st malo

As mentioned, Shelly was hoping for some seafood. I drug out the Laptop out did a quick search, and St. Malo was known for having a high concentration of seafood resteraunts... so we hopped on the train! ...


...and shell got some seafood. This was our last stop before returning home.

French seafood was not really what we expected. Shelly watched in awe as little girls at the table behind us pulled snails from the shell with 'snail pokers' and gobbled them up. Shrimps came with legs, feelers, and little black eyes looking up at you from your plate.

My French stinks, so when it came to ordering I managed to order skate:


It looked like a piece of fish... but when I took a bite into it there were all these finger-like bones, and I was making a small scene crunching into them, because the tables are really close together-you dine with strangers. It tasted really good, and was totally eatable once I figured out how to strip off the bone layer. The French couple sitting next to us were pretty amused. A little too amused. Shelly was a little uptight about them laughing at us behind their napkins, but stuff like that doesn't bother me. In retrospect I should have eaten with my hands, used a straw for the wine, and then maybe offered them some of the skate bones.

St. Malo is a pretty cool port town. It was all bombed out in WWII, but they rebuilt it to the old style. Theres a really cool castle on the beach...


and a nifty old fortress out in the water.


We walked around the town at night, had some wine and such, and I have a million blurry at-night photos. We were chased around by a bat for a minute. Woke the next morning, ate a Crepe, bought a baguette and a bottle of St. Malo specialty hard cider, and started the trek home!

Mont Saint Michel

So this seemed pretty cool... 'Let's go there!'

cut and paste from Wikipedia:

'According to legend, St. Michael the Archangel appeared to St. Aubert, bishop of Avranches, in 708 and instructed him to build a church on the rocky islet. Aubert repeatedly ignored the angel's instruction, until St. Michael burned a hole in the bishop's skull with his finger.'

To get there we stayed in the closest town, called Ponterson. With a little bit of luck we managed to get there on a national holiday unkown to us, and the entire place was a ghost town, and all the hotels and hostels were booked. So this improvising stradegy of ours finally caught up and bit us.... almost.

Wandering around town, knocking on hotel doors and ringing bells at hostels, we were beginning to wonder if we would be sleeping in some farmer's barn somewhere when we came across another couple of travelers. It immediatly became clear that they too were in the same situation. We had to join forces! After some more hotel hunting we came to a campground with cabins for rent. They were booked up, but the guy running the place realized our situation, and was able to make an arrangement for us, there was an empty cabin but people were coming the next day, so we had to be out early and the place had to be clean. We agreed to share the cabin, which turned out to be the nicest, cleanest, and cheapest accomodation of our trip! And to top it off, we made some new friends.

Caroline and Robin were Swedish, and they spoke probably better English than us. They were a few years younger than us, and were about a week or so into their 5 week European tour which they had been saving up for for quite some time. The weather was miserable, and there was nothing to do in Pontorson except for a couple of ratty bars.. so we had a couple of drinks and some pizza with our new friends and later we retired to the cabin. I had my computer so we hung out, and they shared with us their favorite 'are you smarter than a 5th grader' Youtube clips and we counterattacked with our favorite Swedish Chef clips.

The thing to do normally would be to catch a bus up to Mont St. Michel. But we had a better idea. The four of us rented bikes form the campground and took the scenic route!




Getting closer....


Here we are!
..
As cool as this place is, its also pretty touristy. The worst part? The abbey was closed cuz of the holiday. in fact the only day of the year that it closes. sheesh.



Robin, Caroline, Shelly, and yours truly at the cabin.


The worst bikes in the world. Mine had a baby seat on the back, and ironically, after spending a couple of hours on that seat, Im not sure if I'll be able to have kids.

a movie!



Shelly really wanted seafood... and this place, despite being on the coast, did not deliver much option.... so onward for seafood we went.

