrance with the red light.  We walked back and went down and it was closed at the bottom by a chain link fence.  Long story short, we asked a shop keeper on the street by the bridge over the Seine where the entrance was.  He told us there had been a problem earlier and they closed the entrance.  Best bet was to walk to another entrance which was the the station that we had tried to ride to earlier for 8 euro.  And that’s how we found the train.

So back to square one.  We had journeyed up to Paris to pick up Ryan who was due to arrive in the dawn’s early light.  So deciding to do the logical thing, we set out a day early with our guides de touristes in hand and a reservation for a room at a Novotel (big hotel chain in Europe) near Charles de Gaulle airport north of Paris.  Novotel must be a huge chain because we found not one but three of them near the airport.  And we found the first two before we found the one we were booked at.  After driving in circles in roundabouts (literally), and taking several wrong turns, one which ended us up near a corn field with no hotels in sight, we finally arrived.  And that was how we found our hotel which was perfectly located in the direct line of the flight pattern about 1000 meters from the where all the planes touched down.  But that didn’t matter much because we were in downtown Paris getting lost and didn’t return until 1 a.m.   And the way we returned was on a shuttle from the airport to the hotel which we caught after we arrived at the airport on the bus from the train.  Confused?  So were we!!

Ryan, by the way, arrived and spent most of the day doing Napoleon’s tomb, military museum and looking for a parking place.  Now we’re back in La Ferte recovering and planning the next great adventure which will embark on tomorrow and which will involve the tasting of wine and wandering chateaus.

France fancy tales

No, we aren’t there yet.  This is from our last trip in May, 2007!!  But we are getting ready.  So, this will be the place to go for updates etc. so I’m practicing my computer skills to make sure all is going to work according to Hoyle.  This of course is Ray Ray posing in front of the Arc de Triomphe!! y fourgonnette liavrisons (vans)!!

Yesterday, July 14, we traveled to LAX to pick up our new french friends.  There was a mob scene at the airport.  But alas, after looking and looking at people coming out of Customs, the Habras arrived.  There were hugs around.  Luckily they speak english.  Martine is shy with english.  He spent time in the U.S. so he is fluent.  Their son is darling.  He’ll be a ladies man soon.  He’s 15.

We went to dinner in Manhatten Beach and parked at a meter that required a credit card.  That’s a new one.  The restaurant at 9 p.m. had a 20 minute wait.  Rock’n Fish.  Loud but good.  I’ll spare all my restaurant review.  Would I return.  No.  But the scene was fun.  I’ll post a picture when we settle in France.   I’m including a movie we took at Venice Beach.

In the way of background, he teaching engineering and she teaches math.  Their oldest daughter, 20, studies chemistry at university.  Their 17 year old daughter is the equivilent of a senior in high school.  They plan to visit San Francisco, Yosemite, Grand Canyon while in the U.S.  They will be very busy driving a lot!!

So, it is July 15th and we sit in the lounge at LAX at 6 p.m.  Our flight leaves at 9 p.m.  Key learning.  Arrive 4 hours ahead of time on international flights and avoid the rush.  It was so easy to get through security early.  There were very few there!!

Today, we took our french friends to Venice Beach.  What a hoot.

We think they loved it.  With skateboard parks, a 70 year old man on roller blades with an amplifier  playing a guitar, barely clad women, tatoo artists, black acrobats…there was plenty to see and enjoy/laugh at.  There aren’t many place anywhere as outlandish as that and quite American at the same time.  A good time was had by all!!  Then they dropped us off at the airport so that they could drive up the coast and enjoy the view.  Weather was spectacular.  And so was the company!!

Our flight was remarkable.  We flew Luftanza on an 360 aircraft.  OMG.  It was fabulous in business class.  Our chairs stretched into a bed!!  We had individual screens.  I watched 30 Rock, Glee and Entourage.  Ray watched Revenge of the Titans, so male!!  All the pictures we took in transit are on the iphones and I don’t have the cord to transfer them.  Drats.

