Trip Awards

We are leaving for the airport soon so it's time for the trip awards.

Best Hotel
The Ritz. Not even a contest. This is not only the best hotel of the trip but our new all-time favorite hotel.  Ever.  Not including The Ritz, The Dylan in Amsterdam was our favorite of the trip.

Best Meal
The Rapière in Bayeux. Sadly, this trip did not involve any new or unusual foods.

Best Hotel Breakfast
Not surprising, The Ritz.

Favorite Activity
WWII tour in Normandy

Biggest Surprise
The farmland of Normandy.  We did not expect the rolling verdant fields dotted with healthy dairy cows.  We always think of vineyards when we think of the French countryside.  Normandy is much more like upstate NY except with stone houses and barns.

What could we have done better?
The Chateau in Bayeux was very nice but we do prefer to be in a town or city so that we can go for a walk at night and don't have to drive to dinner.

Would we go back?
To Paris? Absolutely.  We always look forward to Paris.
To Normandy and Bruges? We are really glad we went but don't think we'd return for a second visit.
Amsterdam? Yes.  We were only there for a few days and there is much more to see and do.  I'd love to return just to do some shopping.

Bar Hemingway

So after a nice swim in the hotel pool

We headed down to the Bar Hemingway famous as much for the patrons who have frequented it over the years as for the cocktail creations of Colin Peter Field.  He says that "One drinks a single cocktail three times: once with the eyes, once with the nose and lastly with the palate."  Butch and I agree.

Butch ordered some food after the third round of cocktails which also explains why the pictures are increasingly blurry. Mini hot dogs and mini burgers...

Puttin' On The Ritz

We have checked into The Ritz in Paris and it is even better than I expected.

Pictures of our room

The hotel is thoroughly modern including USB ports in the desk and yet they have kept the original look of switches and fixtures.

The trip from Bayeux was easy.  We had some trouble finding the entrance to the parking garage for the rental car return due to a bunch of roads being closed.  

We spent the afternoon just wandering around Paris.  The weather is perfect and the city is not that crowded.  

We are thoroughly exhausted. It was a very busy week of touring.  We are going to enjoy the pool and bar here at the hotel before heading out for dinner.

We fly home tomorrow afternoon.  

Brittany too

We drove south west to Mont St-Michel this morning.  It's about a 1.5 hour drive from our hotel.  The sign in the parking lot of Mont St-Michel said it would take 40 minutes to walk to the entrance.  Butch and I were all like "That's for out of shape people. It will never take 40 minutes."  We were correct - sort of - it took 45 minutes... Anyway, after a long but beautiful walk

we arrived at Mont St-Michel.  Now the real exercise began.  We climbed from the bottom all the way to the top to visit the Abbey.  25 flights of stairs according to FitBit.

The view from the top is spectacular.   See video below.

Mont St-Michel has been a place of worship since A.D. 708.  The island sits in the Bay of Mont St-Michel surrounded by a huge mudflat.  The Bayeux tapestry has scenes of Harold rescuing knights as their horses sink in the quicksand in this bay.  The tide speeds in and out 8 miles during the month.

View of the bridge and mudflats from the Abbey

We toured the Abbey but I did not take any pictures of the Abbey church because there was a Mass in progress and I did not want to be rude.

View of the giant columns holding up the Abbey church

After thoroughly touring the Abbey, we walked back down and took the shuttle bus back to the parking lot.

Instead of heading back to the hotel, we drove a bit more along the coast into Brittany.  We stopped in the town of Cancale.  This is the oyster capital of France.

Brittany is famous for crepes and galettes so we stopped for lunch.  No English spoken here. Not a problem for Butch who can order a beer in like 7 languages.  It is the only phrase he ever learns.

I ordered a galette with potato, bacon and some sort of cream.  I could not translate the last bit in the menu.  This is what arrived.

That's a bowl of cold buttermilk. The waiter explained via hand motions that I was supposed to wrap up the galette and then dip it into the milk.   So, that's what I did and it was good.

We are back at the hotel now.  This is our last night here before we head to Paris in the morning. Due to the food coma, we will probably have a light dinner in Bayeux tonight.

Operation Food Coma

We have had so much good food but we had, by far,  our best dinner of the trip last night at La Rapiere in Bayeux. Carrot soup, tomato risotto, shrimp puff pastry, beef, cheese course and dessert.  We were happy we had parked far away so we could walk off that meal.  

Normandy is apple country so here is the apple sorbet with calvados poured over it.

The Chateau Le Cheneviere has the best breakfast of all the hotels so far. The brioche is to die for.

Even the horses are smiling

We spent the afternoon wandering around the city of Bayeux.  The highlight is the 1000 year old and 230 foot long Bayeux tapestry depicting the Norman Conquest of England.  

Pictures here are compliments of Google Image Search. No photos allowed in the Tapestry room.

To see the tapestry, you stroll along it while the 20 minute long audio guide walks you through the story as told in 58 panels. 