Tune in next time for 'Eugene eats a skate!'

normandie

A couple of weeks ago we visited our friend Michaela in Solothurn, she's working at an American Resteraunt there. While we were there, there was a 'crazy' guy walking around mumbling to the patrons. Well, I guess he heard us speaking English, and came right over and started mumbling away. I have a hard enough time with the dialect anyway and this guy was just grumbling along like a bum... when suddenly I caught a flash of what he was saying. He was saying June 6th. I looked at my watch, and it was June 6th. D-Day. He wanted to know if we were Americans and when I told him my grandfather was there, he shook my hand, thanked us, and walked away.

The weather was great!:



Looking out in the sea you can see the remains of the mobile docks that were installed quickly during the invasion to bring in ships with supplies:


Entering the American cemetary. There is this garden and the wall holds the name of those who are not buried here, because their bodies were not recovered.



My camera couldn't capture just how peaceful and perfect everything is here.




Some big guns left in place at Omaha Beach.




Our tour guide points to where a shell hit this gun straight on. notice the shrapnel holes in the blown out side.


The beaches at Pointe du Hoc are relatively untouched, and you can climb around in the craters from the air support and from the USS Texas.


Our tour met and set out from a D-Day museum in Caen. Included was a museum ticket, we walked most of the museum, which was cool. Here's the plane hanging in the lobby.

Time to move on. We grabbed a bag of 'Speedy Burgers', paused at the public toilette, and stepped into the train station....

Caen

From Paris we went to Caen. In Caen I learned how to pronounce Caen correctly. Its not what you think, unless your up on your French...

Pretty much the goal here was to see the Normandy beaches. We put up in this city as our base for a night while we sorted out what to do next. This turned out to be worth our while, as Caen had some history too. Mostly destroyed in the Battle of Caen, most of the buildings were new. That is, newer than the 1000 year old stuff we were seeing everywhere else.

A castle, built by William the Conquerer ca. 1060

From the inside, you can see the remains of a moat around the main office.




We climbed around the defensive walls, and took the picture of the town.



This church is doing the limbo.

hostel

This is how we roll. Our home while we were in Paris! This was by far the worst place we stayed on our trip. But... its right downtown in Paris!

Traveling Europe on a tight budget, we often stay at hostels. Most people would find the accomodations pretty miserable, which makes it so much fun for us to share!

Heres the shower. Its down the hall and you share it with the other weirdos on your floor. Oh yeah, that was a push button valve for the water, the kind where you push it in, and you get water for 7 seconds.



We were pretty worn-looking from travel, and pictures of us in this room make us look like we have real problems.



There was a seperate closet with a sink. For some reason. My guess would be that this place could have been a hospital room 70 years ago, therefore the sink.



Romantic huh? Shelly gets the power supply ready so I can charge the computer.


The room included breakfast in the morning:
coffee in plastic cups and bread with chocolate-in-em out of the vending machine. bon apetite!

Notre Dame

The Notre Dame cathedral in Paris:




They were actually having a service when we where there, but tourism and pictures and all that were still fair game, although its best to try not to be a total jerk in these situations...




Left to right:
Stan, Carl, Earl, Hank, Fred, Wilbur and Huey are among the old guys of awesomeness on the front of the Notre Dame in Paris.

One day I will do this:

Shelly was really into the flowers they had in the back garden. girls.... ppffff!

Louvre

So they say you could spend x number of days in the Louvre and not see everything. True. But, we did our best. There were like 15,000 clay pots in the Egyptian section, and to me once you've seen the first 10 your done. Unless your a clay potologist. Id say we walked through 80% of the museum in like 5 hours. Afterwards our brains were fried, we were hungry. Back pains etc etc.


A more photogenic exhibit at the Louvre, these are the furnishings of Napoleon.






EGYPTIAN SHADOW PUPPETS!!!! (You can't take us anywhere)


I was reading this story on the wall, and I think I recognized the plot line from an episode of WKRP. You know, the one where they throw turkeys out of the helicopter?


For every Egyptian artifact, there is a little girl waiting to jump into your photo.


Venus de Milo:

paintings paintings paintings!!!


It was pretty busy in there. Especially around the real popular stuff. About half of Japan was there to see Mona Lisa, which is a pretty small piece.

Mona Shelly (Mona Lisa looks on from behind)