I've finally been working at my current job for long enough that I have more than a month of paid time off. This affords me more time to be able to take extended holidays throughout the year without having to worry about saving time for sick days or to take time off around Thanksgiving or Christmas. After a few years of not taking any major vacations (other than short weekend road trips) due to having a baby at home, my partner and I finally decided that the toddler was old enough to be able to stay with his grandparents for more than just a weekend. So we finally treated ourselves (and our daughter) to a real vacation with another trip to Europe.
I spent a week on vacation in France
with my lovely partner and our daughter.
This time, we decided to go to France!
My partner actually spent almost 3 weeks abroad with our daughter. They went to the U.K. as well. I did not go with them to London, since I have already been there multiple times, and I didn't want both of us to be away from the toddler for too long. I decided to stay home while they were in the U.K.. My partner already had the experience of being a single mother and not being able to do things like travel because of having a baby, so I volunteered to stay behind so that she would have the opportunity to do the things that she wanted to do. Instead, I flew out to Paris to meet them during the 2nd week of their trip.
I'm going to write about the plane flight and my feelings about modern air travel in a separate post, since I want to reflect on the pleasant parts of the trip first.
2 Days in Paris
The first part of the trip (for me) was 2 nights in Paris. Overall, Paris reminded me a lot of San Francisco. The nice parts of the city are beautiful and a joy to walk around. The other parts are filthy, and full of homeless people. And these neighborhoods can literally be separated by a single block. It can be emotional whiplash going from the awe-inspiring sights like Notre Dame to the heartbreak of having to walk past block after block of homeless beggars (including children!) -- many of whom have given up on even trying to panhandle for cash.
Since they live in Europe, hopefully they at least still have access to health care. Right? Surely one of the benefits of having socialized healthcare is that people like this can at least have access to physical and mental health care. I hope that is the case. Regardless, there's not much that I can do about it, especially since I don't live in France and cannot vote in their elections. All I can do is vote in American elections, and to advocate for more public policies that promote the humane and dignified treatment of homeless people and those in poverty. Plenty of my tax dollars go towards bombing black and brown people in other countries, much to my disgust and frustration. If I'm going to be paying those taxes, then I'd much rather that they go towards services like shelters, food banks, healthcare, addiction treatment, and job training for the poor and homeless, many of whom are victims of circumstance and exploitation, and do not deserve to be in the situations they are in.
My partner likes medieval tapestries, and the Lady and the Unicorn is one of her favorites.
My partner and daughter did pretty much all of the usual Paris sight-seeing. They visited the Eiffel Tower and Palace of Versailles, which are both things that I would have liked to do, but which were lower on my priority list. Together, we went to the Musée de Cluny to see the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. This is one of my partner's favorite medieval artworks, and we have a copy of one of the tapestries hanging in our living room. We also spent a full afternoon at the Musée de l'Armée, which is loaded with medieval armor, swords, rifles, canons, uniforms, and weapons from medieval history, all the way through Napoleonic Wars, and both world wars -- not to mention Napoleon's Tomb. They even have Napoleon's horse, stuffed and preserved in a glass box.
I also learned from this museum that, apparently, "gun-swords" were a real thing. You win this round, Final Fantasy VIII...
The army museum includes Napoleon's taxidermied horse.
We also visited the Paris Panthéon, including the tombs of Victor Hugo, Voltaire, and of Marie Curie, who was one of my daughter's favorite historic figures when she was a little girl. And we went to the Musée d'Orsay -- the other art museum in Paris, besides the Louvre. There we saw art of lots of naked women, including the infamous L'Origine du monde ("The Origin of the World").
We capped off our time in Paris with a dinner cruise on the Sienne, with plenty of views of the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame. One of the things that I wanted to do but was unable to do was go into the Notre Dame cathedral. We visited the site in the morning, but the line was crazy long. We decided to go to museums and try coming back later in the day, when the lines would hopefully be shorter. Unfortunately, by the time we got back, it was near closing time, and the line got cut off about 10 people ahead of where we were. So I saw Notre Dame, but could not go inside. I guess that will have to wait till next time...
Another of the highlights of the days in Paris was a beef bourguignon lunch at Le Louis Philippe. It was one of the best beef dishes that I've ever had. My partner and daughter tried it as well, and agreed that it was phenomenal. Their lunches were good too, but we all agreed that the beef bourguignon that I was served was probably the best single dish that any of us had during the entire time in Paris. I want to give them a special shout-out.
It was a busy couple of days, with a lot of walking.
We visited Notre Dame, but unfortunately were not able to go inside.
3 Days driving the French countryside
After a couple days in Paris, we rented a car in order to drive across the French countryside to visit Normandy (and the site of the D-Day landings), and Mont St. Michel. I would have preferred to take a train or other public transit, but tickets were expensive, and my partner really wanted to have the extra freedom that a car would provide us. Driving in France was ... well, it was quite the experience. I'm also going to write about that separately, lest I be here all day...
