Welcome to our next installment: France! France is very familiar to Stephen – he’s studied here several different times and lived in Paris for awhile, and I have visited once before. This trip, I want to visit Normandy and spend a few days in Paris to meet up with Stephen’s friend Louis before we decide where to go next.

• Over the last few weeks, we’ve found advance planning to be a challenge. We like the freedom of only planning 3-5 days ahead, but it is often not conducive to getting the best prices and instead of feeling spontaneous, it feels chaotic.  Knowing we wanted to get to Normandy, we pick a halfway point from where we are in Netherlands and book a Flixbus to Lille, France. Neither of us know much about Lille, but we’re able to get a decent priced AirBNB with wifi, so we feel like it’s as good of place as any to post up and plan the next few weeks, which end up as follows:

  • Flixbus to Caen, France in Normandy. We’ll spend four nights here with a plan to visit some of the D-Day beaches and experience the Normandy countryside.
  • From Caen, we’ll head to Paris for two nights, because, well, Paris, and also to visit Stephen’s friend Louis.
  • We book a flight from Paris to Porto, Portugal on a recommendation from our friend Sandra to stay in a small beach town and drink “the best caipirinhas you’ve ever had” (more on that in our next post).

• On the way to Lille, we stop in The Hague where we meet a friend of Stephen’s from college, Lieke, for a quick lunch. Sadly, I didn’t get a picture, but thank you for meeting us Lieke – good to see our first familiar face!

• First stop in Normandy: Omaha Beach

  After Lille, we rent a cute little apartment in Caen to use as our homebase for the next few days while we explore Normandy. The countryside is beautiful and absolutely charming. The gently rolling hills, emerald green meadows, groves of trees and adorable French chateaus look like they belong in a movie set. Most of the towns are very small and although it’s possible to take public transportation, we decide to rent a car. We reserve the cheapest option – a manual Twingo. This car is laughably small, as is every car in France.

  

  Paralleled that tiny car like a boss.

• As we’re completing the rental paperwork, I learn something about Stephen I didn’t know before. He can’t drive a stick shift. I’m not sure how this can be, because I have ridden in a manual car while Stephen was driving. I bring this up as we’re reserving the rental, and he claims he only steered and braked, since Michaela shifted him through the gears until he reached 80 mph on I-70, set the cruise, and drove for the next three hours straight.

  Our first stop is Omaha Beach, which is the location where most of the American troops invaded on D-Day. I navigate out of the city in our tiny car, grateful for the flat streets and light traffic as I slowly recall my manual driving skills.

• We arrive to rain and gloom. The beach is somber, flat and immense. Many of the houses and businesses along the coast fly an American or Canadian flag alongside the French flag. We visit the Omaha Beach Museum and learn about the days and weeks leading up the attack and are taken through each minute of that day. It’s incredibly moving and the emotions are difficult to describe. Humbled, horrified, ashamed, proud. Learning about the sacrifices of that day and being in such physical proximity to the reality of the horrific years that led to the invasion made me feel simultaneously deeply ashamed and immensely proud of the human race. I’ve never felt like that before.

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  We had just missed the anniversary weekend of the D-Day invasion. This rose with a memorial note was washed up on the beach from the weekend’s ceremonies.

  

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  The Omaha Beach Museum had a large number of artifacts and displays from the time during the German occupation and the invasion. I would recommend a visit – we spent about three hours going through the relatively small exhibits.

  

  

  A personal notebook of a German solider.

  

  I <3 Ike. The native Kansan and man himself, talking with his men in the days before the invasion.

• The American cemetery is the final resting place of more than 10,000 American soldiers who lost their lives during the invasion and the weeks that followed. It is a beautiful, peaceful place that overlooks the very sea and beach where the sacrifice of those brave men (and some women, mostly nurses or Red Cross aides) changed the history of the world. I am extremely empathetic by nature, and visiting the cemetery to wrap up our visit helped me feel the peace I needed to know that the actions of these men and women are deeply honored and respected. I will never forget this visit.

