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St Malo

Wednesday August 30
We arrived in St Malo at about 9am. This time we were at anchor so we had to take the ship tender across to the pier. We got the 10:30 tender, the first one. St Malo is a walled city right on the sea. Its history began in the first century BC. In World War II it was bombed by the allies and destroyed. Of course it was rebuilt. The buildings are all very similar. I would love to see pictures of it pre-bombing. The book “All The Things We Cannot See” took place here. It is a great read.

We walked all around the town. It is mostly a tourist destination and we had plenty of time before our planned lunch where we were meeting an on-line friend of my sister. The town had some nice shops. Many restaurants had the local specialties of the buckwheat crepes used to make sandwiches.

Our lunch was beside the embarkation pier in a restaurant called L’Amiral. We arrived first and Dominique arrived just after. She lives in Paris and loves to come to St Malo for breaks. She is very French and conversing was difficult but fun in it’s own way. The sailboat was outside in the harbor. They begin a single-handed sailboat race from here called the Route du Rhum, destination Guadeloupe. The Brittany coast is the land of the oyster. I used to gobble up oysters by the dozen. But in the last few years I get sick every time I eat one. I assume I am allergic. So sorry I can’t eat them. They look amazing. I had the fish, sea bass, on puréed parsnips all floating in a sea of butter. They DO like their butter around here.

We stayed in port in St Malo until 11 pm. I had terrible connectivity so I am just finishing this post now. In the meantime, we had an “At sea” day. We sailed all night, all day, and all night. They try to plan lots of activities to keep us busy, such as a Vive La France wine tasting. Champagne, Burgundy, Rhône and Bordeaux.

I was just happy to have time to finish reading my book. I highly recommend it — “Beneath a Scarlet Sky”. Takes place in Milan during the end days of the Second World War. It is based on a true story and it was amazing. I’m always interested in what happened in Italy during the War.

At this time we have docked in a town called Loriente. Apparently there isn’t much to see here. But we will go out for a walk and find lunch maybe. The skies have just started clearing and the rain has stopped.

Caen and the D-day beaches

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Links to trip parts
Part 1. Amsterdam
Part 2. Stuck in Amsterdam
Part 3. Rouen France
Part 4. Le Havre and Honfleur
Part 5. Caen and the D-day beaches
Part 6. St Malo
Part 7. Lorient
Part 8. La Rochelle
Part 9. Bordeaux

Tuesday 29 August
Last night we dined up on the deck and saw a lovely sunset. And later the blue moon rising.

Yesterday we visited Caen and from there we booked a private tour of some of the D-day beaches and cemeteries. There was a slight mix-up. We arrived at the coast and navigated a lock. Then they debarked all those who had booked the Windstar tour. It was full or we would have done that. Since it was full we booked a private tour. But it goes out of the actual city of Caen. So we traveled up the canal which took 2 hours. This meant we met our driver a full hour later than planned. It was OK we would do what we could do. It was a perfect day. Sunny and cool.

All was not a waste though, sailing through the estuary was beautiful and we actually went through the Pegasus bridge draw bridge. It was cool. Lots of folks there waving at us and our captain blew his big ole whistle several times. Here are some photos along the way, and of Pegasus bridge.

Pegasus Bridge. Originally built in 1934 and replaced with a new design in 1994. It was one of the most important bridges during the invasion in Normandy during World War II.

We docked at precisely eleven and found our young and enthusiastic guide, Victor. We had a black Mercedes mini-van. Our first destination was Pointe du Hoc. This beachhead was between the two American landing sites of Utah and Omaha beaches. It was a German stronghold with six enormous guns which could spin 360 degrees and shoot 12 miles. Enough to reach either Omaha beach or Utah beach. About six hours before the main invasion a division of U.S. Rangers landed. There were 254 of them. Their job was to take out as many of the guns and Germans as they could. About 30% of them were wounded, killed, or MIA. I am impressed that the left this place just as it was at the end of the battle. Easy to picture what happened there. Here are pictures with subtitles.

A barracks where the German soldiers slept and also used as a bomb shelter.

