Moving on into the Beginning, June 4, 2009

Today we had to move out of our lovely apartment on Cour Damoye.  I was sad to leave, it meant my time was nearly at an end, my precious Escapade nearly termine.  I got up early, before everyone else and continued the packing we had began the night before.  Finally I did everything done I could before we ate breakfast, so I roused the troupes.  Elmer arrived as we were eating our clean out meal.  I had to leave a bunch of stuff; hopefully he was able to make use of it.  He helped us get all our posessions to the local taxi stand and get a taxi to Gare de Lyon.  After all the reconnaissance I had done a week or so ago, I failed.  The place I spotted for Sixt auto rental was a drop off and I had to traipse off and find the place across the street, dumping me out yet another street over!  Holy Merde, How was I to find them?  Find them I did easily and we drove out of town with the ease of a Woman who has lived in Paris for a month!  Actually, better than that!  Jodi and I will always believe it was the constant state of prayer we were in as we drove in and out of Paris!

 I wanted to go to Bienville so the kids could see Pegasus Bridge first.   To my limited way of thinking this is where the action of D-Day began.  I know that it was much more complicated than that, but as an intro for the kids I thought it would be good.  It was better than good.  What I had not considered, had no idea of, or even knew about is that there are people who actually reenact the D-day events each year.  So we encountered hundreds of people dressed in 1940’s attire sporting around in old US (mostly) military vehicles.  There were Motorcycles, cycles with sidecars, trucks, jeeps, cars and even a few ambulances!  In Bienville, I thought they were all American.  I was waving at them like long lost friends, then in Arromanche I parked slightly illegally and I  let Jodi and the kids get out and see the sights and stayed with the car.  Up pulled two jeeps with people dressed in the 1940’s military gear and speaking the Queens English, not the English I would have expected from a person with an American flag on their shoulder!  Shy person that I am, asked them what was up with that and learned, that there are people from all over Europe who participate annually in any festivities that are available.  This year because of the 65^th anniversary, any one who was interested was there in Normandy at the same time as we.  It was a blessing and curse!   The curse part became more and more visible as the two days we spent in Normandy passed.  Traffic was very heavy; we even got turned away from a restaurant at lunch because they said they were too busy.  I went back to the car muttering about how “I’d better never hear another Frenchman complaining about McDonalds”!  We did end up dining at McDonalds AGAIN that day for lunch!  We buzzed by the American cemetery but it was now after 5PM and I was pretty sure it would be closed.  Sometimes it stinks to be right!

  We moseyed towards our hotel, and around 10PM were getting close when after driving around a round-a-bout the 4^th time the flashers came on.  The problem is that neither of us turned them on, nor did we know how to turn them off.  The auto was a Ford so it seemed to me that I should instinctively know how to turn them off, but alas I did not.  Neither, was my French good enough to figure out how to turn the dammed things off.  So finally we decided that we were just going to drive and maybe someone at the hotel would know how or be able to read the book.  We are driving along, I was feeling about like I did when we were Segwaying, and all of a sudden Jodi reached up tapped on the dash and turned them off.  The button had been right under our noses the whole time. Finally we got to our hotel, they had not gone to bed and forgotten us, and they had our reservation intact.  I had been a little worried, as I did not get a real confirmation; just a note saying that everything was o.k.!   The hotel was not actually what I was expecting, it was musty and a little old, but after a good airing, it was not really so bad.  Good thing, because there was probably not a room to be had because of D-Day even that far away.  The lovely thing about the hotel, other than the pool (according to the kids) was that one could see Mont St. Michele going and coming from it each day!