Saint Mere Eglise and Normandy, France (May 11, 2012)

We continued our adventures in France with Mike and Corri Palmer - leaving le Mont St. Michel we had a short drive to Saint Mere Eglise.  Here are some pictures of the French countryside.

The pods in the tree are mistletoe.  It eventually saps all the nutrients out of the tree and will kill the tree if not removed.  We saw trees like this along the highways of France.

A small town we drove through.

The Church in Saint Mere Eglise - on the steeple there is a parachute caught and a soldier dangling.  A close-up is shown below.

Saint Mere Eglise was one of the first places the paratroopers landed to start the D-Day invasion in World War II.  A soldier actually landed like this.  After getting shot in the foot by the Germans, he played dead, which saved his life.  This is portrayed in the movie "The Longest Day" starring John Wayne.

This is a picture of the soldier who was caught on the steeple when he visited the site later in life.  He's pointing to the place where his parachute caught the steeple.

 Inside the church.

A monument celebrating the landing of the paratroopers and the subsequent liberation of the area.  The French detested the German occupation.  They had a very active underground organization to help in the defeat of the Germans.  They were very thankful for the efforts of the Allied Forces in their liberation.

There is a museum opposite the Church where the paratrooper is shown that commemorates the liberation.  Flags of the Allied Forces are shown.

 

A monument celebrating the paratroopers.  They started the invasion in the middle of the night, before the sea invasion began the next morning.  There was a death rate of close to 50% for a couple of the airborne divisions.

From inside the museum. The roof is designed to represent a parachute.

We purchased some of the crickets shown on the left.  Mike and I used them to hurry on Diane and Corri when they took too long taking pictures!  It gave us a fun diversion.

A plaque celebrating the heroism of the paratroopers who liberated Saint Mere Eglise.

A view of the downtown area of Saint Mere Eglise today.

We next went a short distance the the Normandy Memorial and Cemetery.  We first toured the museum that gave a background and history of the invasion.  In the initial planning it was a small mission, but as months of planning progressed it evolved into a major mission.  It caught the Germans by surprise and started the invasion that led to the eventual end of World War II in Europe.

We are at Omaha Beach as shown on this map.  There were five other beaches in the vicinity where the troops came ashore.

We hiked down to Omaha Beach where the Allied Forces came aground the morning after the paratroopers landed.  It was very humbling to visualize them landing here and having to fight their way up to the top of the hill where the Germans were showering them with gunfire.  The beach was covered with German booby-traps, and as the troops climbed the hillside they encountered swamps and very dense vegetation.

A reflecting pond which is part of the cemetery at the top of the hill above the beach.

The cemetery sits in a peaceful location looking out over the beach where so many died.

A view of the grave markers.  The Star of David is for the Jewish soldiers, and a cross for all others.

Most of the grave markers have names on them, but some of the soldiers could not be identified so they are identified like this one.

Those who received the Medal of Honor have a gold star and gold writing to make them more visible.

Over 9,000 American soldiers are buried here, and there are more cemeteries like this throughout Europe.  It was good to take a few hours and honor those who gave their lives so that we might enjoy the freedoms we enjoy today.  Thanks to those like Mike Palmer who have been deployed in the Armed Forces and risked their lives for us.

From Normandy we departed for Paris, a four hour drive.

le Mont St. Michel, France (May 10, 2012)

Along with Mike and Corri Palmer (Mike is Hal's cousin) we had an eight hour drive across France to le Mont St. Michel, an island on the west coast of France.

With the fields in the foreground, it doesn't look like an island here, but it is as will be shown later.  Because it is an island it often appears misty and surreal.  It is a magical place.  I don't know if it's the small island atmosphere, the impressive Abbey, the closeness of the buildings, or a combination of all along with being centuries old, but there is something special about this location.  We've been asked what was the favorite place we visited, and we generally have said it is really hard to pick one as we some some incredible places on our trip.  If we had to narrow it down to just one, this would be it.  Because it is off the normal tourist routes it is not as heavily visited as many tourist sites, but it is definitely worth the effort to get here.

You can't drive your car onto the island.  It used to be that if you were staying the night you could park on the causeway, but they are getting ready to replace the causeway with a bridge, so now you park a couple of miles away and take a shuttle bus.  Corri and Mike are just ahead of me.