Cliffs that had to be scaled to reach the Germans. Just on the other side of this piece of land is Omaha beach.

Flowers growing on the ground where so many died.

Omaha beach. Over 3 miles long. American soldiers were dropped in the water off shore because of the many barriers place there by the Germans. Many drowned on the spot. If they made it in they had to cross this wide beach.

If you look down this beach you’ll see the cliffs of Utah beach.

We next visited the American Cemetery. A moving place. Over 9,000 crosses and stars of David. The average age was 23. Most died in June and July of 1944. The cemetery is overseen by a caretaker, boss of the cemetery. He or she must be American or Canadian. The caretakers house is on the cemetery grounds. The cemetery is immaculate. I always cry here. This is my second visit.

It was a terrific tour. We all liked Victor. We had lunch in a restaurant on Omaha beach. I had Moules Frites. Delicious.

Next up, St. Malo Brittany.

Le Havre and Honfleur

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Monday 28 August
Docked at about 10am this morning. Cool with partly cloudy skies. Le Havre is the second largest port in France. Harbor art.

We had arranged a tour of Honfleur, a very ancient seaside town. I had been there thirty years ago. It is busier, but otherwise the same. The coach was comfy and our guide very nice and informative. We walked into town and around the tiny streets and along the shops which were along the waterfront. We admired the half timbered buildings. And the ones built all of slate to protect from the salt air. Then we walked up to the very cool church which was built by shipbuilders. The roof inside looks like the upside down keel of a boat. The bell tower was built a distance from the church. Since both are all wood they figured if one caught fire, the other had a chance of surviving. Here are my pictures.

I liked the storm clouds and the sun on the buildings

These next ones are the shipbuilders church.

It was a nice day. The weather wasn’t too cool. It didn’t rain. I had fun. Now we are headed to Caan. We have booked a tour of the D-Day beaches but it looks like this could be cut short because I think we are arriving late. We’ll see!

Rouen France

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Sunday August 27
After our marathon at sea we were very happy to get onto land for a day. The weather is quite chilly for August. This morning when we got up it was 54 degrees! And raining 😢. It is supposed to get up to about 70. And it looks like showers intermittently.

We caught the shuttle bus from the Star Legend to the center of the old town. Rouen has a long history going back to the Gauls. The Romans also occupied it and it is where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. It was claimed by both England and France during the Hundred Years’ War and was badly damaged by bombs in the Second World War. It’s most famous sight is Rouen Cathedral with its Tour de Beurre (butter tower) financed by the sale of indulgences for the consumption of butter during Lent. 😁 The cathedral’s gothic façade (completed in the 16th century) was the subject of a series of paintings by Claude Monet, some of which are exhibited in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

The weather was changeable. We had rain and sun intermittently all day. Windstar provided a shuttle bus. It was only a 15 minute ride. We walked down to the famous cathedral.

The old part of town is full of half timbered buildings. The Gros Horloge – or Great Clock, whose face was golden, shone in the intermittent sunshine.

Cool bookstore. It was Sunday so no stores were open

Very crooked house. Look at the beams just above the front door.

Lunch was the only meal that I have reserved on this cruise. It was at La Couronne, pictured above. The restaurant has been there since 1345. It is known as the restaurant where Julia Child had her first French meal. I read her book describing the meal as a revelation to her. And as we all know, she was known as the French Chef and wrote books on French cuisine.

The building is full of pictures of famous people who have eaten there. It is dark and quaint and so very French. The meal lasted three hours. Most of us went for the Dover Sole Meunière, one of two signature dishes. It is what Julia ate. It was good but the meal was so rich we were worthless the rest of the day.

The cheese chariot. Love French cheeses!

Heating the glass for Luther’s Armagnac.

We returned to the boat and crashed. We skipped dinner. Sail away wasn’t until 1am. Then we would sail back down the Seine to Le Havre. We have a tour of Honfleur booked. We were there once, long ago and loved it. Another place where the Impressionists painted.

Next up Le Havre!

Stuck in Amsterdam

Trip report – Amsterdam

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These next few posts will be about our trip. I will be breaking it up like I did on our German trip last year since people seemed to like that.

