Oct 18-25, 2009 – Cap Ferret, France – A little vacation within our trip

First of all, follow this link to a Google Map that shows where Cap Ferret is located – about 1 hour west of Bordeaux in the southwest corner of France.  As its name suggests, it is a spit of land that has the Atlantic Ocean on one side and forms the Basin of Arcachon on the other side.

We decided we had been traveling pretty hard since the beginning of our trip and wanted to spend a little time in one place so we started to take a look on the Internet for places in the Acquitaine region of France because this was the general direction we wanted to head after Normandy.

We also thought it would be nice to find some place like what we’ve rented in the past in the Okanagan Valley (Westbank and Naramata) where we could set up housekeeping, buy our own food, and make sure Allister and Charlotte had a separate bed or bedroom.

There are a number of web sites that owners of properties can advertise their rental properties – http://www.abritel.fr/uk/index.php, http://www.gite.com/gite.com/index.php, and http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/ are but a few.  The Web site puts owner and potential renter together and then e-mail is used to finalize negotiations and arrangements.  We found a property we liked on www.abritel.fr that was discounted heavily (40%) on an already discounted low season price (more on this in a moment) and confirmed our interest and finalized arrangements with the owner.

As you’ll see in subsequent posts that include pictures of the Cap Ferret vacation home we rented, it was rustic looking but had all the facilities we needed – including a dishwasher!  High season in these parts is July and August and this place rented for > 3000 Euros/week in those months but the owners – a family who lived in Bordeaux – was willing to rent it to us (turns out they only rented to families) for around a little more than 1/6 of its high season rate.

The owner met us at the property on Oct 18 (a Saturday) collect the deposits and go over the details of how to operate the appliances and other equipment on the property and that kicked off our week in Cap Ferret.

Oct 12-15, 2009 – Normandy – World War II Memorials

The Caen Memorial, a DDay memorial museum in Caen, France (follow this Google Map link to see its location within France) was a great place to start our visits to World War II memorial sites.  It had an impressive amount of information about the role the Canadian, British, US, and other nations armed forces played in the invasion of Normandy and told the story very well.  I highly recommend this museum to anyone traveling to the area.

After the Caen Memorial, we followed the advice of Rick Steves’ guide book and located the beach where Canadian troops had landed.

In the nearby community of Courseulles-sur-Mer, we visited the site, but did not visit, the Juno Beach Centre, a museum and cultural centre, which opened on June 6, 2003 and presents not only the Canadian role in the Normandy invasion but the war effort made by all Canadians, civilian and military alike, both at home and on the various fronts during the Second World War.

About 5-10 kms from the Juno Beach Centre is the Canadian Cemetery where we spent a thoughtful 20 minutes walking around the cemetery and reading inscriptions on the headstones.

Oct 12-15, 2009 – Normandy – Mont-Saint-Michel

I have included a brief history of Mont-Saint-Michel (follow the previous link for a Google map that shows its location in France) below, but geographically it is an body of land off the coast of France that is connected by a causeway with the mainland.  If this causeway was not available, Mont-Saint-Michel would only be accessible at high tide (and the tide change here is something to behold).  It is home to both an order of friars and sisters and an impressive abbey.

A Brief History of Mont-Saint-Michel

The Bishop of Avranches [a town about 20 kms away] consecrated a small church on the site in 709 AD. In 966 AD, a community of Benedictines settled on the rock at the request of the Duke of Normandy and the pre-Romanesque church was built before the year one thousand.

In the 14th century, the Hundred Years War made it necessary to protect the abbey behind a set of military constructions, enabling it to withstand a siege lasting 30 years.

The Abbey was turned into a prison during the days of the French Revolution and Empire, and needed to be restored before the end of the 19th century.

With the celebration of the monastic’s 1000th anniversary, in the year 1966 a religious community moved back to what used to be the abbatial dwellings, perpetuating prayer and returning it to its original vocation.  Friars and sisters from “Les Fraternités Monastiques de Jerusalem” have been ensuring a spiritual presence since the year 2001.

At the same time as the abbey was developing a village grew up from the Middle Age. It flourished on the south-east side of the rock surrounded by walls dated for the most part from the Hundred Years war.  This village has always a commercial purpose.

UNESCO has classed the Mont Saint-Michel as a world heritage in 1979 and this mecca of tourism welcomes more than three million visitors a year.

This photo, cadged from a post card at a stand gives a good perspective of Mont-Saint-Michel (at high tide.)  The top of the body of land is the religious order and abbey buildings and the buildings on the lower part is the civilian dwellings

 

Another view of the site down the causeway in the picture on the left. We went to dinner and then returned after sunset and took the night photo.

 

We roamed all over the site and while it was filled with tourists, it was large and didn’t seem crowded.  LL and the kids are pictured in the passageway on the right.

This picture gives you an idea of the expanse of sand visible at low tide.  They also post warnings about where not to park in anticipation of high tide.

I had never seen a slate roof before.  The big picture is on the left and the close up on the right.

Looking up to the abbey from the village.

 

Just to show that it was an active order.  Some of the friars in uniform.

The abbey itself wasn’t the biggest church we’d seen but still impressive considering its location on top of a rock.

This gives an idea of what was holding it up.

The village and its commercial district.

Allister is drawn to all things medieval and implements of warfare (mostly historical) and Mont-St-Michel was no exception.

