Bidding Adieu to France

Can you stand the mention of one more French Gothic church? Because we finally went to Mass at one, St. Jacob's in Beauvais, which is near Paris.

Many of these big old churches are chilly inside. But the acoustics in this one were very good.

I think this might be St. Peter crucified upside down.

So no more photos and descriptions of churches. . . until Spain!

Luke and I in front of a huge hotel in Beauvais. We are mainly in Beauvais because it is where we will catch our flight to Madrid.

                            

We had a great time in France. The countryside is beautiful. We are looking forward to turning in the rental cars. I should have taken a photo of the two we rented, a Skoda Octavia made in the Czeck republic that we drove in Ireland and a French-made Citreon C-3 in France. Both cute cars that got fabulous gas mileage. Driving got easier with each passing day, but it was a challenge. We would have been lost, literally and figuratively, without Google Maps.

This was Luke's favorite bed so far in the trip, in Bayeux.

Sacre Bleu! We committed the cultural crime of going to a McDonald's in France. But only once. They had an interesting set up where you place your order at a kiosk and then they bring the food to your table. The food itself? Exactly the same, which is what you are looking for when you go to McDonalds.

This is as close as Luke got to the Eiffel Tower, at DeGaulle airport. We would have love to have gotten to Paris on this trip, but we didn't have time. Good lesson: not to try to cram too much in.

We've been getting from country to country on Europe's budget airlines. Here John and Luke are boarding our Ryanair flight to Madrid. These airline tickets were cheaper than train fare and get you to your destination quicker. We had very good experiences with these airlines. They are very serious about leaving on time.

Up, up and away!

Looking forward to the adventures Spain will hold!

The Lessons of Cemeteries

On our last day in Normandy, we visited the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, where 9,387 of our servicemen and women are buried. Another 1,557 are listed on the Walls of the Missing.

Most of these soldiers gave their lives in the D-Day invasion and subsequent battles.

Including Thomas J. Sullivan above. This was the first grave I happened to look at. Pvt. Sullivan would have been in the first wave of the Utah Beach landing.

The cemetery is located on a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach, the D-day site where so many American soldiers lost their lives. 

We saw the grave of Theodore F. Rosenbaum. He was a 2nd Lt, in the 358th Regiment of the 90th Division, John's dad's Regiment. Lt. Rosenbaum was awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

In one of John's dad's (John) letters, he says that his best friend in the Army was killed. He didn't describe the circumstances or give his friend's name (he couldn't reveal that information). But a few years ago, we found the below letter in John's papers and figure there's a good chance this is his friend.

The Normandy Visitors Center has computer terminals where you can look up any person buried in a military cemetery. 

Staff Sgt. Kvenmoen is buried in Epinal, in the northeast part of France. 

We will hope to pay our respects on another trip.

Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., son of President Teddy Roosevelt, fought heroically in World War I and II. He helped coordinate the D-Day invasion and then asked to accompany his men, even though he needed a cane to walk because of his WWI injury and he was 56. At first, his commanding officers said no, but he persisted. After Roosevelt and his men were blown a mile off course of their Utah Beach landing target due to strong currents, he reassessed the situation and said, "We'll start the war from right here." Roosevelt was the only general in the first wave on D-Day. He raised the men's morale through his presence and good humor, telling stories of his father and reciting poetry during the invasion. Roosevelt died in Normandy about a month later of a heart attack. 

When 5-star General Omar Bradley was asked to name the most heroic act of the war, he said, "Theodore Roosevelt on Utah Beach." Roosevelt's son Quentin was part of the invasion on Omaha Beach. They are the only father and son who took part in the D-Day invasion. Roosevelt is buried next to his brother, also named Quentin, who was killed in WWI.

When we were leaving Orglandes a couple of days ago, where John's dad's regiment was, we passed a high wall. We stopped to see what was on the other side of the wall. 

It was a German war cemetery. 

There are over 10,000 German soldiers buried here. This cemetery contains more graves than Normandy.

But there are far fewer headstones as sometimes six names would be on each stone, three on each side.

We wonder about the men buried here. Some were probably committed Nazis. Others, unwilling German conscripts. Like all of us, children of God.

There are so many things to think about, so many lessons from visiting these places.

Above is a memorial on the wall of the Bayeux cathedral, memorializing the French who died in concentration camps. I wonder what the dead would say to us. Maybe things we already know.

At the Normandy Visitors Center, the narrator of a film described the stakes of the D-Day invasion:
"The fate of the free world--the entire free world--rested on their very young shoulders."

Laundry in Bayeux

For our visit to the Normandy area, we are staying in Bayeux, another amazing French town with a huge Cathedral dedicated to Notre Dame. 

Bayeux is one of the few French towns in the area that wasn't destroyed in the war. It has many interesting sites of its own that we didn't have time to see, including a famous tapestry made in 1070 that portrays the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England. 

Whenever we didn't have time to see something interesting we said, "It means we have to come back."

Have I mentioned that some things in Europe are smaller than we are used to in the U.S.--garbage cans, glasses, and bathrooms, although the above bathroom is small even by French standards. It was like being in a phone booth.

In Bayeux, we had one timeout day when we did laundry.

                           

It was a little complicated at first, but we figured it out.

Luke monitors the progress.

John helped by going out onto Bayeux's rainy streets and getting us a lot of change.

This episode remained me of when Chris Ardis and I were in Paris in 1985. It was the start of the fourth week of a month's trip to Europe. The first three weeks we were on a Cosmos tour-- a if-this-is-Tuesday-it-must-be-Belgium kind of trip. It was a rigorous pace. Gabby, our tour guide used to say, "You are not on holiday (vacation); you are on a Cosmos tour." I've said something similar to John and Luke: "We are not on vacation; we are on a pilgrimage." They are excellent pilgrims.

Anyway, by the time Chris and I got to Paris, we were desperate to do laundry. As we searched for a laundry mat, we promised we'd never complain about washing our clothes again if we could just find one. We finally did!

Chris and I were as happy as Luke above, who was also very glad to have clean clothes. 

Above, a scallop shell in the Bayeux Cathedral, another sign of the Camino de Santiago.