Tuesday August 22. Departed Umbertide for Amsterdam, Netherlands

We drove ourselves and our cat sitters down to Foligno station to catch the Frecciabianca – fast train to Rome. We left them with the car so they could take in the sights. They are Sue and Bev, one lives in Canada, the other in Michigan but both were born in Canada. They have known one another since childhood. They came recommended by Liz one of our previous sitters. I am sure they will have fun. This week they will probably lay low because it’s hitting 38 degrees Celsius which is 99 Fahrenheit for a couple days. Hot! But next week cooler.

All went well on the trip. Train to Rome, caught the DaVinci express to Fiumicino airport. ITA Flight (formerly AlItalia) was 25 minutes late getting off. Miraculously we landed on time in Amsterdam. It is refreshingly cool in Amsterdam, just 22C or about 74F. We had arranged a driver who took us to L’Ambassade hotel. It is on Herengracht canal. Beautiful area. Nice hotel. We spent a night here in 1984 on our first trip to Europe. It has changed a lot! View from our window.

After refreshing ourselves, we met my sister Cindy and her husband Bill for dinner. This is our annual trip so we get to see each other once a year. So great to see her! Off to dinner at ‘t Zwaantje. Dutch food. It was busy and popular, but the food was not so much.

We walked back to the hotel bar for night caps. Cindy & Bill had arrived from the US that day and did the usual, stay awake all day then crash. Next day you are mostly over the jet lag. They made it almost to 10pm.

Wednesday August 23

Big day! We met up at 9am for our ticketed visit to the Van Gogh Museum. It was about a 25 minute walk. It is hard to walk here. Narrow brick sidewalks slope toward the street. There are millions of bikes traveling at speed. It seems like they couldn’t possibly stop if someone walked in front of them but my sister accidentally tested that, and damned if he didn’t stop in time. The motto here is, don’t be a squirrel. Like make up your mind in what direction you’re going and stay the course. And always look before stepping to a street. They say 63% of Amsterdamers travel by bike. Some pictures.

The Van Gogh museum was very good. Many floors. A permanent and a temporary exhibit. I took a lot of pictures of the art. It was interesting with many short write-ups about the art and about Van Gogh. Such a troubled man. Only 37 when he took his life. The last room was dedicated to suicide prevention which I thought was interesting. Just a few of the paintings I saw. I took a lot more than this! This first one was one of my favorites. Almond blossoms to celebrate new birth. It was on the occasion of the birth of his brothers baby, Vincent. Treasured by the family, especially after his suicide.

All of the next ones were painted just before he died. Most of them in the two months before his death and in that two months he painted 75 paintings. More than one a day.

We went to find lunch which we did in Restaurant Red. There turns out to be better choices but we don’t know the city or where to look and by this time we had been standing for many hours. I was anxious to sit down and for some icy cold water.

This evening we had reservations at an Indonesian restaurant named Tujuh Maret. Funny thing about Amsterdam that I noticed. When you reserve a table they have a beginning and end time. You get the table for 90 minutes. Having lived in Italy where the table is yours for the whole night it was a flashback to the US dining where they rushed the meal and brought the check, getting you out as fast as possible so they could turn the table. In Italy meals are relaxed affairs and you pay and leave when you are ready.

Anyway, we ordered the big Rijsttafel. Indonesia was a colony of Holland and food migrated with the people who came to Amsterdam. Now it is a specialty. I had had one of these many years ago and I told my sister I don’t care what else we do, I just want one Rijsttafel dinner. This one was 18 individual dishes served in the center of the table. With rice on the side. They were served in sets of six — mild, medium and spicy. Some of the spicy ones were pretty spicy but not too much for me. It was yummy. Ranging from tofu, beef, chicken, veggie, salad, sweet, sour, hot. So many different flavors. We all had fun except maybe Bill. He is a trooper and goes along but he isn’t a foodie and is not an adventurous eater. I hand it to him, he tried most of them. But he said the meal was only ok.

Other pictures of pretty Amsterdam.

Next up, Star Legend embarkation!

