Sardinia

David’s mama has a ton of vacation days built up, so she decided to take July off of work and spend some time in Italy.  She convinced us (it wasn’t tough!) to meet her for a long weekend in Sardinia.  So Friday morning we flew into Alghero to relax on the beach for a few days and eat lots of delicious Italian food!

Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily.  It was ruled by the Spanish for hundreds of years, and joined Italy in the late 1800’s, so its culture is both Italian and Catalan.  We spent the weekend in Alghero, on the northwest coast.  The city is surrounded by white sandy beaches and crystal clear water.  The old town, with its narrow pedestrian lanes, is enclosed behind sea walls and ancient towers.

After we checked into our hotel on Friday morning, the dei Pini on Bombarde Beach, we headed down to the water.  We were assigned specific beach chairs and umbrellas for the entire weekend and every morning, the lifeguards would prepare them for us.  The hotel also hosted water aerobics classes and even Pilates.  And trust me, I needed those classes after eating as much as I did.

A breakfast buffet was included in our room rate and I definitely ate breakfast like I was on holiday.  My breakfasts consisted of chocolate cake, amaretto cookies, apricot pie, panna cotta (Italian custard), and powdered sugar croissants. 

I did get some fruit in my diet – you can spot a glass of orange juice and bowl of pears in the top of the picture!

We quickly fell into a routine of lying on the beach under the 100 degree sun for about half an hour, getting too hot to stand it, and then running into the water.  After cooling off, swimming around the reef with the fishes, and lounging on the lifeguard boat, we’d go back to the beach chairs and read for another 30 minutes or so before running into the water again to cool off.  The water was so clear and clean, we could see more than 10 feet down to the fish swimming along the bottom.  The colors went from light green (very shallow) to teal (where the reefs were) to blue (deeper parts of the sea).

I spent hours dozing on the that raft and working on my tan (and reliving my glory days as a lifeguard). 

On Friday evening, we had dinner reservations at a nearby restaurant, Sa Mandra.

Sa Mandra is not just a restaurant – it’s a whole experience.  Out near the airport, in the middle of nowhere, Sa Mandra is a farm / recreated village that houses a large restaurant serving local produce and meat.

After arriving, we were escorted to a small yard where the staff was offering wine, prosciutto, olives, and roasted pecorino cheese with the local bread.  The bread was like an Indian poppadum, a large crisp covered in olive oil.

Then we had a family-style dinner of all-we-could-eat antipasti, followed by a first pasta course, a second course of suckling pig and roasted lamb with innards (I avoided the lungs and heart), and finally, a dessert sampler with biscotti, fruit, and sugared marzipan.

Unfortunately water aerobics was cancelled the next morning, but I swam some laps to make myself feel better.  We also hiked up around the cove to get a better view of Alghero along the coast.

That afternoon, we took a cab into the old town to walk along the cobblestoned streets behind the sea wall. 

We had dinner at Ristorante O, run by Master Chef Eoghain O’Neill.  At first, I was a bit weary of eating a traditional Sardinian dinner at an Irishman’s restaurant, but the chef has lived all over the world, trained under some amazing people like Gordon Ramsay, and his food did not disappoint!

We had a bottle of white wine to go with our lobster sampler, melon with prosciutto, and trilogy of sea bass.  They also brought us an amuse bouche of cauliflower gazpacho and spicy duck.  For our mains, I had black risotto with lobster, David had lobster farfalle pasta, and Karen had steamed sea bass.  Then they brought us a palate cleanser of pineapple and eucalyptus before our dessert.  Karen had a trio of traditional seadas, ricotto cheese fritters with honey (very similar to Mexican sopapillas).  I had a trio of crème brulee (pistachio, cardamom, and passion fruit) and David had lemon tart with a shot of limoncello.  Each dish was beautiful and scrumptious.  Don’t be fooled by the name, Ristorante O was a really pretty location overlooking the harbor with food to match the view!

View of Alghero across the bay

Our flight out on Sunday wasn’t until 6:00, so we were able to hang out on the beach all day again.  Even though check-out was earlier that morning, the hotel offered a ‘courtesy room’ where we could shower and get dressed before flying.  That is a really smart idea, and the first time we’ve seen that at a hotel.  In the past, we’ve either boarded the plane covered in sand and saltwater, or avoided the beach altogether.

