Bon Voyage! Part 1

This blog is a bit late, I should have posted it on Wednesday but I guess I had other things to write about. Last January my oldest daughter and I had an opportunity to go to France and England on a short term missions trip with her school. It was an amazing trip. We had 3 weeks of traveling around France. About halfway into our trip Taylor and I slipped away from the rest of the group and took a train ride to England. A very good friend of mine lives in London and I have wanted to go and visit him ever since they moved there. I could never afford the airfare so I was never able to go. I had mentioned to our team leader that if at all possible I would like to go over to England to visit my friend and his family and she said that she thought it would be nice for us to be able to go and she would try and work it out for us. It cost us an extra $300.00 for the train tickets but it was well worth the money. Let me tell you about our trip, the flight to Paris was long but it seemed short to me. I was as excited as a school boy on the last day of school, so sleeping was out of the question. We left Ohio at 6:30 p.m. and traveled for a total of 12 hours and arrived in Paris. The airport was huge and we had a hard time finding our way out and to our bus. I think it took us 3 or 4 hours to get from the plane to the bus, once we got to the bus it took us another 2 hours to get into downtown Paris. I'll never forget it, I was in Paris, France. I couldn't hardly believe it, you could have pinched me and I wouldn't have felt it. My senses were on overdrive trying to take in all the sights, sounds and smells. It didn't matter to me that we didn't know exactly where we were going or that we were backtracking. The city streets are like a Labyrinth, it is so easy to get turned around there. Every intersection though different look very much the same. The streets for the most part do not run in blocks like here in America, they run in circles and diagonals. It's all very confusing, not to mention all the signs are in French. It was around 5:00 p.m. when we found the apartment we were looking for. Some of the team was going to stay in the apartment and the rest of us were going to stay in a Hostel. We finally made it to the Hostel at 9:00 p.m., we had been dragging our luggage around Paris for 12 hours, on and off of the Metro (France's Subway) and the buses. This was a chore but I look back now and I would do it all over if I had the opportunity. I would definitely pack lighter the next time. I was one of the lucky ones who got to stay at the Hostel. This was a really neat experience, I never knew from one night to the next who my room mates were going to be. The city was beautiful and exciting, I don't know if I could live there for any length of time but to go and stay for a year would be fun. We were in Paris for 3 nights, the first night I was rooming with, believe it or not, 2 American college students. They were there looking for an apartment and a job, the next 2 nights I had 2 Chinese students in my room, they were there traveling and studying French Business. I met young people from many different countries while there, most of them between the ages of 15 and 18 years. Everyone that I met were very polite and quite enjoyable to meet. On Sunday our work in Paris ended and we hopped on a train and headed to Franceville/Normandy. We travelled for a few hours and had to switch trains but we had a layover for about 3 hours. We slept in the lobby of the train station and had a good time. It felt like we were traveling and living free, as I said before I wouldn't trade it for anything, it was like a big adventure. When our train arrived we hopped on and went to a small coastal town and found a bus that took us to an authentic French Abbey. I think that is what it is called, it has a proper name but my daughter isn't hear so I can't ask her what it is called. If she gets home before I am finished I'll add it in somewhere. This place was awesome, it reminded me of a castle from some old movie, it isn't a castle at all as it still has monks living it. It sits out in the English Channel on an island. When the tide is in you can't get to it by car. The abbey was a foreboding and menacing stone structure that appeared to be growing out of the ground. Once you get there however and were inside the gates it was like being in a small town or village. It was all very cool. We spent the morning there and then we hopped back on the bus went and had French pizza and ice cream and got back on a train and headed for Franceville/Normandy. This was another treat, it is a coastal community that is a summer getaway for much of France. The place where we were staying was right next to the beach, I could look out my window and see the waves crashing the shoreline. We arrived late afternoon and had our dinner, some of the girls couldn't wait to see the beach so we went right after eating. Once again we were treated to a beautiful sight. The beach was shell lined like no beach I had ever seen and I have been to over 40 different American beaches both as well as some Caribbean beaches. There were shells everywhere, not just little shells but big ones also. We only had a short visit as it was starting to get dark and we didn't get much sleep the night before so we went back to the dorm and went to bed.

Be back after Travels to the Edge with Art Wolfe..........

I'm back so lets get back to Franceville/Normandy. The next day after we were finished with our service work we went back to the beach and were surprised at how much bigger it was. When the tide is out the beach is much larger. I don't know exactly how much bigger but I would guess you could walk about a 1/4 of a mile further out before you get to the waters edge, then if it were warmer you could go out quite a ways again before it would become knee deep. As we walked along the beach we were treated to a horse trainer training a horse by running it up and down the beach. We started walking along a path and it took us into a natural area that I later found out was a nature preserve of some kind. As we were walking along I noticed every so often these low concrete looking sheds that were overgrown by the brush and weeds on the coast. At first I thought they were some kind of remains of larger buildings but the more I saw them I knew that they were something else. They were German bunkers from WWII that had been left standing as a reminder of what Germany had don't to France in the past. I was surprised that so many of them were still standing. It was a very surreal reminder of the terrible things that happened during WWII. The next day we took a trip to the American Monument to the fallen soldiers who fought for Europe's freedom during WWII. It was a very humbling experience to stand among the tombstones of so many American soldiers who had died defending freedom. It gave you a sense of pride and patriotism but at the same time it was all very humbling. To walk along Omaha beach where so many Americans died that the water ran red from American blood, is a feeling that I cannot describe. I enjoyed being there but it when it was time to leave I was ready to go. Well the next day is when Taylor and I are going to slip away and go to England, I think I will have to save this part of the story for tomorrow, other wise this will be an extremely long post. So come back tomorrow and read part 2.

Photoman