L'Aventure Normand

Hello everyone! Unfortunately I was unable to update you because we have had some internet problems and I was not able to do a blog post prior to tonight =(  The good news is that David and I are arrived safely and efficiently in Saumur (tomorrow will mark the second day of our Loire Valley tour) and we have internet. Today we started in Angers and saw a total of two chateaux before arriving in Saumur, where we will start tomorrow with our tandem bike rental and our bike tour of the Loire. However, I figured I would use today's blog to summarize our travels in Normandy.

We arrived in Paris on-time from Barcelona, and we were rushed to get on a bus that would take us to the nearby train station which was schedules to leave 15 minutes after we landed. And here is why we love Ryan Air, the airline company that we have been flying with: David and I were standing at the bus stop with all our bags 7 minutes after landing... I am talking 7 minutes after the wheels of the plane touched the ground. It was seriously incredible. That means that David and I had no problems getting to Caen, the first city of our Normandy voyage. There we spent our half-day visiting the city cathedrals and the medieval fortress. The next morning we woke up early and set off to see the beaches of Normandy. Unfortunately for us, without a car it is very difficult to get to all of the beaches of Normandy in a single day unless you pay for a private guided tour. Now there are loads of companies that offer these services, the problem is most of them cost around 60E a person to spend most of your day in a car driving between the 5 landing sites. Therefore we decided that we would use public transportation and visit the site most important to us: Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery Memorial which overlooks the beach. Other than the weather which was windy and rainy and maybe 40 degrees, I would say that this part of our journey was a success. Here are those pictures:

This is the Chateau of Caen, an old military fortress. It is mostly in ruins and today just consists of its exterior walls and a chapel within which was under restoration. It was really fun to see though, and we were particularly happy because the rain clouds cleared about 10 minutes before I took this photo and we got to enjoy a little bit of sun. 

Here are David and I in front of the memorial cemetery at Omaha Beach. It was pouring and extremely windy, but nothing could really damper our awe at the sight of this patriotic monument. 

Due to the bad weather there were relatively few visitors to the memorial so I was able to get a pretty empty picture of the crosses. There are 9,387 burials at the site.

We also hiked all the way down to the beach, which you can see past the forest that we were about to hike through. Honestly it looked quite a lot like a normal deserted beach, but knowing the history behind it did make it interesting. due to weather constraints we only had time to walk to one of the "items" that they had scattered along the 5-mile stretch of beach, which was a piece of German anti-aircraft artillery, located maybe only a mile away from our starting location. Then we returned and went through the museum on the site which was not only free but very informative. 

The next day we headed to the all-famous Mont Saint Michel, one of the most visited abbeys in the world. We got there about an hour before the grounds opened which we spent walking around the premises (there is a wall that surrounds the area which is open to the public) and taking pictures. We also found a somewhat large snail which was a highlight for our morning, though after seeing the abbey of course. Here are some pictures of that excursion:

This is the all-impressive facade of the abbey Mont Saint Michel, which sits on what is an island during high tide and a kind of hill in the middle of a sandy landscape during low-tide, when we saw it.

Here is a view from the inside of the abbey grounds out past the houses of the "island" and toward the sandy stretches of beach which lay beyond.

This is David and I pictured by the cloister within the abbey.

I just loved how ornate the column architecture was! Plus, this is one of the few sites that I have been too that hasn't had an enormous amount of construction and restoration going on, so I found the site especially pretty. 

This is David and I on the paved road that leads to the Mont Saint Michel. That was definitely one of the most impressive buildings that we have seen thus far in our lives! We really enjoyed our day of touring there. Also, since it is a national monument of France, we get in FREE! Woohoo!

Ok, well I think that I have brought this blog mostly up to date, and hopefully tomorrow David and I will again have internet so that I can share with you some of our pictures of the Loire Valley. PS we will be biking about 70 kilometers tomorrow (that is about 44 miles) and we have a schedule to keep and three chateaux to see. Wish us luck! We are off to bed to get ready for our big day. Oh, and let's pray that we don't get any more rain!!