New trip

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We are preparing for a new trip. We have house/cat sitters arriving on Sunday. We are meeting up with my sister and her husband for another small ship cruise. Again on the Windstar line. This ship holds 300 people. We will fly to Amsterdam and depart from there and sail down the coast to Bordeaux. Then fly home. I will, of course do a trip report. Right now many preparations are being made. Getting the apartment ready for our sitters is the prime importance. And also, of course packing for ourselves. We are almost ready. Still just need to make up a second guest room since our sitters are two women who want separate bedrooms.

Last night I finally tried the outside wood BBQ. I made a garlic, yogurt marinated chicken thigh recipe. It came out well but I needed either more oil on the grill or not skinless thighs. They tended to stick. They tasted good though. I will use this grill more now.

Stay tuned for my upcoming Trip Report.
Buon fine settimana a tutti!

August

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It is agosto, August, time stops here. I read some complaints on Facebook expat groups about the fact you can’t get anything done now because everyone is on vacation. You might be surprised, but really everything does stop. Go to your bank. There are no tellers. All construction stops. Factories close. Everyone is at the beach or in the mountains. My comment to the complainer, who said Italy can’t progress because of this stupid August thing, was to say, Viva la difference. Although it can and is frustrating to live in a culture so unlike the culture in the US. The very nature of the inconveniences make Italy, Italy. I didn’t move here for convenience and US sameness. I moved here precisely for the differences. For 45 years I worked in the “progressive” USA and fought for a work/life balance. Who is to say the crazy work, work ethic of the US is better?

On a lighter note, I walked to and from the Wednesday market and I grabbed a couple shots of this newly created “garden(?)”. I was amused. Snow White and her dwarves, fake grass, fake water lilies! Who says the Italians can’t be tacky? 🤣😂😅

I forgot to mention that we learned a little more about our apartment. Paolo, our cabinet maker, seems to be fascinated with this apartment. He was surprised, as so many are, to find a place like this in this area and in this building. Unexpected I guess.

Anyway, he must have mentioned it to other people and in the process he learned the original owner was a strange one. He had a storefront but did no business, his money sources were not known and he seemed to have no visible means of support. This means one thing to me. And you can probably guess what that is. He ended up bankrupt and this apartment went up for auction. The people we bought from were it’s second owners. I assume they got it for cheap. The original owner is no longer living. It is always interesting to learn about your house.

Again I made pesto. I wish you were here, I would give you some!

Freccia Tricolore

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The title of this post is the name of Italy’s famous flying team. It means the tri-colored arrows — tri-colored for the colors of the Italian flag. It is recognized as one of the best aerobatic air patrols internationally. They fly Aermacchi MB-339 single-engine, two-seat advanced training and light tactical support jets. There are ten jets, nine fly in formation and there is a single outlier. We were thrilled here in Umbria to be paid a visit by this famous team. They headquartered at the Assisi airport for the week, flying practice runs over the countryside and doing two air shows, one in Perugia and the other in Foligno.

I should also mention, in the time since we moved here the Perugia/Assisi airport has really grown. There used to be only 3 or 4 flights a week but now we can fly from there all over Europe. And it is so easy to use. Twenty minutes south of us with easy parking and only 2 gates. It makes air travel fun again!
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Last week Paolo, our cabinetmaker, finally finished the work. His last thing was a built in cabinet with shelves into an odd triangular shaped space in the main hallway. When we moved in it was empty with no molding so I assume something was built in and removed by the seller. There was also an ugly spot on the wall that had been hidden. Our painter, Luca, fixed this when he painted but the space cried out for something to fill it.

Here is the finished cabinet. I think it looks nice. I will find something else to put on the empty shelf. And we will use the cabinet below to store the bags of pellets in the wintertime. Good place to hide them.

Lunch today was a panino. We had gotten a sample of flooring for our new kitchen and had to return it today. On the way home we picked up some nice prosciutto, both cotto (cooked) and crudo (cured). Prosciutto is just the word for ham here. I also bought a delicious ciabatta bread. Did you know that meant slippers? It is for its shape. The bread is chewy and really tasty unlike much Umbrian bread.