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  I found the names of two Kansas soldiers listed on the missing in action memory wall.

  

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• We stop to explore some of the remnants of the battle along the beach and the German occupation of France, including the famous Pointe du Hoc. There are haunting remains of German bunkers along the hillside that meets the sea. Concrete platforms and steel bases that once supported German defense weapons are surrounded by grassy fields pockmarked by bomb craters left by Allied forces in attempts to destroy German defenses the days before the sea invasion.

• In addition to visiting the actual location of the invasion, we also spent time in Caen reading about the impact the Allied invasion had on the civilian population.

• What’s it called? Cider brewery? Ah. Cider Mill. That’s right.

  Since we have the freedom of a car for a few days, we decide to attempt La Route du Cidre. The Normandy region is famous for it’s cidres (sparkling wine), pommeau (an apertif, or, pre-dinner drink), and calvados (a whisky-like liquor) – all made from pommes (apples). We choose our first stop on la route – Famille Dupont –  and hop in the Twingo.

• The Twingo feels like a go-kart as we cruise through tiny French villages on narrow, winding roads. Stately, leafy, green trees create romantic canopies spanning across the paved roads. Google maps instructs me to take a left so I slow down and turn onto the most picturesque lane I’ve ever seen. The gravel crunches under our tiny tires and we cross over a pond dotted with lily pads, and pull into the side parking area. Then the sudden, violent jerk of my failure to downshift stops us about halfway into a spot before the Twingo dies. People stare.

• We just miss the morning tour, but still have a nice chat with the cidreman, do a small tasting and buy a bottle of cidre to share later.

Another fun Normandy fact is it is responsible for the popularization of camembert. CHEESE! So we head to an épicerie in nearby Cambremer to get some camembert to have with our baguette for lunch (SO French). We see that the next stop on La Route du Cidre is a few hundred meters from the shop, so we walk and make it just in time for the tour at Pierre Huet. We spend the next 45 minutes learning about the orchards, the process to make cidre, and take a visit the cellars where Stephen climbs in a wine barrel that everyone on the tour thought only a child would fit through.

Some people we met on this day:

• Matieu at La Famille Dupont, who offers very patient French lessons while I butcher phrases like “I don’t speak French,” “I’d like a glass of wine,” and “Can I have some cheese.”

• Melanie at the épicerie in Cambremer, who cleverly sells us no less than a pound of sausage and two pounds of cheese. 

• Very nice British couple who, upon hearing our plans, give us their phone number with not even a hint of hesitation, in case find ourselves in England and are hard up for a place to stay. Shoutout!

Kristin gets offended

On our last day in Caen, we pack some of the leftover cheese and meat we bought from Melanie and the cidre we bought from Mateiu. We plan to return the rental car and then walk to the Caen castle lawn for a late afternoon lunch.

I (smoothly, like a pro) glide into the rental garage and gladly pull that parking break for the last time (well-deserved shoutout to my guy friends from high school who taught me how to drive a stick shift while dragging main in Rexford).

After a brief visual inspection, it’s confirmed that I did not in fact hit anyone or anything and we’re directed to the front desk to check out. As the rental manager is completing our paperwork, I smell something horrifically rancid. I wrinkle my nose and stare hard at Stephen to get his attention and see if he smells it to. He doesn’t look my way, so I turn my attention back to the guy, smile and finish our paperwork. As we walk outside, I turn to Stephen:

“OH MY GOD did you smell that?”
“Smell what?”
“The dude in Hertz. He smelled like farts.”
“Really? I didn’t smell anything.”
“Yeah he was totally just farting in there.”
“Weird.”

We pop into a bakery to grab a baguette, and I wrinkle my nose again. The smell is back:

“Stephen! Was it you farting in Hertz?”
“What? No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes”
“Okay…”

At the castle, find a place on the lawn and unpack our picnic. I realize that the stench is coming from my backpack and is, in fact, just the cheese we’re about to eat for lunch. It wasn’t rotten, it was just regular stinky cheese. Yum.

