The good, the bad, and the really friggin' ugly!

 ♪ ♫ So, sit right back, and you'll hear a tale - a tale of a fateful trip... ♫ ♪

You know the rest. Sing it quietly to yourself while you're pouring a cold drink, and come back when you're ready for a long, drawn out story.

Oh, back already? That was quick!

So, the daughter is in town for a quick visit, since it's Rock im Park time again. There's a yearly festival in Nuremburg that she enjoyed last year, so she came back for more. She arrived on Wednesday, and we drove down on Thursday to check into our VRBO. We got all settled, and made a trip to a grocery store to stock up on supplies.

No one felt like cooking anything, so I made a trip to Boogie's BBQ for take out; since we've been visiting and passing through Nuremburg, we've enjoyed their BBQ in the past, and this was the first visit to their new location. BBQ was pretty good.

Over the next couple of days, the girls went to see different bands at the festival - some we've all heard of (311, Green Day, Avenged Sevenfold, Dropkick Murphys), some that only people really into heavy metal will recognize (Skindred, Hatebreed, While She Sleeps, Electric Callboy), and even Keanu Reeves' band Dogstar.

I went to one of my favorite pools a couple of times.

We returned to Frankfurt, then Cori and I loaded up to head to Paris the next day. We took the subway to the main station and hopped on a train, to arrive at one of Paris' main stations about 5 hours later. As we were walking from the train station around to the metro station, I warned Cori about pickpockets, as Paris metro is a well known hunting ground for them.

So... we made our way onto our subway train, and somewhere between that station and our destination... my wallet was stolen. I keep my passports separate from my wallet, so I've still got them, but... my TN and German driver's licenses, my German residency card, all of my debit and credit cards... gone.

To say that changed our plans for the next couple of days would be an understatement.

I beat myself up about it for a little while (and started the process of notifying everyone in three countries across two continents), then switched into problem solving mode. Cori had money and cards with her, so we decided to press on.

That evening we walked around town, and I showed Cori the Arc de Triomphe, and we stopped in a park area called Trocadéro for her to get some good pictures of the Eiffel Tower.

The next day, I tried unsuccessfully to file a report with the police. I had read online that due to the massive issue with pickpockets, you can now file a report in any city metro station. While that may be the theory, in practice, at two different metro stations, no one was able to take my report, so I walked to the nearest police station and attempted to file a report there. I gave up after waiting 3 hours.

That evening, Cori and I went to the Louvre, and she saw the Mona Lisa. She's not a big art fan, and since the painting is a bit underwhelming anyway, she wasn't too impressed.

As part of the notification process when my wallet was stolen, the wife sent emails around the Frankfurt consulate, notifying them that my German IDs had been taken. One of the folks in the security office in Frankfurt copied his Parisian counterpart on the email chain, and the local reached out to me with an offer to accompany me to a police station to make a report. I met up with him and went to his local station, where his contacts worked. Making a report there went quite a bit more smoothly than trying to do it myself. Less than an hour and a half total, versus three hours the previous day (while not accomplishing anything). If you insist on getting pickpocketed in Paris, highly recommend.

That evening, we went to an Italian place down the street from where we were staying; excellent food, and the waiters all spoke fluent English. We still ordered by pointing at pictures of the food though.

The wife drove in from Frankfurt the next afternoon; we wandered around the city a little bit that night. Notre Dame still had scaffolding around it, but considerably less than during our last visit.

The next morning, we left downtown Paris for the next leg of our trip: Costco. Y'all, there's a Costco in Paris. There are actually 2 Costcos in Paris - of course we had to stop at one of them! Since we weren't heading directly home, we didn't buy a lot, but planned to stop again on the way back through.

We continued our trip, and headed to our hotel for the next 3 days, in Bayeux. How to describe Bayeux? Without going into a lot of detail, let's just say it's the county seat of one of the "counties" within the region of Normandy. We found a seaside restaurant to eat at that evening, and walked around the town of Port en Bessin a little bit after dinner. 

