Spring Break

I decided I wanted to spend my spring break in France. The problem was, I only had a vague idea of where I wanted to go, and pretty much everyone I know either had big plans to leave France for elsewhere in Europe, or was staying in Aix to save money for post semester travels. Thankfully another girl in my program liked my idea of staying in the country and seeing new places, so we started planning and this is what we ended up with: 

Tuesday:
-6hr train from Marseille to Bordeaux, arriving in Bordeaux early that afternoon
-spend the rest of the day seeing the city
-stay overnight in Bordeaux
Wednesday:
-spend the morning/afternoon seeing Bordeaux
-take a 4hr train to Nantes, arriving later in the evening
-stay overnight in Nantes
Thursday:
-spend the better part of the day seeing Nantes
-take a 2hr train to Tours, arriving later in the evening
-stay overnight in Tours
Friday:
-do a morning tour of two castles in the Loire Valley outside of Tours
-catch an early afternoon train to Caen in Normandy
-stay overnight in Caen
Saturday:
-catch a commuter train to neighboring Bayeux and embark on an all day tour of mostly American sites from the D-Day landings, then head back to Caen
-stay overnight in Caen
Sunday:
-catch an early afternoon train back to Aix 
Here's a visual representation of the route. It ended up being a total of over 1,500 miles, and over 20 hours on a train.

On paper, is was all beautifully planned. We were going to make the best of our time and money; spending a good amount of time in each spot, and finding good prices on hostels and train. We researched and booked tours to get us to the castles in the Loire Valley and the sites of D-Day because they’re not possible to do without a car.
I’m proud to say almost everything worked out PERFECTLY. The only small problems were our tours of castles and D-Day sites never got booked due to some computer glitch. When I didn’t receive confirmation emails I got skeptical. Early in the week I called the D-Day company who told me they didn’t have my request and weren’t doing a tour that day. This was disappointing because this tour went to Mont St. Michel in the morning and the D-Day beaches in the afternoon. Instead, we booked an all day D-Day tour with another company who offered a student discount. The castle tour, I called the company the morning of and was told they didn’t have my request and weren’t doing the tour we wanted that morning—but they had another tour with spots available of two different but equally beautiful castles that we joined instead.
But other than those two small things that could have been a huge issue, which we solved calmly and with time to spare, everything worked out perfectly. Kristie and I have traveled with a variety of people, so we knew what we wanted and how we liked to see things and thankfully we made excellent travel partners. So that’s a summary, and here are my stories….

Bordeaux:
A six hours train was easier than expected. I thought an eight or nine hour flight here sucked, but after all this train travel, it’ll be easier to get home. We dropped our things off at our adorably small hotel and went to explore. It was really windy and rainy, but we didn’t take this trip to not see stuff so we braved the elements all week regardless of weather conditions. We spent the rest of the day exploring the city , and it was so lovely. Bordeaux is a beautiful city, especially at night.
In the morning, we decided to check out an especially exciting museum as something to to—the French National Customs Museum. For 1,50€, we learned about the history of French customs, import taxes, smuggling, and border security. If that doesn’t scream spring break, I don’t know what does. I can barely contain my excitement recounting this now. But seriously, it was oddly specific enough that it was genuinely interesting. Then we stopped for tasty homemade lunch at a restaurant called “Chez Maman” (At Mom’s), had some tasty food, and shared a pitcher of wine. When the server brought our after meal coffee, he also brought us shots of orange vanilla rum, he claimed it was good for your health with the changing temperatures. I wasn’t about to argue with him. Needless to say, we were feeling pretty good as we went to our next museum to learn all about the long history of Bordeaux and the region it occupies. To close out the first leg of the trip, we grabbed some pastries that were the local specialty and boarded our train to Nantes.
The ride to Nantes was especially beautiful. France grows a lot of canola, which produces bright yellow flowers. So the countryside was quite colorful. We even briefly passed by the Atlantic Ocean. We arrived at our super cheap hostel later in the evening, and crashed to rest up for the next day.

