Mercredi le 15 Septembre
7:00 comes quickly after a night of champagne.
Parisian skies were grey and the streets were wet as we got to St. Lazare to take our train to Caen. After lugging our suitcases up what seemed to be a fa-fillion stairs, we stood watching the departure boards and sipped from tiny café crèmes.
A smelly and crazy old man began chatting with us in English about a town where he wanted to go. Crazy people seem to be a theme on this holiday.
Anyway, the platform number came up and we made our way to the train without incident.
I had purchased the train tickets in advance online and there were no seat numbers listed on them, so we just sat wherever there were empty places. I still don’t know exactly how it works, but the ones we chose seemed to have been reserved even though they were not listed as such on the poster in the corridor. There were eight seats in the compartment, the score was 5 tourists to 3 French people and from what I could catch of the conversation, all of the tourists were in someone else’s seats. But no one asked that we move, they seemed to prefer to talk about us disparagingly instead. The journey was therefore a little awkward, but by the time we reached Lisieux they had all left the train and we were able to relax a bit for the last leg of the journey. I slept for about 30 minutes and felt pretty fresh on exiting the train.
We emerged from the station at Caen and true to expectation the car rental office really was right across the street. We were assigned a Citröen Picasso and Reyn was totally stoked when he saw it. We set up the GPS and plotted a course for Courseulles-Sur-Mer, left the parking lot and turned right into the tramway, missing a collision with an oncoming tram. Good thing we got the extra insurance. Oh – did I mention that the GPS was directing us in German? We got a hearty laugh from the obvious irony that a German voice was guiding us through Normandy to Juno Beach of all places. At any rate, Reyn understands enough German that this did not present an insurmountable obstacle, so we went with it for most of the day until quite by accident stumbled upon a way to change the language settings.
The French seem to love roundabouts/traffic circles and once we figured out that ‘cedez le passage’ probably meant something to the effect of ‘give way’ or ‘yield’ we had no problems. And we figured that out after the first roundabout and the second near collision. Like I said, good thing we got the extra insurance.
We arrived at Courseulles-Sur-Mer in good time and took a walk on Juno Beach. It is hard to put into words the feelings that I had, standing there, thinking about the events that had transpired right in that spot. I wondered what it must have felt like, storming that beach drenched in freezing Atlantic Ocean water, weighed down with equipment, trying madly to dodge bullets in order to stay alive so that you could dodge more bullets.
We returned to the town itself to have some lunch prior to returning to the Juno Beach Centre to take a tour of the immediate area.
Lunch was delicious; a fried omelet avec frites for me, and Reyn had the plat du jour. It started out a bit dicey, but ended with an amazing café gourmande of an assortment of little chocolate and mocha themed mini-desserts. And he shared!
The Juno Beach Centre is staffed by Canadian students who work giving tours and are generally WWII ambassadors for the people who visit. A young woman lead our group in and around the beach, and even into the still-intact German observation bunker that comprised part of the park. We learned that right at the very spot it was the Royal Winnipeg Rifles who came ashore and captured that bunker.
It was very windy and even though the tour was extremely interesting, we were glad to return to the building to see the short introductory film and walk through the museum.
Afterward, I filled a small baggie with some sand from the beach. Some people may not think that was appropriate. For me it did not denigrate the sacrifices that were made to win that sand, rather it serves as a reminder every time I see it.
The next place I needed to go was the Canadian War Cemetery at Bény-sur-Mer. I have always considered it to be my duty as a Canadian to pay respects to the fallen soldiers of my country.
The cemetery was a serene and tranquil place despite the work going on to replace each of the markers. It seems that erosion has caused a great deal of damage and there is a project, now almost complete, that will see each of them replaced.
The meticulously kept grounds, planted with maple trees and a profusion of flowers in and among the graves, clearly showed me that the French continue to honour the dead.
I am not ashamed to say that as I walked through the rows and saw so many young, young men’s names and dates, I became quite choked up. Being there in person brings it home to you in a way that seeing it on films or reading about it in books never could.
As we made our way back to the car another couple was just arriving. I thought it wonderful to see that this was a place that had many visitors.
