After dinner, we head for the parking lot under the castle only to find it totally locked up. We can�t seem to find a way in. J.C. dispatches us to a nearby bar to wait while he searches for an entrance and his car. He does show up eventually and drives us to our hotel. We crash immediately since tomorrow is D-Day beaches day.
We find our train compartment. After getting all our bags stored and feeling really comfy, a group of people with tickets interrupt us for our seats. Oops! I screwed up. We are in the right seats but the wrong car. We get �uncomfy� and move to our proper seats for the uneventful ride to Caen.
We arrive in Caen before Noon. We will be staying at a Best Western Hotel, Le Dauphine. It is described as being �near the train station.� As usual, �near� is a relative term and we cannot even find a map with our hotel�s street on it anywhere near the train station. We see no taxis. We ask a few people for directions but they either speak no English or have never heard of Le Dauphine.
By this time, we are hungry and grumpy (two of the seven dwarves). I have a brilliant idea. Since we will be renting a car for tomorrow, we�ll go to the Hertz office and they will be able to direct us to our hotel. Problem is that all the car rental places are closed from 12:00 Noon to 2:00 PM and it is now past noon.
What to do? What to do? That�s easy - baguettes and beer. We find a brasserie across from the station with sidewalk seating and settle in for the long wait. While we are sitting there, eating and laughing at ourselves, we strike up a conversation with a couple having lunch at a nearby table. They introduce themselves as J.C. and Caroline Thomas. After enduring our less than hilarious J.C. comments, they tell us they are relocating back to Caen, his hometown. They had lived in the Carolinas for two years, a while back, and recognized our Yankee accents and behavior. They, obviously, liked living in the U.S., otherwise they would have ignored us. They are a delightful couple and give us a ride to our hotel. They also invite us to join them for dinner. I am, once again, fascinated with the serendipity of travel. If we hadn�t gotten lost, we would have never met the Thomases.
We check in at the hotel, which is a refurbished Chateau. I find that in Europe, at least France, Germany and England, Best Westerns seem to offer the best value - three star quality, reasonable prices and interesting venues. We do have to carry our bags up two flights of stairs. The clerk offers to help, but we realize the bags are bigger than he is so we turn his offer down and struggle up the stairs ourselves.
I�m exhausted so I take a short nap and then grab a tram back to the station to rent our car. You may wonder why I didn�t rent the car earlier. I�m trying to hold the rental period to under 48 hours, thereby saving an extra day�s charges. There are a few people ahead of me so I have to wait. I notice how different the French and the British are in their interactions with the clerk. The French family members are assertive and ask many questions. The British couple is very polite and diffident and ask almost no questions. I wish I could step back and watch myself. The Hertz people are very nice, answer all my questions, and give me good directions back to the hotel. Later I spend an hour and a half deleting some 2400 spams from my e-mail box at a nearby Cyber Caf�.
The Thomases pick us up at dusk and we first visit the castle in the center of Caen where we are treated to a beautiful sunset. We walk to the Vaugueux area, an old part of town that has many restaurants and bars. It�s Saturday night so the place is packed but we finally find a small bistro that looks good.
Our guide for the day is John Flaherty of Hand Maid Tours, his solely owned company. I had spent three days with John in March 2003 visiting, not only the D-Day invasion sites but also the Bayeux Monastery and Tapestry as well as a number of outstanding restaurants and bars. John is living out his fantasy. He�s British by nationality with an Irish surname. He chucked it all a few years ago and bought a 300 year old farmhouse in a small crossroads village and lives there with his wife, Elaine. She�s a sweetheart, a superb cook, and teaches English as a Second Language in the area, a renaissance woman. He is an invasion buff, obsessed with bunkers and concrete. He also does tours of the Loire Valley and is a bit of a wine connoisseur. He�s also an expert on Calvados, the apple brandy of Normandy. He convinced me of that halfway through a bottle of the local product. He never wears shoes, only sandals even in the Winter. He wears his hair quite long and is well-known and respected, not only by other WW II buffs but also by the local people, a difficult accomplishment with the French. He�s the perfect choice to fill Tom�s head to overflowing with all the information he will share.
I�m looking forward to re-visiting some of the places I saw in March, 2003. I also want to hear John�s stories of the 60th anniversary celebrations held in June. I don�t intend to go into great detail on all the places we visited. If you are interested in the details, please use the links I�ve provided. In addition, I have over 100 pictures on my photo site, most of which are from my 2003 trip to the area. There is a ton of material on the D-Day invasion, 996,000 web references on Google alone. Your interest my be as great or greater than mine so I encourage you to research what is a great historical event and if you get turned on, contact John and spend some time visiting the area.
We meet John at the train station. He will be driving us in my rental car. Our first stop is Pegasus Bridge. The site of the famous British glider drop. We drive to the British and Canadian beaches, Sword, Gold, and Juno. Unfortunately the long weekend creates a huge traffic jam and the beaches are so packed with tourists that we can�t get close enough to see anything. Parking is out of the question. The houses in this area come right down to the road that runs along the beaches. Our only choice is to drive slowly while John describes the history of the area. I feel bad for Tom. I was lucky in 2003 because it was March and there were very few people about.
(Continued)
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