Day 16 & 17 - London & Home

We spent the day exploring London. The weather was pretty dreary, the first bad day we had had in two weeks. We saw all the sites, including the changing of the guards. We got there early and had a decent spot, but there were so many people and so many rude pushy people!

After the changing of the guard, we took the Underground to Wimbledon. We walked around the museum and saw Centre Court.

We enjoyed the Fish & Chips so much the night before, we got it again tonight.

Tomorrow we have an early flight home. What a great two + weeks!

video games & orange soda...

Day 15 - On to London!

We had a late afternoon flight to Paris, so we hung out in the morning and relaxed.

All our stuff...

We had a 45 minute train ride to the airport, we left at about noon to allow for some extra time. Luckily we did, we had some difficulty buying a train ticket to the airport, the debit card swipe was not working and we had no cash on us. Andy wandered around while I stayed with the bags, and he looked for someone to help us. It took him some time, but finally we were able to get tickets. We arrived still fairly early to the airport, and we sat outside the British Airways check in counter until 2 hours before our flight. The flight to London took a little over an hour and the first thing we noticed was how nice it was to finally be able to read signs again!

We found our hostel, The Astor Inn, easily. We were in a 12 person room for the two nights that we are here.

our hostel was the blue door

We asked for a recommendation for dinner and ended up going to a delicious fish & chips place.

After we ate we came back and crashed. Only 1 day left!

Day 14 - Paris

We have officially been traveling for 2 weeks, crazy! Today we did a ton!

We started the day with an early trip to the Eiffel Tower. We got in line before it opened at 9am, and waited for almost 2 hours to go to the top.

the line

The lift to the top was kind of scary, but the view was great.

We then proceeded to walk around the city and see everything. We saw the Arc de Triumph, the Louve (& Mona Lisa), Notre Dame, the Pantheon, and we climbed the 200 steps to the Basilique du Sacre Coeur.

Paris was way too crowded and dirty. We got some dinner and ate at the hostel.

Our Rummy score....Brit is getting crushed!

We then ventured out to check out the World Cup Finals. There was a big screen set up right near the Eiffel Tower and there were SO many people there watching the game! We stayed for a little and left before the end of the first half. We didn't care as much about watching the game as we did to see the scene. It was unreal.

We are off to London tomorrow, one more stop!

Day 13 - to Paris

We got up early and drove through Bayeux on our way to Caen. In Bayeux we saw the British War Cemetary and the Eisenhower statue.

Eisenhower statue.

We took the 12pm train back to Paris, arrived around 2:00pm and navigated our way through the Metro to the hostel, Le Village.

the train ride back to Paris.

our room.

So far, the city is crowded and dirty. We took a quick trip to a Museum and saw Napoleon's Tomb.

Then we played some cards and relaxed in the hostel. Tomorrow we are going to try and see all of Paris in one day!

Day 12 - the Beaches of Normandy

Today was a much better day. We like France a little bit more now....We got up early and had breakfast at the B&B, bread, fruit and crepes. We then drove to Caen to try and figure out our car situation. We thought we were going to have to pay a lot for being over the 100 miles, but it ended up not being that bad. We returned the old rental car and got a new one.

Our first stop was the Memorial de Caen, or Peace Memorial Museum in Caen. We spent the better part of the morning at the museum, it was amazing. It was the best museum we had ever been to, and we could have spent hours there. There were tons of neat pictures and at the end we saw a really powerful video that showed the German and Allied perspectives of the invasion simultaneously. They also had a special Cold War section. the video was called Hope.

We spent close to three hours at the museum, and then headed toward the beaches.

We drove along Rt. 514 for forever, it runs right along the coast.

Every town had a sign with the flag of the country that liberated them.

We saw a bunch of memorials, British, Canadian, and American. Its pretty neat to see all the flags everywhere. This is one place that you can be proud to be an American.

We saw Arromanches, the American Military Cemetary, and then we drove to Sainte-Mere Eglise.

Arromanches

the American Military Cemetary - Omaha Beach

We went to the American Airborne Museum in Sainte-Mere Eglise, this was one of the towns that the US Airborne liberated early on during the Battle of Normandy.

the Airborne Museum

the church where a parachuter got stuck...

On the way back to the B&B we went by way of Point de Hoc.

Point du Hoc

We played some cards and hung out outside til after 11pm, it doesn't get dark here!

totally not staged....

Day 11 - The disaster....

I guess every trip has to have one disaster of a day....today was that day for us! We had the 8:30am train from Bern to Paris. All seemed ok at first, until the train arrived in Paris almost 50 minutes late! Once we arrived in Paris, we had to wait in line for 45 minutes to buy tickets to Caen. Once we had the tickets, we had to take the subway to another train station to get the train. We thought we might have a chance to make the 3:10pm train, instead of waiting around for the 4:45pm train, so we decided to sprint. Sprinting with our bags was no easy task, we almost died! We sprinted up the stairs into the other train station at about 3:09....we thought maybe we had a chance. We ran along the length of trains looking for our train and couldn't find it. We stumbled across a train marked Caen and barged on to it....We thought we had just made it. There were three workers just sitting there, relaxing. They stared at us kind of funny. We must have been quite the sight, we were dripping in sweat and huffing and puffing after our run! It ended up being our train, we'd come to find out later, just the much later 4:45pm train.

We got on the 4:45pm train and it was packed and so unbearably hot. We were dying. We got to Caen at just about 7pm, we went directly to our car rental place and the place was closed. Avis next door was also closed. We started to panic. Luckily there was one place that was still open, and we were able to rent a car. We had a tough time finding the highway, and eventually were on our way to our Bed & Breakfast.

Our day was a stressful one, but it was so nice to get to the B&B. The lady who owned it was really nice, we had a small room with a private bathroom.

Our Bed and Breakfast

Our room.

We hung out for a little, played some cards, and then called it an early night. We were just happy to be there. Tomorrow we are planning on driving back to Caen and dealing with the other rental car company.

a little tea and some cards to end the night.