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No I haven’t flown back to US without telling anyone, I spent a weekend in Normandy and visited the American Cemetery which rests on official American soil. With the five other English assistants, we rented a car and embarked on our first driving adventure in France (which with the exception of a speeding ticket that I was not responsible for, went well). We left Friday night after everyone finished with classes and arrived late that evening in Bayeux. The speeding ticket incident did occur on this part of the trip unfortunately, we were driving along when there was suddenly a blinding white light - this prompted me to ask the others if they too had seen the light or I was just about to lose my eyesight on the A-13. Yes they too had seen the light, Jesus suggested it might have been an alien abduction; but Charles informed us no, it was the flash from the radar camera . . . awesome . . For something that’s supposed to promote the safety of those on the highway, blinding lights don’t really seem to be the best way to achieve this . . .

Back on American Soil

Lisa Damico
2007-03-08 20:31:11

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the British built one and towed it across with pontoons and bridging sections to Aramanche.

Since Nicole and Charles, the Canadian assistants (and proud to be so) had humored us by visiting all the American D-Day beaches it was only fair we went to the Canadian one - Juno Beach. Our visit there coincided with sunset, so we got to enjoy a lovely beach sunset (as you can see from the photos).

Sunday's morning routine was much the same, we started the day off with a visit to the Bayeux Museum which houses the famous Bayeux Tapestry depicting the 1066 Battle of Hastings and teaches everything you wanted to know and more about then Tapestry. We then drove three hours to Mont St. Michel - a "tidal mountain" upon which was built a Benedictine Abbey. What makes Mont St. Michel so special is you can only get to it during the day and if you don't leave by 5 pm or so you're trapped for the night as the ocean tide rises and the mountain becomes an island. We did a highlights tour of "France's third most popular tourist site after the Eiffel Tower and Chateau de Versailles" as the rental car had to be back Sunday night and we were 4 hours away from Chartres. Lucky for us we were there the first Sunday of the month, which in France often translates into GRATUIT (free!!) so we got to climb all the stairs to the top in time to see the clouds coming in for a terrific wind and thunderstorm - yes we got wet, but it made for some impressive scenery.

So that's my Normandy weekend in a nutshell, hopefully the first of many fun weekend road trips. I've also included some photos of a big department store in Paris, La Galerie Lafayette, famous for its famous pre-Christmas window displays complete with moving parts and music.

Things are going well here, I spent a very fun weekend mainly in Paris. Took a mini road trip Saturday (which turned out to be a gorgeous sunny day, we get very few of those in the Eure-et-Loire (that's the region I live ...