The first few scenes show Harold with his pack of hounds visiting Normandy.  They were carrying the dogs onto the boats so I thought Harold was not so bad. It turns out that he is a complete jerk and ultimately ends up with an arrow stuck in his eye.  

Walking out of the museum, Butch and I both commented that our favorite part of the audio guide was "even the horses are smiling" describing William's invasion of England.  We were able to buy a pillow in the gift shop with the smiling horses. 

As usual, we are currently relaxing in the hotel bar before we head back to downtown Bayeux for dinner.  The only thing we don't like about this hotel is its remoteness.  The nearest town is a long walk away so we have to drive everywhere.

Obligatory view from our hotel window

Tomorrow, we head to Mont St-Michel and the Brittany coast for our last day of touring before going to Paris.  

D-Day

Our half-day tour of the WWII sites included the German Cemetery, Pointe du Hoc, Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery.  The tour guide was fantastic filling us with facts about D-Day while we visited each place.  I cannot recommend enough visiting Normandy.  I've read quite a lot of history about WWII but nothing compares to actually walking around here and seeing the steep cliffs and the long beaches and the German bunkers.

There are 21,000 soldiers buried in the German Cemetery.  It is a somber place with black crosses and 2 graves per marker.  There is a circular mound containing the remains of 200 unknown soldiers.

Pointe du Hoc gave us our first feeling of just how incredible the D-Day invasion was.  Today, the German gun battery is full of bomb craters and empty bunkers but the steep cliffs down to the sea remain.  We did not realize that both Pointe du Hoc and the American Cemetery are now technically part of the United States having being given to the United States as memorials after the war.  

Butch was really moved walking on Omaha Beach where his father landed during the war. 

The American Cemetery is the largest military cemetery after Arlington. There are 9000+ graves for soldiers, red cross workers and war correspondents who died in the Battle of Normandy.  The families were given the difficult choice of burying their loved ones in Normandy or having the bodies returned to the United States.  

There is also a time capsule at the cemetery containing all the general's war reports.  The plan is to open it after 100 years on June 6, 2044.  

In Bayeux

We are staying at the Chateau La Cheneviere in Bayeux.  

We have this wild room on the top floor of the main house.  We have our own private staircase off the 2nd floor.  And, Yes!, that's the tub and shower in the room.

The restaurant at the hotel has a very good reputation for the area.  We were too tired from our travels to venture out last night so we ate here. 

Everything was wonderful except the dessert.  Dessert looked good but did not taste great.  Butch had that weird meringue thing on the right. My chocolate cube was hard and just not chocolate enough. Perhaps I'm just spoiled from having been in Belgium.  

This morning we are touring the WWII sites.  I hired a guide from the hotel.  

Belgium was so yesterday

We had a wonderful classic Belgium dinner at De Koetse last night.  Butch overheard some people in our hotel talking about a really good restaurant so we followed the people to it.

I've never had a screwdriver with fresh squeezed OJ

It is late in the tourist season so Bruges was quiet in the evening.  I imagine all the squares are swarming with people in the summer months.

The Pand Hotel was fine except for the coffin-like elevator.  I never did get in it. I climbed the 3 flights of stairs every time.

View from our bathroom window

After a quick breakfast at the hotel, we left Bruges this morning for our journey to Normandy.  Google said it would take close to 5 hours for the trip to Bayeux.  The trip went mostly smooth except for the toll booths and the gas station.  We stopped for gas and the machine would not accept my credit card. I know about 100 words in French and most of those are food related so I could not string any of them together to explain to the attendant that the pump was broken.  With a few trips back and forth and a lot of hand signs, she finally understood and turned the pump on.  Each toll booth was a different new puzzle for us to figure out.  I can see why the highways in France are so nice.  We spent about $50 in tolls to get here.

View of the Normandy bridge from the road

This is the longest cable-stayed bridge in the Western world.

We stopped in the charming Honfleur on our way to Bayeux.

Notice how skinny the houses are.  When these were built, people paid taxes on the width of the building and not the height.  

The wooden Ste. Catherine Church in Honfleur looks like an upside down boat. This is what happens when a group of fishermen build a church.

They also have pews with reversible backs so you can either worship or listen to the organ.

We climbed up to the Cote de Grace.  The book said it was a steep climb.  Butch and I were like "how steep could it be." We knew we were in trouble when the path turned into a series of switchbacks.  However, the view was worth the climb.

That's the city of Honfleur and the Seine River with the Normandy bridge in the background.

I'm including this picture of Butch and I but not because it is a particularly good picture.

We are laughing because we asked this group of frenchmen - 1 man and 3 women - to take the picture. The guy took our camera and the 3 woman proceeded to yell at him to get just the right background.  We have a bunch of these pictures and all are not great but watching the guy try to satisfy the 3 women was priceless.

After Honfleur, we traveled to our hotel in Bayeux but more on that tomorrow.