Port en Bessin is centrally located on the coast of Normandy, right on the edge of Gold Beach. Commandos from the UK, Poland, and the Netherlands landed on Gold Beach, and were tasked with liberating the town of Port en Bessin, and linking up with the Canadians on Juno Beach to the east, and the Americans at Omaha Beach to the west. Our visit fell right after the 80th anniversary of D Day, so the town was still decorated for the celebrations, with bunting hung all around the town. We wandered our way down to the beach, and the wife found a spot where scallop shells had been trapped by the waves, piling up by the hundreds and thousands around the rocks in the bay.

The restaurant was supposed to be a tapas restaurant, but it turns out it wasn't. We ended up ordering our own form of tapas, selecting several smaller plates from the menu to share:

After dinner, we walked out on the jetties, stretching into the English Channel:

In the background of the left hand side, you can see another jetty; the hill in the background (behind the jetty) comes down to the furthest west end of Gold Beach. You can see a collection of flags on the right hand side of the pic, honoring the countries who participated in the liberation of the entire region (not just this town):

 

A memorial to fishermen lost at sea:

The boss's beach:

Lots of shells:

Lots and lots of shells:

We returned to our hotel after our wandering. Before I go on, let me wax poetic about our hotel. This visit to Normandy has been an item on my bucket list for as long as I can remember, so we decided to go all out and get a private guide who could tailor the trip to our (my) interests. In order to splurge on the tour, we decided to save money on the hotel. That said, we might have been a bit overenthusiastic in our attempt to be frugal, as far as the hotel goes.

Our original plan included two hotel rooms; to save money (for the aforementioned splurge on the tour), we downsized to a single room with a queen sized bed and a bunk bed for the three of us. The room was barely larger than the queen sized bed, didn't have a proper bathroom, and felt more like a hostel than a hotel. In the future, we probably won't skimp quite as much on the hotel.

The next morning, we met our guide (Colin) outside our hotel at 9:00. Colin is a historian by trade, specializing in World War II. I had told him what I was able to find out about my grandfather's service, and we spent the day retracing his steps during the invasion.

We started at Omaha Beach, where the 29th Infantry Division came ashore. Colin explained to us that a lot of stories about Omaha were misleading; overall, there were only a couple thousand German soldiers defending the beach head, despite the impressions that we may have developed based on movies. The main problem with Omaha beach was that it was almost perfectly laid out in the defenders favor, with a massive 88mm anti-tank cannon on each end of the beach, pointing directly down toward the opposite end of the beach, supplemented by machine gun nests and artillery emplacements which had overlapping fields of fire covering the entire beach.

The initial plan was for the Americans to clear the beach within 2 hours of their arrival, allowing vehicles to land within 3 hours, and establish a bridgehead 5 miles inland by the end of the day. It wasn't until 2:00 in the afternoon that the Americans took the beach, and they were only able to accomplish that because the German defenders ran out of ammunition. 

At the end of the first day, isolated pockets of Americans had been able to penetrate up to a mile and a half inland, but of the 2,400 tons of supplies which were supposed to land on June 6th, only 100 tons made it due to the defensive fortifications of the Germans.

This picture was taken next to the emplacement of one of the 88mm guns (on the east end of the beach). The crease in the ground through the center of the pic is one of the trench lines still scarring the cliff.

All of the plants in the foreground of the following pic have grown in the intervening years; there were no bushes on the hillside in 1944 - taken from the same hill as the previous pic.

After our stop at the east end of the beach, we walked through the cemetery next to it.

Here is a pic of the 88mm gun emplacement at the other (west) end of the beach, topped by a monument dedicated to the members of the National Guard.

Due to the proximity to the D-Day memorial celebrations, flags from every nation which participated were still flying over the beach, but there are only three flags which are flown there full time: the French flag, the American flag, and the flag of the Army National Guard.

