B26 OUR SECOND HONEYMOON – THIS TIME WITH FAMILY

27 & 28 June, Monday and Tuesday

Trash collection starts early in Paris so we coaxed the MG out of the dark serenity of the Apollon Hotel garage and into the untypical heat of a Parisian summer day. “Oh, it’ll get cooler when we leave town,” I said, assuredly, to Louise who just finished her last load of wash at Chrise’s. Well, it didn’t. The further we went the hotter it got and, by the time we reached Normandy and our hotel in Rouen, we were fully wicked out and parched. Even our drinking water was hot. Thank God (and Lisa) that our hotel was an air conditioned 3 star.

That afternoon we rendezvoused with the family for a guided tour of old city Rouen that included beautiful examples of Norman housing.

Unlike much of France, the houses are wood based rather than stone. “More wood than stone was available,” was our guide’s simple answer.

A visit to the cathedral was obligatory and we learned it was almost destroyed by British bombers during WWII. They were aiming for the bridges but a command miscalculation led them to drop their bombs in the center of town.

The structure was saved from collapse by one small side chapel whose buttresses held up the entire building, allowing them to rebuild the cathedral cautiously. The blasts even moved large stone pillars a few feet. No wonder they’ve left the small chapel exactly as it was in 1944. The boys were doing their usual horsing around until the guide told of the bombings. The idea of destruction of large buildings really caught their imagination for a while. I guess boys will always be boys.

During our old town tour we were guided to a local church known for it’s various gargoyles and, at one corner, a fountain with an unusual delivery system. It resembles the mannequin pils in Brussels, Belgium only this one is safe for drinking. No one was willing to be photographed while trying.

To keep things in a spiritual mood we had dinner at a outdoor restaurant that lay in the shadow of the cathedral. There we had a great view of the scaffolding that seems to surround every building of a certain age in Europe.

The scaffolding will probably be there for the next generation as well.

We learned about the quality of 3 star living when we were treated to an expansive breakfast at the Hotel Mercure Cathedral. It was a great way to kick off our fifty third wedding anniversary and our latest honeymoon.

Before we began the next journey we posed for a group photo outside the hotel. After scanning many passers by, I chose an older guy with a limp to take the picture thus assuring the security of our camera. However, I did check his focus and composition before letting him go on his way.

For the first time I had a new navigator at my side. Alec won the toss with an agreement to let Kade ride shotgun at halfway. This gave me the opportunity to share my pathfinder capabilities with my grandsons. I explained to them the complexity of reading foreign country maps in a car with the top down and how to quickly convert kilometers to miles per hour to avoid a conversation with the local gendarmerie. I shared with them the necessary skills of recovery after mis-reading directions while going round and round inside a roundabout. I was also able to demonstrate language skills when having to ask directions, in French, from pedestrians, most of whom had never been outside their own village. In the end Kade used his boy scout training to get us on the right track. The boys claimed to have enjoyed the experience but seemed to prefer the comforts of a vehicle in which they could actually hear the music from their iPods. Remy never volunteered to navigate after she realized that a car that was naturally air conditioned could also muss hair. I guess girls will be girls but I seem to have a real prize in my Louise.

Our trail ended at Chateau La Cheneviere, a 4 star luxury hotel just outside the Norman fishing village of Port en-Bessin. This regal chateau had been a headquarters for the German army during their occupation of France and, to prove the Germans weren’t the only ones who understood strategic luxury, was taken over by the Allied command after the D-Day invasion.

The color of olive drab is long gone from these premises and barely a scar remains from those awful days. The neighborhood hasn’t forgotten though, as we would learn when our local guide took us on a tour of the Normandy invasion beaches and the unfortunate casualties that lie forever in the American military cemeteries.

Louise and Ray