Our first stop on our tour of the French countryside was the city of Rouen, famous for being the site of Jeanne d'Arc's (Joan of Arc) execution by burning at the stake. The museum dedicated to Jeanne d'Arc' was, unfortunately, closed at the time we were visiting. We stopped for lunch, and checked out the nearby cathedral (because every French city apparently has to have a minimum of at least 3 gothic cathedrals). We weren't there for very long before being asked to leave because of my daughter's "skimpy shorts". Whatever, stupid made-up rules for stupid made-up gods...
Then we got back on the road to the city of Bayuex. There, we checked out the Bayuex Tapestry (in all of its 230-foot glory), which has been another of my partner's favorite medieval artworks since she was a teenager. In fact, we also have a replica of a section of it hanging in our living room, which I had bought as a gift for her years ago.
Every town in France apparently needs at least 3 gothic cathedrals.
Lastly, we checked into a rural chateaux outside of the town, which would be our residence for the next couple nights.
Remembering when America fought against fascism
The next day was our "World War II day". We spent the entire day visiting museums, monuments, and bunkers along the Normandy coast near Omaha Beach. It was nice to remember a time when America fought against fascists, instead of voting them into office. In fact, homes all over Normandy would fly the American, British, and Canadian flags, alongside the French flag, above their front doors.
We saw the remains of several German bunkers along the beaches, including the ones at Point du Hoc. There was even one bunker that still had the original artillery gun still inside of it.
We visited as many German bunker ruins at Omaha Beach as we could.
One of the museums that we visited was a privately-owned and operated museum. It basically began with a single man collecting guns, uniforms, and other artifacts that he would find along the beaches and woods around his home, and displaying them in simple galleries in his home. Other people in the community would bring him things that they would find, including sometimes entire tanks that they would dig up in the sand under the water! He eventually purchased an old building that had been used as a forward operating infirmary, and converted into a full museum. When he died, his sons took over operation of the museum.
The other museum we visited was (as far as I know) a state-run museum, but I'm not entirely sure. There were like 2 other museums at Omaha beach that we didn't even have time to go to.
And all that was just Omaha beach! We didn't even go to Utah, Sword, Juno, or any of the other D-Day beaches. So even after spending a full day driving up and down that beach, we still only saw a fraction of what there is to see about the D-Day landings. One of the museums that I wanted to visit was the Operation Overlord museum, which contains a lot of tanks, artillery, and other heavy hardware. We drove past it twice, going to and from the beach monuments, but did not go inside. I was hoping we would have time to come back, but we didn't. It's too bad, as I would really have liked to have seen it.
Museums contained tons of artifacts from the D-Day invasion.
Ascending Mont St. Michel
Our last planned stop in France was to drive from Omaha beach to the abbey at Mont St. Michel. We parked and walked across the bridge over the marsh to the island. We walked around the ramparts, and up to the tour of the abbey at the top. This was a really neat site. It's part church, part castle, and part village -- all built on a tiny island that, without a bridge, is only accessible by walking across a salt marsh during low tide.
Later in the day, a torrential rainstorm came through and soaked us. Thankfully, the rain didn't start up until an hour or 2 before the island's normal closing time, so it didn't cut our visit short. We had plenty of time to explore the island and the abbey, and to shop through multiple gift shops.
As impressive as the site itself was, the food served on the island was awful. We stopped at a restaurant for lunch. I had the "world famous Mont St. Michel Omelette de la mére Poulard", and was not impressed. We didn't get to go to the actual Poulard restaurant, since it was full. Maybe it would have been better if we had gotten into the original restaurant, instead of having to settle for a different restaurant on the island. In any case, the other food was outright awful. We also had steak and chicken, neither of which had any seasoning at all -- not even salt. It might very well have been the worst food that I've ever eaten at a restaurant. At least the ice cream that we got from an ice cream stand on the way off the island was good.
We climbed Mont St. Michel all the way to the abbey tour at the top.
For dinner, we decided to try to make up for the lackluster lunch by splurging on dinner. We went to a popular restaurant on the mainland that serves the famous salt marsh lamb. This is a specific type of lamb that can only be eaten at this one place in the world. They graze on grass in the salt marsh, which has a very high salt content. The salt in their diet supposedly begins to brine the meat while the lamb is still alive, and gives the cooked meat a distinct flavor that requires little-to-no additional seasoning. This was a very good dinner! The lamb was exceptionally tender and tasty. I would have preferred to have a little additional seasoning, but the meat itself was exceptional.
