Monday, June 6, 2011

Normandy Weekend: Day 1

We just got back from a wonderful long weekend (gotta love those French holidays that fall on Thursdays, and the 'faire le pont' day on Friday!).  We decided for the long weekend to make the trip back to Normandy.  We spent a long weekend there last year with friends, but didn't get to visit any of the D-Day beaches or museums.  We felt we would be unpatriotic if we let our time in France go by without taking time to visit the beaches.

It is about a 7 hour drive from Clermont to the area of Normandy where I found a b&b.  We decided to break the trip up and stop at a chateau in the Loire Valley.  We chose the Château de Chenonceau because, well, because I saw a really pretty picture of it in my Frommer's France book!  It is said to be a lot of visitors' favorite chateau in all of France, so I figured if we were only going to visit one, then it would be a good one.  We arrived in the little village right at lunch time and since most restaurants stop serving lunch at 2:00pm, we decided to go ahead and eat.  Again, trusty Frommer's directed us to a little restaurant that was a short walk from the chateau's parking lot.  This was the first time we had attempted to take Jacob with us to a French restaurant.  The French love their food, and a meal is never something to be rushed.  I was a little anxious about how Jacob would do- especially after just having spent 3 hours strapped in his car seat.  He was awesome!  Whew!  He was completely fascinated by everything going on around him.  It also helps that he is now eating a lunch meal, so I could feed him a bite, eat a little myself, feed him, etc.  We had an amazing 4 course meal, and Jacob was completely content the entire time.  After all of that food, thank goodness we didn't plan to get right back in the car.  The day was beautiful, and walking through a chateau and its impressive gardens was just the ticket.  The chateau was really pretty, but super crowded! 

After about an hour, we decided to go ahead and hit the road again.  The bed and breakfast I found in Normandy is part of a working dairy farm.  It is in the middle of nowhere, which just happens to be very close to Omaha Beach.  When we drove up the tree lined drive, our jaws dropped.  The main house was enclosed by a stone wall that surrounded it and several other buildings.  The Ferme Manoir de l'Hermerel cows provide milk that is used to make Normandy's famous Camembert cheese.  Yum!  We had to wait about 30 minutes when we arrived because we couldn't find the owner!  Finally she arrived and showed us to our room(s).  I booked a room with a small adjoining children's room for Jacob, thinking he (and we) would sleep better if he wasn't in the same room as us.  It was almost 8:00 (an hour after his normal bedtime) by the time we got settled in the room.  We did bath and fed him his bottle, but since the sun doesn't set until about 10:00pm, his room was really bright.  He had a really hard time falling asleep.  Matthew left to go find something to bring back for us to eat for dinner.  Jacob finally fell asleep a little after 9, just as Matthew got back.  We ate sitting on the bed, and went to bed early ourselves, ready for a big day in Normandy the next day!

(Blogger has told me that I have exceeded my uploaded picture space... boo!  So, I put all of the pictures from Day 1 in a slideshow and uploaded it to YouTube.)

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