Well, we arrived.  Late.  But, nevertheless, an arrival.  It is 2:50 a.m. and we’re enjoying a glass of wine and some chocolate before retiring.  It was, after all, a fabulous trip here aside from the time that Mr. J snarled at me in a rottweiller-kind of snarl.  And aside from the time that I screamed, “just pull over and look at the map” as  we got more lost by the second in gay Paris!!  And then there was the episode of trying to pay the machine for the use of the toll road.  Imagine, if you can, Ray driving and pulling up to the the machine automatique to pay the toll for the short trip we took south of Paris to Orleans.  It was like 11 euros.  So, Ray put the ticket into the machine and the credit card into the slot marked carte or card…and the darn thing spit them both out when an impressive amount of velocity.  So much force that they hit the ground.  Well, Ray was parked too close to the machine and he couldn’t open the door.  Temper started rising in the direct relationship to the frustration level.  So, I hopped out of the Citron and ran around the front of the car.  He was so close, I couldn’t retrieve the items.  Of course there was a car behind us…waiting in the darkness of their car, no beeping, being mysteriously silent.  So, I ran around the back on the car and crawled down the pick up the ticket and the credit card and then reinserted them.  I can tell you that it was great relief on Ray’s part that my attempt was not more successful than his.  So. desperate to free ourselves of more embarrassment, he fed a 50 euro into the machine.  Well, you would have thought that you were at Las Vegas and had won the big grand slam.  Euros just kept gushing and gushing.  By this time, Ray was screaming something about, “these god damn euros just keep coming” as he heaved them by the handfuls into the car.  Then he put the car into reserve, “god damn this car”, righted himself by putting it into forward and we pulled over to re-group.

There were a few more episodes that occurred before we arrived like when we could not find the street to turn on off the main drag.  The French have a lovely, quaint habit of essentially hiding the name of streets on sides of buildings.  Often, these words on hundreds of years old and so is the paint they use to “highlight” them.  It is lovely when you are walking about.  But when you are dead tired, with a snippet of moon and few street lights in a never-been-before place, it is downright discouraging.  But that’s another story.

So, here we are.  Think I’ll go to bed now.

Bon jour, it is Saturday.  We awoke at 10:30 a.m. feeling a bit more human.  This old house has wonderful french doors, imagine that)  and outside shutters made of very thick wood.  We opened the shutters and let the sun shine in!!  After watching a TV program in francais and playing with the computer we ventured out to find some food.  We arrived at the main drag, just a block off of where we are living and looked up and down the street.  Tourne au gouche (turned left) and walked until we decided we went the wrong direction.  A man was standing in the door to his abode having a smoke so we approached him.  Not a word of english was spoken by l’homme or il mer (man or his wife).  We were able to figure out that the stores were 2 kilometres away.  To make a long story short, his wife took us there by car.  Now, can you imagine such a thing in the U.S.?  Not sure it would have happened that way.  She was so nice.  She dropped us off near the restaurant we were trying to find.  Voila.  The restaurant was ferme (closed!!).  So, we walked down the street and found a boulangerie, bought two quiche Lorraines and a bagette.  Found the wine store, bought some local wine, walked home and had our first meal in Le Ferte St. Albin sitting outside under a tree next to the maison (house)!!

And now it is Sunday.  We ventured out last night and ate at the local restaurant.  We were the only ones speaking english.  It was great fun.  We actually carried on a  conversation in francais with each other and with the wait staff.  Fabulous!!   Oh, and the food was very good.  I had canard (duck) and Ray had beouf (beef).  We split of bottle of red and life was good.  Came home and retired.  The sun, by the way, was still up at 9:30 p.m.  Most people arrived to eat well after 8:30.

Today is Sunday and almost everything is closed.  We could not see the golf tourney, British Open on the TV so we thought we would drive to a golf course, have lunch and perhaps watch the tourney.  Fat chance!!  The first course we drove to had three cars in the lot.  No TV.  They did not speak english but we were able to speak enough francais to get directions to another course!!  It was about 15 minutes nord (north).  The course was lovely and next to a hotel and restaurant.  Alas, no coverage of golf.  The TV only had Tour de France.  So we left, searched unsuccessfully for a restaurant that had sandwiches.  Everything was closed in Orleans, where we had ventured to.   So we drove back to La Ferte St. Albin, returned to la maison (the house) and made toast with jam for lunch.  Je suis desolee (I was so sad).  Diner (dinner) was a different matter.  We barbecued petit lamb chops and served it with home grown, fresh picked out of the jardin (garden) legumes (vegetables) with vin de rouge (red wine).  And we ate outside on the patio.  Fabulous.  A very quiet day that included a nap!!!  Tomorrow we head for Paris to shop, spend the night and pick Ryan up at 7:35 a.m. on Tuesday.

Tripping around California

Here is a picture we took at Morro Bay when we were out on the bay.  Check out the blimp!!  What a great coincidence!!!

We are getting ready to go to France so I’m practicing with my blog!!  In the days ahead I’m going to put a few items of interest for all of you to see.  Hope you enjoy it.

Merci,  Dianna