Spring Break 2013: Part I Grandma and Papa visit!!

As I was trying to write about the D-Day tour, I realized that I had not given any lead in ... so

On, 14 March, Grandma and Papa showed up for a 3 week visit.  Mayland planned a trip to Normandy and Paris France to help fill their time here and keep the kids off of the computers.  While Grandma and Papa would have been content to stay in the house and just relax, the kids really needed to be gotten out so that they would focus on something other than Minecraft.

Tower / dungeon where Joan was held

Sean finished up in the ICU and the kids with school on Tuesday the 19th and on Wednesday, we walked down the hill to the train station and took off for Paris.  We spent the 1st night in Paris, Grandma and Papa watched the kids; while, Sean and Mayland went to visit Giselle (Westtown classmate) and her family.  Giselle made a ratatouille by which all else would be judge only for them to fall short.  We also learned about the French white wine: Saumer.  We also learned that in France - you don't know the grapes, you know the vinter and region.  It is the same in Germany and Italy, which explains why it is so much harder to identify wines that I like because the vinter may have a good crop of one type of grapes one year and then the next year - something different.

Thursday found us in Rouen, France seeing the place where Joan 'dArc was held prisoner during her interrogations and before she was burned at the stake.

This sign is in front of the church and marks
the location of the death of Joan 'dArc

We tried to enter the very modern church, seen to the left with MJ in front, that was erected in her honor, but a service was happening at the time and we needed to head back to the train station to pick-up the rental car, a must for visiting the Normandy countryside.  The art museum in Rouen was wonderful as it gave us a chance to see many impressionist artists including Monet.

That afternoon we drove out to Bayeux, France where we would stay for the next few days.  The overcast sky is very much what we awoke to daily and the temperatures hovered near freezing making their way up into the low 40's.  Just the week before Normandy had it's largest snow storm of the year over 24 inches had fallen.  The fields were flooded from the melting snow, and looked very much like it would have looked when the American's came to liberate France in 1944.  The weather in this part of France is very much like that of southern Britain, cold, damp and overcast.  The upside is that we had no rain.  The downside, French coffee is not that great (especially after Italy and Germany) and we kept drinking it in hopes that it would provide warmth.  Oh, and soup, yeah, not on many menus, not even the famed onion soup.