A lot of the soldiers who landed at Omaha were Army National Guard (including my grandfather). The difference between the Army units and the National Guard units were that the National Guard units were frequently made up of guys who came from the same area, and had known each other for years. The fighting was so rough at Omaha, that orders came down to ignore fallen comrades, and find cover for yourself instead. These orders weren't well received, as shown by this statue, prominently displayed above the beach:

There was a special memorial to the 29th Infantry:

My grandfather was attached to the Combat Engineers within the 29th Infantry, so we visited the memorial to them:

After finishing up at Omaha (and the memorials there), we had lunch at one of the local restaurants. Galettes, which are buckwheat crepes, filled with your choice of fillings - considered French peasant food. I chose camembert, potatoes, and onions. Wife had ham & cheese, with a poached egg on top. Quite tasty!

After finishing up lunch, we took things a bit out of order and headed to Saint Lô. This was another important stop for me, as I've found some personal memorabilia from my grandfather, showing his movements after D Day, traveling across the countryside and taking the city.

Saint Lô was an important objective for the allies, as many of the roads across the area met there. Capturing the city would allow the allies to control the shipping of men and machines across the French countryside. Fighting was furious, as the Germans obviously didn't want to give up such an important crossroads. By the time the allies were able to enter the city, between 90 and 95% of the town had been destroyed.

While the majority of the destruction was done by American forces, the inhabitants welcomed allied troops into the city; by order of one of the generals, a Jeep carrying the flag draped body of Major Thomas Howie was the first American vehicle into the town (because of his efforts in taking the town). He is nicknamed "The Major of Saint Lô," with a massive memorial to him in the center of town, and his memorial service in a local church was attended by Americans and French alike:

A section of the local cemetery containing scores of the WWII dead:

Interesting story that Colin (a proud Irish gentleman) relayed to us: Ireland was neutral during the war, but saw the amount of destruction of Saint Lô and wanted to assist however they could. In August of 1945, the Irish shipped in 174 tons of equipment and material to build a new hospital. While the building has since been turned into a school, the Irish flag still flies proudly next to the French flag, in honor of the contributions of the Irish government and people:

After Saint Lô, the weather had cleared up a little bit, so we headed back to explore the hedgerows. As an American, I had no idea what a hedgerow actually is... basically, the fields in that area are sectioned off with thick rows of trees, instead of fences like we'd expect to see in America. There's a row of trees and vegetation at the edge of the fields, separated from another field by a cart path and another row of trees and vegetation.

The Germans would put a machine gun in the hedgerow in each corner of a field, and basically have a full field of fire covering the entire field:

By the time the Americans were able to fight their way into the hedgerow, the Germans had moved back to the next field, allowing them to keep the Americans from immediately following them, all while inflicting devastating casualties.

While I've always heard that WWI was one of the dirtiest wars, wandering through the hedgerows gave me a new appreciation for what our forces went through in rural France.

Afterwards, Cori wanted some down time, so the boss and I went exploring the local city of Bayeux. Quite a cute little town, very appreciative of the allies efforts during WWII - flags and bunting were still hanging all over town, with thank you messages still painted onto windows:

Next morning, we got up bright and early and headed for Mont St. Michel. Even if you don't know it by name, I'm certain that just about everyone has seen pics - this is a stock pic, not one of ours!

Pretty impressive castle and abbey, but it was incredibly crowded, and there were way too many stairs for my comfort... here are a bunch of pics, in no particular order:

The town from afar:

The wife got another watercolor, and asked if she could take a pic of the artist with it:

Seagulls evidently nest around the castle - there were signs posted all around warning about aggressive gulls. This one seemed to be fine with posing for pics for tourists though:

Pic of the interior of one of the rooms in the Abbey:

At some point between 1461 and 1483, Louis XI turned it into a prison, and he put in a fun treadmill for the prisoners to work out on:

(Okay, I may have made up part of that last fact. Prisoners did indeed use the treadmill, but it was used to bring up food and supplies - it probably wasn't very much fun though.)

One of the cloisters inside the abbey:

More random pics of the castle:

Mont St. Michel is the second most visited site in France. I think they were all there the same day we were:

The next day, we stopped back in Costco on our way back through, and bought entirely too much stuff - including a case of French wine!

So... that was our most recent trip - the good, the bad, and the ugly. If you wanna visit Paris while you're over here, I'll help you get there... but I think I've had enough of it for a while.