Kristin finds a diamond

On our Flixbus to Paris, I sit in the window seat and listen to my audiobook. My eyes feel heavy, my head lulls and slowly falls against the window. As I gaze down, something catches my eye. I sit up and look closer. Wedged between the window strip and the glass is a small, sparkling diamond. I rouse Stephen and show him the tiny jewel. We conjure a pair of tweezers and I gently pluck the gem from it’s crevice. No update on this. We thought we’d get laughed out of town at if we took it to a store in Paris (Cartier, Tiffanys, etc.) so we have yet to verify authenticity. We did complete some at-home test such as breathe on it and drop it in water to see if it sinks and the results thus far are inconclusive.

We visit friends and try tartare

Once in Paris, we meet up with Stephen’s friend Louis and a few of his friends for dinner. We chat about our trip so far and though most of the conversation was in French, everyone was kind enough to translate the gist of the conversation for me every so often. It was so great to have a nice meal with friendly people – thank you for letting us join!

It’s during some point in this meal that Louis turns to me:

“They’re talking about a very good restaurant that’s near the place you’re staying. We’re discussing how many types of tartare they serve.”

I’m intrigued, because Paris restaurants are romantic, and as a self proclaimed non-foodie who likes food, I’ll take any restaurant recommendation as long as that means I don’t have to choose one for myself.

“Have you ever tried tartare?”

I reply that no, I haven’t, but when in Rome, haha, etc. etc.

The next afternoon Stephen and I sit at a tiny corner table at Les Tontons and order a plate of tartare to share. I ask Stephen if he thinks it will be enough food, and he says we should at least try one dish first, and if we like it and are still hungry, we can order another dish. I’m not worried, as I’m here for the experience. I always order my steak medium rare. Surely I can stomach a few slices of raw steak, as long as its a good decent cut of filet. Hell, I might even like it.

At this point in my story, dear reader, you might be tipping your head and with a furrowed brow think that wait, steak tartare isn’t slices of rare filet. And you would be right. I didn’t know this. I express this to Stephen and he laughs, and tells me it’s pretty much raw, ground hamburger. I gag a little.

We get the plate and I try a little on top of some bread. I chew once and quickly swallow. It’s not so bad. The plate we order is seasoned with goat cheese and pesto, so feeling braver, I fix a slightly larger bite with a little more meat and a little less goat cheese. This time I chew twice, and then I gag. That was it for me!

Other notable things we did in France

• Around the corner from our apartment in Caen was a little bakery that advertised take-away coffee on their sidewalk chalkboard. I’m really missing my American coffee “to-go” so it felt familiar to stop in each day, grab an espresso and enjoy it on our walk to that day’s activities. Even if it was very, very tiny.

• The most French thing I saw: a man walk into the bakery, buy one, single baguette, walk outside, put it in bicycle basket and ride away.
• Did a little sightseeing…

• I drop my iPhone down the center of a spiral staircase from the third floor of our Paris AirBnB. The screen didn’t survive. How is it there are cell phone repair places on every city street corner until you need one? It’s all fixed up now.

• We meet Louis and friends to watch the Spain vs. Portugal World Cup match. I’d been eyeing a fooseball table in the corner of the bar for most of the night, so once the match was over and the crowd cleared out some, I challenge Stephen to a game. Before we can insert our Euro, Louis and another of his friends hop in to play doubles. It’s very loud in the bar, so I don’t completely understand what happened over the next 7-10 minutes of this game, but here’s what I surmised:
  • The rules are not the same as what I learned in the US.
  • Some players can only pass but not score.
  • If a rule is broken, someone–without warning–REACHES THEIR HAND IN THE COURT and picks up the ball to restart.
  • I hit a lot of people’s hands.
  • Score is calculated in 2s and 1/2s and 1s. Points are taken away. Perplexing.

• In the Uber to the airport on our last day in Paris, I realize I left my wireless headphones in the AirBnB. Our host ended up mailing them to our AirBnB host in Lisbon. So kind and I was ecstatic to get them back.

Next up…Portugal!!