Nantes:
We didn’t really know what there was to do in town, since we figured we’d make those decisions when we got there with the help of the hostel desk and pamphlets. Over breakfast, we mulled over a little guidebook and made our plans for the day. Our first stop was a botanical/rose garden and were happy to be greeted by a surplus of flowers. We were strolling through the out of bloom rose garden and all of the sudden heard something strange coming from the river that wound past the park. A large group of children were having a sailing lesson, and for some reason they were screaming the baseline to Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes. We walked a bit closer to see what was happening, and were very surprised at what we saw. There were maybe 12-15 tiny, rectangular boats with small sails, and each had two or three children in them wearing lifejackets. But there were no adults in the boats, instead three motorboats of adults were observing/herding the children. We laughed about how you would never see such a thing in the US. It was so ridiculous, I won’t elaborate any further. Heading back into the city, we checked out, at the suggestion of the guidebook, Nante’s revived industrial neighborhood. It featured a large hanger that had stored imported bananas until they turned yellow but was converted to shops/restaurants/bars, a big yellow crane, and some mechanical zoo.
Nantes used to be a very significant port, but eventually the river became un-navigable  by large ships, cutting off the city and its established industry from transportation lines. So they’ve tried to remodel this image, and that kind of reminded me of the work to revive the Menomonee River Valley in Milwaukee. Their crane…was just a crane. It no longer serves any purpose other than a giant yellow eyesore. They’re pretending to smile and say it’s a tourist attraction now, which is hilarious. And the mechanical zoo was just some old factory you had to pay to get into (we opted out) to play with some science stuff and take a ride on a giant robotic elephant. Unimpressed by this area, we headed back into the center of town. We checked out the castle in the center, which was converted to a museum of the city/region’s history, much like what we saw in Bordeaux. It talked about the cities place as a major slave port back in the day, which was very sad. They also talked about their previously described troubles with their shipping industry. We then wandered some more, and caught an early evening train to Tours, to see castles in the Loire Valley.

Tours:
We weren’t there long, checked into our cheap hostel that evening and lounged around to save some energy/money. On our way there though, we were seriously weirded out. Walking past a war damaged cathedral, we heard the strangest noise—a didgeridoo. My friend peeked around the corner, only to see a hooded man sitting in the entryway…playing a didgeridoo. What the fuck.
Anyways, the next morning, we walked over to the tourist office to meet our guide and see some castles. We piled into a van with our guide, two Japanese women, and a Frenchman who was in town for the weekend for a French language Scrabble tournament (ADORABLE).
Our first castle was called Azay le Rideau. There are over 500 castles throughout the Loire Valley, where Tours is located. About 100 of those are open to the public and privately owned, and another ten or so are open to the public and government owned. Azay le Rideau happened to be one of the government owned was, which was awesome because it meant we got in for free as young European residents (the cost of the tour only covered transportation to the castles). It had a moat and the castle itself was so beautiful. The second castle was privately owned and called Villandry. Though the castle is best known for its gardens, the interior was absolutely gorgeous as well since, being privately owned, there was more money invested in it. But the gardens were beyond breathtaking. Everything was so elegantly sculpted and manicured. We returned to Tours and caught a train to the city of Caen, our base for seeing the beaches of Normandy.

