We are heading south to Agel

Unless we find easy access to the Internet, this is my last post until we return. We left our wonderful spot in Brittany this morning and we are on our way to Agel in the south of France. Tonight we are staying in a Formula 1 Hotel outside of the city of Bordeaux. The last time we were here was when we boarded our barge for a ride alone the Garrone canal.

Breakfast

My routine almost every morning is to hop in the car and drive to one of the great patisseries to get fresh warm bread and usually some pastries. Tough, but someone has to do it! I started by going to the tiny bakery just down the road, but was told my third day that they were going on vacation for the next three weeks! How could they do that to me? Well, I found a very good, and bigger, replacement in our neighboring town of Châteaulin with great bread and pastries, not to mention, more choices!

The only problem with this place is that it is not open on Mondays

Just a few of the choices!

They have even more breads than you see here!!

Our home in Port Launay, Brittany

Greenside house just after sunset (our room is where you see the skylights)

As I write this we have settled in as temporary locals in Mark Greenside's house in Port Launay, in the Brittany region of France. This is our first time in this part of France. I highly recommend you read Mark's book, I Will Never Be French about how he fell in love with this area and his adventures buying a house and living here part-time. It is available at Amazon (Kindle too).

We arrived the first of September with our friends the Kettwigs in tow. The house had been closed up for several weeks so we set about getting supplies and cleaning out the spider webs, etc. Then it really began to feel like home. It is an old house with 3 floors, Annie and I are in the old attic which has been converted into a bedroom and bathroom. "Watch your head and don't fall down the stairs as you walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night," Annie would say to me as I climbed into to bed every night for the first week.

The house is on a wide lot with houses on either side, but you don't really see them. The house to the right says it was built in 1897 and is occupied by an older couple. I exchange bounjours with the gentleman almost every day. Especially when we are both out checking on the minute sheep herd that inhabits the park across the street beside the Aulne river.

We are situated by the last, or first, lock on the Brest-Nantes canal, depending on which direction you are going. It reminds us of our barge trip on the Garone Canal several years back. We've seen several recreational boats and a couple of old sailing boats go through the lock. The lock, I'm guessing, is more than 30 km from the sea and yet, we experience the tidal surges twice a day. Some days the tide actually rises above the dam next to the lock and, other times of the day, down stream is just a small creek hardly deep enough for a canoe to travel.

Port Launay

Mont-St-Michel

Mont-St-Michel

At some point I will post most of my pictures to the web, but for now I will add a few to my blog when I post.

Last Days in Normandy

We all piled in the van and headed off to spend our last full day in Normandy in Bayeux. On a previous visit this was our home base. The cathedral is said to be bigger than Notre-Dame in Paris. By the way it is also called Notre-Dame. Bayeux is famous for the Bayeux Tapestry which is over 70 meters long and tells the story of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 (a date all British and French students know well). It was completed about 100 years after the battle and used to be displayed once a year in the Notre-Dame cathedral. Now you can see it up close and get a great audio tour description too!

Notre-Dame

The next morning we got up bright and early for our long days drive to Port-Launay in Brittany (our home for the next month). While checking my e-mail in the breakfast area I said hello to a fellow traveler and asked him where he was from. "A small town in northern California," was his reply. "Oh, where?" I asked. "Pleasanton," he replied. "I taught in Pleasanton along with two of my fellow travelers," I said. "My daughter teaches at Mohr," he said. "Mohr! I taught at Mohr and Joe Kettwig who is with me was the principal," I said surprised. His daughter is Michelle Britto who taught right across the hall from me my last year, and teaches 4th there still! Small world!!

The highlight of our drive, besides the beautiful countryside, was our stop at Mont-St-Michel. I have been there before, but this time I got to have one of their famous fluffy omelettes. I have to say it looked way better than it tasted and now I won't need to go back for another. Plus, the lunch was real expensive! We beat the tides back to our van and continued on to Brittany.

D-Day tour

First, I am no longer going to do a daily blog, big surprise. I am going to cover places we've visited. Since I have several groups, we sometimes visit the same places more than once. Also, at the end of the day after I have been driving people around, I don't have the energy to sit down and cover that day. Having said that here is some information on our D-Day tour.

