Solo success!

It's been a pretty productive 2 days here in Normandy. Tuesday started out kind of rough when the number 2 bus never showed up. Still not sure what happened - the stop had a 2 and time schedule, just no bus. I ended up walking to the Caen WW II memorial. Even weirder I followed the bus route some of the way and still never say the 2 headed in my direction. Strange - took me about an hour and that included at least one wrong turn and back track. The museum is impressive. The call it a peace museum and I spent about 6 hours there. Much to my relief the number 2 was at the right spot when I got out of the museum and I avoided another long walk!

Today I rolled out of bed at the crack of 6am to take the bus over to Bayeux. There were 3 buses scheduled to go to Bayeux today but two of them didn't leave Caen until after lunch so I opted for the 6:50 departure. The bus got to Bayeux around 8 am which gave me plenty of time to grab a coffee before heading over to see the Bayeux Tapestry museum. If you not familiar with it the Tapestry is around a 1,000 year old linen cloth with the story of William the Conqueror embroidered into it. The museum has a 15 minute movie about the story and then they give you an audio guide that tells the story as you walk around it.

From the museum I headed into town to check out the local market. It was pretty small, only around 50 booths so after walking through that I headed up to the cathedral. The cathedral is huge. I took some pics but am sure they won't do it justice.

It was only about noon and I didn't want to head back to Caen so early so I caught a different bus into the City of Arromanches. This is the little town where the British created a temporary port right after D-Day to bring equipment and supplies in. The museum in town had a nice little movie - they literally started the english version 5 seconds after I paid my admission, great timing on my part!! - that shows the planning and setup of this temp port. I think they said that 15 of the 115 pieces are still out in the harbor. Another interesting afternoon.

This could be my last report. I catch the train back to Lorient at 7:23 am tomorrow. We have a rental car lined up for Friday and plan to drive to the Western edge of France, the Brest area of Brittany. I might get a post up Saturday after I turn the car back in.

I have lots of Pictures and will try to sort through them and post some by the end of next week. It might be tough because I am scheduled to fly up to Denver for a BIE conference on Tuesday.

Thanks for reading - hope your having a great summer where ever you may be!

Doug