We plotted the GPS coordinates into our unit and we were off to find the B&B near Villers-Bocage. It was around 19:00 by the time we arrived and I was a little worried that madame might be perturbed with our late-ish arrival. I unlatched the gate and I saw her coming out of the house to greet us, words of genuine welcome tumbling forth in the melodious French of a native-speaker.
She showed us to our room and in and around the common area of small kitchen and large breakfast room/lounge, and left us to settle in.
She reappeared a few minutes later with a bottle of farm-made cider as refreshment. We chatted a little and showed her on a large world map of the type you used to see in geography class exactly where in Canada we were from. Surprisingly, there was already a push pin in the spot so we had been beaten to la Ferme by someone!
After dinner in Villers-Bocage (nothing great) we went straight back to the room to shower, upload pics to the computer and to crash.
After so many awful broken sleeps in Paris, this oh so quiet and oh so dark little corner of France was most welcome, and I slept like a rock! Yay!
Jeudi le 16 Septembre
A rooster crowed around 7:00 and intermittently thereafter. Up at 8:55 for the pre-arranged 9:00 breakfast, we quickly made ourselves presentable and went down to eat.
We met 4 other guests at table and chatted amicably as we gobbled a delicious omelet (made with eggs fresh that morning), and sampled any number of fresh pastries that madame had purchased in the town earlier that morning. The coffee was delicious and cheerfully refilled. In short a perfect breakfast!
We went back up to the room to prepare for the day. I had already planned on seeing Deauville and Honfleur and had hoped to be able to add Étretat on as well, and madame had assured us that this was completely do-able. So off we went.
We chose a route that avoided tolls on the way to Deauville and as a result had a much longer drive than was probably necessary, but we did see some lovely countryside and charming villages as a result. We marveled at how cute everything was, geraniums on just about every window ledge and lovely rustic farmhouses…just postcards everywhere you looked.
We arrived in Deauville and could see right away that this was a ritzy place. We walked along the boardwalk at the beach and took a few pictures, but that was really all we wanted to do there.
Back in the car to go to Honfleur. This would be our destination for lunch. We parked the car and strolled over to the old harbour and sat ourselves down for café crème and croque monsieur. It was there, in Honfleur, that Reyn and I took on the noble quest of finding the best café crème in France. Stay tuned. Lunch was delicious and the sun warm as we sat back and enjoyed the view of the masts in the harbour and the very old and narrow buildings along the three sides. The Impressionists loved the quality of the light in Honfleur and they flocked to paint there; Champlain also sailed from Honfleur for Quebec.
After lunch we looked at a few souvenir shops and walked around the harbour, stopping to watch a merry-go-round/carousel do its thing.
Back in the car and headed for Étretat. We went over the Pont de Normandie which spans the river Seine. It is a huge thing and cost us €5 each way.
For me, Étretat was the highlight of the day for sheer spectacle. We drove into the town, which is conveniently located right between two of the stone formations and walked down to la mer.
To paraphrase Seinfeld, the sea was angry that day my friend. We could see that rain was literally racing in toward shore, and so we had to take shelter under the awning of a news kiosk, as my flimsy umbrella really didn’t offer much protection. I suppose we could have got back in the car, but I can’t recall that option being considered.
Luckily the rain swept through fairly quickly and we decided to climb up one of the hillsides to really get a sense of the cliffs and the cote d’albatre. The rain had made the steps a bit wet but we managed the climb fairly quickly, it actually was not as bad a climb as it had seemed it might be. Surprisingly, there was no fee to do this; strange that the real money making enterprise in the town seemed to be the pay toilets.
Even though the weather was overcast, the view was still spectacular. Looking to my left I could see the elephant trunk and looking to my right there was nothing but more spectacular white coastline. It was truly wondrous and one of the main highlights of the entire trip for me.
After a long drive back to Villers-Bocage we bought a bottle of wine to take back to the B&B and then got some dinner (same restaurant as the previous night, similar unremarkable food).
Now we’re relaxing and letting the sights of the day sink into our memories.
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