US Cemetery above Omaha Beach

We ended up hiring a personal guide, Claire, and she was great. It seemed costly until we realized we would have paid more for the 4 of us to go on a big impersonal group bus tour. Of course I was the little bus tour driver. We had an almost 9 hour tour for 4 people for 313 Euros. We went to the two US beach heads, Utah and Omaha. We stayed in Arromanche, Gold Beach, which was invaded by the British so we didn't need to visit there. Skipped the other two landing sites. We went to a German cemetery and the US cemetery above Omaha Beach. Annie and I had been to the US cemetery before, but that was it. We also visited several significant battle sites and heard many accounts of the back ground of the war leading up to D-day and what happened on that day. Did you know that we captured Korean soldiers who had been forced to work for the Germans after being captured from the Russians, who captured them from the Japanese, who captured them when they invaded Korea before WW II! Also, there are now shell fish living in the waters off Utah beach which are native to our gulf coast because the landing craft were built around New Orleans and they hitched a ride on the boats all the way to France.

Arromanche

August 29: We packed up and left Karl and Maria's Forest Farm and headed to Arromanches and the D-Day beaches. We are staying in the Hotel Marine right on Gold Beach with the remains of Winston's harbor off shore. The tides here go out dramatically, although not the 22 km you find at Mont Sant Michel, about 800 meters. This is the sight of the British landing and is called Gold Beach. The people at the hotel are very nice and have arranged an all day tour of the D-Day Beaches for tomorrow.

Monet's Garden in Giverney

August 28: Erin and her friend Stacy met us at Forest Farm and we went off to Giverney. It was very crowded and it took us a while to even park. Went went to lunch first at Hotel Baudy, which is where Monet and his artist pals would meet for meals when they were in town. Many a famous impressionist painter stayed at the hotel and painted in the studio behind the hotel. After a filling lunch we went off to tour Monet's gardens. It is different every time we come. All the flowers are at a very mature stage and this was our first visit (this is our third time) where we actually saw the lilly pad flowers blooming. Even crowed, it is a peaceful place to visit!

Bois Jerome, Vernon, and Giverney

Forest Farm - Karl and Maria's B & B

August 27, 2011: Annie and I didn't sleep much on the plane, but we both watched two movies. We were in the first row of the plane in business class. We had been upgraded when they re-routed our flight. So our seats were great, the food was great, and we had no complaints. We just can't seem to sleep much on a plane. We arrived a little after Joe, Judy, and Erin Kettwig and at different terminals. The plan was to meet at the pickup spot for our van. Erin left with her friend Stacy for Paris and the Kettwigs were at the pickup spot as planned. It was good to see them because we were both having trouble texting each other when we first arrived. It wasn't long before we were loaded up, filled the tank, and fired up Penny (my GPS) to head out of town. Our first two nights we are staying at Karl and Maria's B & B in the small village of Bois Jerome, not far from the city of Vernon and Giverney. We got to the B & B early, as planned, and dropped off our luggage. We headed into Vernon to get a bite to eat and to load up on Euros at the nearest ATM. So we stopped at the very first restaurant and ATM we found. What did we have for our first meal in France you may ask? Pizza! We then headed for the old center of town which we love from previous visits. While wandering around briefly we were suddenly soaked by a huge cloud burst. So back in the van and a quick retreat to Forest Farm to dry off and rest. While everyone else napped I headed back to Vernon to find a car parts store, which I did. There I bought some tie-down strapped and a plastic cover to put over some of our luggage that we plan to put on the roof luggage rack. I found what I needed and headed back to Forest Farm. After resting and walking around a bit, we headed off for dinner at an old hotel right across the road from Monet's gardens in Giverney. We had a good dinner of different kinds of gallettes, depending on our tastes. Then it was back to our B & B for a good nights sleep!

Importance of getting to the airport early

We decided to stay in Santa Cruz the night before our flight. Our son, Jeremy drove us to the airport. We left plenty early and arrived about 3 hours before our scheduled flight to Chicago and on to Paris. As soon as we got into the Admirals Club I checked the board and found our flight was delayed by 45 minutes. I went back to the desk and Nancy, very helpful, said right away Mr. Britton we have problem. You won't have enough time to make your connection in Chicago. She was already working on a solution. So we are now on the plane bound for Dallas. We actually left about 30 minutes earlier than we had planned. The not so bad news is that we were bumped to business class for our flight from Dallas to Paris. We will arrive about 30 minutes later than originally planned. Not bad!

Next post will be from France when I get the chance.