Sardinia was absolutely stunning and we had such a relaxing weekend hanging out on the beach.  It was nice to have nothing planned, no schedule to follow.  The only things we had to worry about were packing the sunscreen and some good books to read!

Normandy

While we were in Normandy for the weekend, Jordan, David, and I decided to break up our WWII tour by also exploring Bayeux and then taking a trip to Mont St Michel.

Picturesque Bayeux

We had a full schedule on Friday afternoon, but we did manage to visit the Bayeux Tapestry Museum to see the 230-foot long embroidered cloth that tells the story of the Norman invasion of England in 1066.  William the Conqueror came to England to take the throne from his cousin, Harold, and succeeded.  The tapestry was commissioned shortly after to tell the tale, making it nearly 1,000 years old and still almost perfectly intact.

The museum is housed inside an old seminary

Before heading to Utah Beach, we took our time strolling through the cobblestoned streets of Bayeux.

The Bayeux Mill on the River Aure

Bayeux Cathedral

The moment that we saw this building, we were all thinking of the tavern that Gaston hangs out in in ‘Beauty and the Beast.’  We all started singing ‘Little Town’ and couldn’t get that song out of our heads for days. 

And of course, we ate really well in France!  For lunch, I had my favorite French snack – a ham and cheese baguette with butter, while the guys opted for mussels with cream sauce.  Normandy is known for its apple cider (alcoholic – like a refreshing beer), butter, caramels, and cheese so we made sure to eat a lot of each!

That evening, we had dinner at a traditional Norman restaurant in the shadow of the cathedral, L’assiette Normande. 

David and Jordan managed to eat a five-course dinner, while I could only handle four courses.  David started with escargot, while Jordan and I were not as brave and had French onion soup.  Then the guys had a palate cleanser of Calvados, the local apple brandy, mixed with apple sherbet.  I had whipped camembert with apples.  Our mains were an Andouille sausage casserole mixed with potatoes and cheese for me, steak for Jordan, and fish for David.  I have to say, the boys were very jealous when my bubbly, cheesy casserole dish came out to the table.  Then David and Jordan managed to each have a cheese plate before dessert – a sampler platter for David and Nutella coconut crème brûlée for Jordan and me.  It was such a delicious meal; each course was really well prepared and tasty.  It was a great dinner, and the perfect way to end our time in Bayeux.

Cathedral at night

On Saturday afternoon, after our tour with Francois, we headed to Mont St Michel.  And sure enough, we got lost again.  I gave up at that point and gave the maps to David… who didn’t do much better.

Eventually, we found the freeway and before long, we could see the mount across the fields.

Mont St Michel has a long history.  Originally just a small, 8^th century sanctuary, it eventually became a pilgrimage site and was later settled by Benedictine monks.  As the abbey and the village around it were built up, the mount became a stronghold.  The religious community was dissolved and during the French Revolution, the abbey was used as a prison.  Then in the 1960’s, the monks returned.  There are currently only a few dozen people living on the island.  We saw some nuns while we were there, but no monks.

I fell in love with the town immediately.  Mont St Michel was even better than I had imagined.  The town was so representative of a quaint French village that again, we all started singing from ‘Beauty and the Beast.’  There are cobblestone streets, a drawbridge, and ramparts circling the island. 

All of the shops, and even the post office, had these wrought-iron signs hanging outside their windows

For Saturday night, we had booked a room in one of the very few hotels on the mount.  We wanted to be able to see the island during both high and low tide, and without as many people in the evening after the tour buses leave.  The main, narrow cobblestone street was packed during the day, but at night, it was eerily quiet. 

Main street abandoned on Saturday evening

The employees at the mount were on strike when we got there, so they were offering free access and tours of the abbey.  We missed the last English tour, so we guided ourselves through the numerous halls and crypts and rooms.  The place was enormous!

After visiting the abbey, we left the island to take a walk on the beach.  I thought the beaches of Utah and Omaha were large in low-tide, but Mont St Michel takes it to a whole new level.  We felt like we were wandering in the desert, except that instead of sand, the beach was more like wet clay.  I was very doubtful (even though I’d seen numerous photos) that the tide would really come in from so far away and water would completely surround the mount.