Here you can see the causeway on the right and on the left you can see the tide coming in to surround the island.  This is about as far as the tide came, but when Mike and Corri were here two years earlier the tide was higher and completely filled the area around the island.

When we arrived in the late afternoon there were still a lot of tourists on the island and the narrow streets were pretty packed.

This is later when most of the tourists had left and we kind of felt like we had the island to ourselves.  The sign for La Vielle Auberge is for our hotel.

We actually stayed in the annex across the street and up a bunch of stairs from the hotel entrance.  Here we're standing at the door to the annex. 

Mike caught a picture of both Corri and Diane taking pictures - they were our main two photographers.

The island is not ADA accessible - you've got to climb lots of stairs.  We didn't get there until around 5 pm, but Corri's pedometer said that we climbed 86 flights of stairs that day!  Some flights of stairs were very long like this one.  This is just part of the climb to the Abbey on the top of the island.

Outside the chapel at the very top.

Inside the chapel.

We began our self-guided tour at the top and worked our way down through a maize of rooms in the Abbey.  Here's a garden area part way down.  Because space is a premium on the island you don't find very many garden spots like this one.  Below is an up close view of the pillars surrounding this garden.

Under the chapel there are four rooms with massive columns like this one.  They hold up the 500 million tons of weight from the chapel.

We didn't start out as the last ones on the self-guided tour, but we soon became the final visitors for the day.  A man was following us locking up each area as we finished, assuring us that we could take all the time we needed.  When we got to this room with the pillars he started to talk to Mike and Hal and told us we were there at the perfect time, no rowdy students, no noisy tourists, but in a quiet atmosphere as an Abbey should be - I think he liked it quiet and that we were respectful and quiet.  We found out that he was an English tour guide.  He soon became our personal guide.  He pointed out that the Gothic beams on the left that came together were not put on top of the rock in the columns, but rather were carved as part of the rock itself, and each fit perfectly.  The rock was carved 35 kilometers away and transported by boat to the island.

This large wheel on the right was used as a primitive elevator to get materials up into the upper reaches of the Abbey.  Humans acted as the power to move the wheel by walking side by side on the inside.

The wheel is just inside the hole in the wall in the top right.  Below it is a track made of rock with slats on the outside on which a big wooden sled would run.  Human power would turn the wheel to raise or lower the sled which would be loaded.  This is no longer used.  To the left and a little higher up is another large opening.  There are metal cables (you can't see them in this picture) and an electrical winch is used to raise and lower a cart which holds the load.

The picture is rather dark, but this is the first chapel in the Abbey and it is several levels down from the top.  It is not open to the public, but our new friend, the English speaking French guide showed it to us.

Before anything was built on the island, it was a massive rock extending upward.  Everything was built around the rock and upward.  In the center bottom you can see the original rock and then at the top the rock and masonry as the Abbey was built on top.

Corri, Mike and Diane with our friendly French guide.  Diane is holding the keys he was using to lock the rooms behind us.  He made our tour of the Abbey very special and personal, which just added to the magical feel of Mont St. Michel.  We viewed this "coincidence" as one of many tender mercies we had throughout our tour of Europe.

Some shots of various buildings on the island.  The roofs of these buildings are made with a slate shingle.

There's not a lot of room for gardens, except on the outside of the buildings.

A small cemetery on the island.

The rising height of the buildings adds to the mystique and magical feel.

Our hotel room windows are the middle left building.

To the left Diane is standing in a narrow alley that climbs up the hillside.  We went exploring and were followed by a group of Asian tourists that thought we had found some hidden sight to see.

At twilight the large lights on the side of the Abbey started to come on a section at a time.  It was time to head back out to the causeway to try and get some night time shots.

Mike, Corri, Diane and Hal in front of le Mont St. Michel at night.

A last view at twilight.

The four of us had a great late afternoon and evening on the island.  Mike and Corri had been here two years earlier, and enjoyed it as much the second time.  I had wanted to come here since reading Corri's blog about their first visit, and Diane and I were not disappointed.  It really is a magical island.

Tomorrow we head for Saint Mere Eglise and Normandy.