 

Oct 12-15, 2009 – Normandy – Honfleur

On our way from Paris to Normandy we spent a night in a place called Evreux as a way of breaking up the trip.  This is something we’ve done from time to time – we know how far we can travel in a day and like to be settled in time to get dinner at a more or less regular time.  We had hoped to stop in a place called Giverny to visit Claude Monet’s house and gardens which were the inspiration for many of his most famous works, but a GPS hiccup spooked us and we pressed on using the GPS in Jean-Pierre (our Peugeot rental car).

After spending the night in Evreux, we headed for Mont-St-Michel (actually a city near it called Avaranches) with a stop in Honfleur, a beautiful seaside city. 

Just before reaching Honfleur, we encountered another example of Europe’s fine bridges.  Maybe they have more practice because they have more rivers to ford, but it can’t be just our imagination that by comparison Canada’s bridges are an architecturally uninspired and sadly utilitarian lot.

The town of Honfleur has a nice parking lot for visitors just outside its main core and you pass this working harbour on the way to the more touristy inner harbour.

This is the inner harbour and on this fine, sunny day, it was a real beauty.

Allister and Charlotte finding a group of small fishes to feed or observe.

We visited Honfleur on a weekend afternoon and it seemed a popular place with French visitors and, for a city this pretty, surprisingly few foreign tourists.  This highly unscientific finding is based on the sampling of spoken foreign languages heard technique our family deployed in most towns we visited.

Honfleur had some lovely small shops and restaurants and on a sunny, warm weekend day, its narrow roads looked great!

This old building is Honfleur’s oldest churches and, even though this picture doesn’t show it, the story goes that Honfleur had many more tradesmen skilled in building boats than churches.  If you look at the roof of the church from the inside it looks more like the inverted hull of an boat than some of the other churches and cathedrals we visited elsewhere in Europe.

 

Finally, as I said earlier, it was a sunny weekend and as we were headed in this direction we were passed by a large number of powerful motorcycles with French license plates.  Once we reached Honfleur, based on the number of motorcycles in evidence, it became apparent that most of the motorcycles had also been bound for Honfleur.

 

Oct 6-10, 2008 – Paris – Decision to not drive in Paris

A number of people had advised us to not drive in Paris, particularly since our hotel was in an area with virtually no parking.  There were also references to crazy Parisian drivers.

But this posed the problem of where to park the car and how to transport ourselves from there to our hotel.

We settled on the long-term parking lot at the Charles de Gaulle airport at a mere 20 Euros a day and then grabbed a taxi from the airport to our hotel.  The taxi ride was about 50 Euros (the Cdn $ – Euro exchange rate has ranged from about 1.52 ($Cdn) – 1.66 ($Cdn) = 1 Euro) and took about 1 hour.

These turned out to be good decisions, despite their cost (we came to accept the fact that Paris was very expensive).  It would have been tricky to find our hotel – it was on a small 3-5 block long street and the French traffic, particularly in the roundabouts and Places, seems to be a bit of a free-for-all.

However, it did impress upon us the need to travel lighter on future trips.  Flexibility seems to be a good goal when traveling and there would be more options if we didn’t have the 3 seasons of clothing and other gear we are carrying.  We all agree that when we travel again it won’t be for as long a period and that getting our kit into two pieces of carry-on luggage is a worthwhile goal.

Oct 6-10, 2009 – Paris – Eiffel Tower

We went one afternoon to check out the Eiffel Tower and its schedules and then returned the next day to ascend its heights.  We took these photos on our reconnaissance day and, as you can see, we had good weather on both days.

The first picture below is from a water bus (more on this in a moment) on the Seine and the second is looking right up into the Tower.  I read other accounts in guide books and other sources that were genuinely impressed (and surprised) by the size of the Tower and that was also our reaction.  It is HUGE. 

 

As everyone that knows our family is aware, I don’t like heights.  Laura-Lyn, Charlotte, and Allister all think heights are cool.  So when compared our ideas about how to tackle the Eiffel, they wanted to go to the 3 etage (observation deck level) and I told them I’d wait on the ground.  We said our goodbyes and arranged a spot to meet and off they went.

The 3 observation deck elevations are:

1. 200 ft.
2. 400 ft.
3. 900 ft.

As I started to wait, I thought, “I can’t come to the Eiffel Tower and not go up at least part of the way!”.  So I bought a ticket that enabled me to take the stairs to the first level.

Here is the photographic evidence that I made it to the first observation deck level.  This was plenty high enough for me.

However, LL, Charlotte, and Allister carried on to the 2nd and 3rd levels.  This photo of LL is from the 2nd level.

 

This is a photo of the 3rd level observation deck.

Here are some examples of the view from the 3rd observation deck.  I think these are Allister’s photos.

As we found out during our walks around Paris, destinations can appear farther than they look.  We decided a 2 day Seine water bus pass would help reduce our travel time to areas such as the Latin Quarter, Blvd. St. Germain and other areas.  Here are some photos that give some idea of these water buses and what it was like to travel on them.

There were other types of tourists at the Eiffel Tower – there were at least 3 groups of 3 soldiers each on foot patrol in the area at all times we were at the Tower.

There were other also groups that weren’t so serious.  This group of French girls were dressed in costume and playing a selection of standards and popular tunes on their mostly brass instruments.  They sounded quite good, but seemed mostly interested in having a good time together.