An un-planned lap around Le Mans
When we were planning our trip back to Paris, we took a different route than the one we took to get the Mont St. Michel. This route would go further south and be a bit more direct, and I noticed that the car's navigation system showed that we would be driving through Le Mans. This made me wonder if any parts of the Le Mans raceway were on public streets open to the public. We looked it up, and sure enough, the long straight-aways all run along public roads that are open to the public when the race isn't in session.
I spent a lot of time grinding the Le Mans 24-hour Sarthe circuit in Gran Turismo 7, so I was curious to see these roads for myself. We changed our course to take us to the Le Mans Racing museum, where we stopped to check out the exhibits of the cars that have participated in the race, and to pick up some souvenirs for some of our friends and families who are bigger fans of auto racing, and of car culture in general, than we are.
Then I looked up the raceway on Google. compared its layout to the maps of the city, and put in a few addresses into the navigation system that would take us around all the publicly-accessible sections of the racetrack that I could find. We took off, and did a quick lap around Le Mans (obeying the local speed limits and traffic laws, of course). Despite not being set up for racing, many parts of the race track are still plainly visible. The 2 chicanes (along with blue and yellow rumble strips) are plainly visible on the side of the road (and blocked off with simple temporary gates), and many of the distance markers and other signage are still present along the sides of the road. It was all stuff that I recognized from the many, many hours that I spent driving a Gr. 3 Dodge Viper around this track in Gran Turismo 7.
We took an un-planned detour to Le Mans to drive on the public parts of the race track.
This little detour to Le Mans was something that we hadn't planned on doing, and was a true spur-of-the-moment activity, since we didn't have any particular plans for the rest of that day. After all, since we found out that Notre Dame was closed to the public for the last day and half of my trip, we were in no hurry to get back to Paris. As such, this informal lap around Le Mans ended up being one of the surprise highlights of the entire trip for me. I'm not going to say that a racetrack was more meaningful to me than seeing genuine Wonders of the World, such as Mont St. Michel and Notre Dame, but for auto racing fans, and players of Gran Turismo, it is kind of a low-key wonder of the world in its own right. It's not every day that I get to do something in real life that I've done before in a video game.
And no, I did not beat any my Gran Turismo lap times...
Back to Paris, then home
On the way back to Paris from Mont St. Michel, we also stopped at the castle in Fougéres, which was probably the coolest medieval castle I've been to. The fortifications are in very good shape, and the tower keeps are also still standing and open to the public. We even found multiple poop closets in the castle! There is even still a working moat, full of water! Yeah! An honest-to-goodness castle moat! And, of course, we both had fun standing on the ramparts and yelling down to each other that if you don't go away, you shall be taunted a second time.
The castle at Fougéres is one of the most impressive and complete castles I've visited.
And that was pretty much it. We drove back into Paris, dropped off the rental car, and looked for dinner for our last night in Paris. My partner and I decided to try out escargot as an appetizer for that final meal. We were both unsure of whether or not we wanted to try it, and we kind of avoided it the entire trip. But we final decided "what the hell?" and went for it. It was surprisingly not bad. I was expecting that it would be served cold, and that it would be slimy. But it was served piping hot in a seasoned broth. It wasn't at all what I had expected. If you like clams or muscles, it's very similar. I was expecting it to be more like oysters, which I don't like as much as clams or muscles. If you don't like clams or muscles, then probably avoid this one.
After this trip, I was itching to replay Napoleon: Total War.
We wandered around a shopping district near the Arc de Triomphe the last morning before I headed to the airport for an 11-hour plane ride, and my partner and daughter hopped on a train back to London. Somebody had to go home and rescue the toddler from the grandparents (or rescue the grandparents from the toddler, depending on how you look at it).
The plane flight gave me a lot of time to kill, and I tried playing games on my laptop. But sadly, my gaming laptop draws too much power and tripped the fuse for the airplane seat outlets. The best I was able to do was turn the graphics settings and screen brightness as low as they would go, play for about an hour on battery, then turn it off and plug it in to charge. In the meantime, I would watch a movie on the in-flight entertainment panel, or read a book (an anthology of sci-fi stories written by black American authors).
After this trip, I was kind of itching to play as the Normans and French in Civ VII. And I kind of wanted to boot up Cities Skylines II, but I'm trying to hold off on playing that again until the Harbors & Piers expansion releases later this year. But more than either of those games, what I really wanted to do was to dive deep into my old Steam catalogue and dust off Napoleon: Total War. I had never really played much of that game, because it was much harder than the other Total War games, and I had never made it through the Egypt campaign. I had gotten bogged down fighting the Bedouins and Mamelukes in Southern Egypt, and quelling revolts, and never even got to move into Syria before the time limit ran out. Fueled with all the museums about French history (and Napoleon specifically), I re-installed that game, and finally beat that damned Egyptian campaign (which for whatever reason seemed much easier than I remember it being).