Monday, June 23, 2014

As planned, today we began our day by traveling to Caen and without any trouble found he correct shopping mall, proper parking, the right store (FNAP is its name) and a proper replacement for my broken lens. No problem that cannot easily be solved by throwing money at it!

Then we continued to Omaha beach, to see the sights and have lunch. 

Then we moved on to Point du Hoc where   Reagan famously said about the veterans being honored there in 1984, the fortieth anniversary of D Day, "These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war."

We then stopped at a nearby war museum which featured tanks and guns salvaged and put on display before stopping for dinner at what turned out to be a roadside French restaurant featuring German food!

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

So after managing our way through half of France, innumerable French restaurants  and French menus, Linda decide to have breakfast at McDonalds today. No, not because we were hungry for McDonald’s food (we don’t even eat that at home), but because we were desperate for WiFi with a reasonable speed (the one at the house is soooo slow) and had heard that all of the McDonalds restaurants offer fast Wifi as well as fast food. You would think ordering at McDonalds would be a snap, even if the menu was only in French, but…

People working at McDonalds are friendly and helpful, but not necessarily highly educated or bilingual. In fact, less English was spoken there than at any restaurant we had been to so far. So when I placed our order for two McWraps, and two coffees, the girl at the counter said something that I interpreted as “would you like fries with that?” to which I smiled and nodded yes. So when our order came up this is what we got…

1 Mc Wrap instead of two, 2 Coffees, (as requested), No fries, 2 Ice Cream Parfaits

So much for ordering at McDonalds. I think I will stick with French restaurants for the rest of the trip.

After spending a couple of hours working on this Blog at Mikey D’s, we drove to Sainte-Mere-Eglise, a tow that is famous for being the sight of a paratrooper battle (if you saw “The Longest Day”, this is where the paratrooper got hung up on the church steeple) and visited the phenomenal Airborne Museum completed only last year with the help of Roald Reagan’s son Michael Reagan.

ŷ

Then we went to Arromanches and toured a the best museum we have seen so far, containing fabulous exhibits which finally gave us a full appreciation of the artificial harbor built and brought there by the Allies.

After that we got a recommendation for a restaurant in a nearby village and had another memorable French dinner.