Normandy:
The weather in this town/region was not pleasant the entire time we were there, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it. We grabbed a quick dinner and crashed at our hotel. In the morning, we took a quick commuter train from Caen to neighboring Bayeux where our guide picked us and three other Americans up for our tour. He was  a young Frenchman who was from the area and was very nice. Our first stop was the German military cemetery, located a short drive from Bayeux. The other Americans we were with, two middle aged sisters and one of their husbands, didn’t really get why/how the cemetery was there. I tried explaining how things like that are necessary for civilized war and a future of peace, but they didn’t seem to understand. Next was the village of Saint Mere Eglise, where paratroopers landed in the wrong spot early in the morning on D-Day. They were supposed to land outside of the town, but due to wind and other problems, they ended up falling right into the main square in town where a large fire was burning. There was already a large German military and French civilian presence dealing with the fire, so when the sky started raining American paratroopers, the scene that followed quickly got ugly. Nearby fences and chimneys still had bullet holes in them from that night almost 70 years ago. We also stopped at a museum that had a plane used in the operations, and plenty of artifacts from the period. Also while in town, we visited the church some of the paratroopers accidentally landed on. War bombing destroyed the original stained glass windows, and after the liberation two new commemorative windows were put in place that featured images of the paratroopers (one made by the town in their honor, and the other as a gift from the veterans to the town). The guide spoke a lot about how thankful the people of this town were for their sacrifice and how they understood the price they themselves paid in the destruction of their town and civilian casualties taken on in order to bring end to German occupation.
On our way to the next spot, the guide stopped at several small things, such as the first temporary airfield the Allies set up in the area which still had the same wire fencing used in 1944, a few smaller monuments, and some of the fields that the Germans had flooded as a means of deterring paratroopers. We had a bit of time at Utah Beach, which was the more successful of the two landing beaches. They had some of the original beach obstacles on display that the army encountered. It was very harrowing to see. It mean, the whole day was…bullet holes and bomb damage everywhere, but the beaches were something else. Looking out at the English Channel and imagining the boats coming in, and then glancing over at the shore, only I really knowing what they could expect to find there.
The next spot was the Point du Hoc, where 200 Army Rangers scaled enormous cliffs to overtake a long range German gun station. The whole site was still full of craters from the 40 minutes of bombing delivered prior to the Rangers’ arrival. Round holes were from aerially delivered bombs, and oval ones from naval strikes. We toured a German bunker. The ceiling was charred from when the Rangers entered with flamethrowers. Some of the walls were full of bullet/shrapnel holes. Everything still seemed fresh. This was also one of the only sites in the area where bomb craters remain. Elsewhere, locals were anxious to fill them in and move on from the war. Our group stopped for lunch at a little fishing village and then moved on to Omaha Beach. We actually visited the sector made famous in Saving Private Ryan, and it was a very emotional experience, with similar things going through my mind as had been there at Utah Beach. The sea was also very rough that day, painting an even better picture of the conditions they had to endure that morning. I could have spent hours there, but the tour had to move on to the next stop, the American Cemetery. On the way there, we passed the first temporary cemetery where American bodies were buried before they were shipped back to America. We were also surprised to see there were houses built all along the beaches of Omaha, but no one is allowed to build there anymore.
Going to the cemetery was technically going back to America, since the land has a similar status that embassies have (http://youtu.be/imeQs7rkPRs?t=11m40s). We wandered through the visitors center, which I could have spent hours more in, and headed out to the cemetery. It was just as moving as to be expected. The soldiers are all buried randomly, officers and common soldiers alike, because everyone’s sacrifice was equal. The guide showed us Teddy Roosevelt Jr’s grave with its Medal of Honor markings. He was buried next to his brother who died in WWI (and the only non WWII soldier buried there), because when you’re a Roosevelt, you can make things like that happen. We stayed for the lowering of the flag and they played Taps.
We then headed back to Bayeux and Caen, grabbed dinner at another adorable creperie, and called it a day. And now I’m recounting all of this in a journal Sunday afternoon on my way back to Aix. I have an hour or so in Paris to change stations, so I probably won’t be above ground but for my time in the stations and won’t actually see the city. But can we observe how crazy it is that I’ll be in Paris for an hour, just passing through? My life is so crazy…and I love it.

And so this is what I did this week. Due to the extreme success and good travel partner chemistry, I was able to do quite a bit of personal reflection and begin to process this whole year, which I’ll share bits and pieces of as the week goes on.

One month left!
For more photos, here's a public link to my album.