Small chapel on the beach - the water levels are visible on the rocks

So that evening, we had a long dinner at the Mere Poulard Café to watch the waters rise.

Annette Poulard opened her inn on Mont St Michel in 1888, after the abbey ceased to be a revolutionary prison and re-opened to the public.  She earned the nickname of Mere Poulard, and became world-famous for her giant omelets and cookies.  Instead of eating in her original inn’s restaurant, we opted to eat at the outside café next to the ramparts so we could see the tide come in.

French boy outside the cafe watching the waters rise

We probably sat down to dinner around 8:00 and didn’t finish until 11:30.  It was a typical long, multi-course, European dinner made even longer by the fact that it took FOREVER for the waters to surround Mont St Michel.  The tide doesn’t really come rushing in as I had imagined, but instead, around 10:00 (when it’s finally starting to get dark) the waters of the various tiny rivers around the mount start to rise and swell, and eventually spread across the beach. 

And like we expected, by the time we got out of dinner, the town was empty.  Sunday was Bastille Day (French Independence Day), so at midnight, fireworks from shore started to go off and we were able to see them from the top of the abbey.

The next morning we had a leisurely breakfast of crepes at the hotel before setting off to Caen to catch our afternoon ferry.  We planned to leave at 11:00 to be in Caen by 1:00 at the latest (our ferry left at 2:00 and passengers with vehicles are required to check-in at the latest 45 minutes beforehand).  Well… by the time we got on the shuttle and back to our car in the parking lot off the island, it was exactly 11:50.  My Google directions stated that it takes 1 hour and 25 minutes to get to Caen, and given our track record of getting lost on the trip, we all started to panic!  A couple of years ago, David and I were 15 minutes late to our ferry to Calais and they didn’t let us on the ship.  We had to purchase another set of round-trip tickets to catch the next boat!  That COULD NOT happen again.

So when it really counted, David and I focused on the maps and Jordan drove fast (but not too fast!) and with a purpose… and we made it to the port’s check-in point at 1:12!  I think Jordan even took a picture of the clock on his dashboard, he was so relieved and yet incredulous that we had actually made it!

The ferry on the way home was a lot of fun.  The ship was outfitted with a variety of restaurants, cabins or reclining chairs, a sundeck, casino (which was just basically a few slot machines), and game/play rooms for the kiddos.  While we slept the whole way to France, the return journey was a day-trip so we hung out on deck, working on our tans (or in Jordan’s case, burning the tops of his legs and knees to a crisp).  There are also a couple of movie theatres on the ferries, so we watched ‘The Internship’ which was basically a terrible, 2-hour Google ad.  But it was a great way to travel and we all agreed that we should do it more often.  With the great, sunny weather and unbelievably warm temperatures, it beat sitting in airports and on planes for hours!

Au revoir, France!

D-Day

After a busy May and June, David and I were planning on spending the next couple of months relaxing at home in London.  Our plans quickly changed when we realized that David only has a few more baseball games left until the playoffs in September.  That opened up a lot of weekends for us!

Inspired by the WWII trip Dad and Uncle Paul took across Europe last spring, I started to look into going to Normandy for a few days.  Jordan had also mentioned to us before that he really wanted to see the D-Day sites across Northern France, and since he was planning on being in the states most of August for work and his brother’s upcoming wedding, we had to quickly plan a trip for July!

On Thursday evening, we drove down to Portsmouth to get on the overnight ferry to Caen.  The journey was a little over 7½ hours, leaving England at 10:45 and arriving in France at 7:30 the next morning. 

Leaving Portsmouth Harbor - We crossed the English Channel the same as the D-Day troops, from Portsmouth to the area around Caen.  The ride over was smooth for us, but due to bad weather and big breakfasts, the boat trip for the troops couldn’t have been more different.  They were violently seasick and lost so much energy before even landing, that the ones that did make it across the beaches had to rest in the safety of the sea-wall before moving on.  Some of the British on Sword beach even stopped to brew cups of tea, while the beach was still under fire!

Because I had to work the next day and the guys wanted to get the most out of the morning, I made sure to book us a sleeping cabin so we could rest up.  When we first walked into our cabin, we only saw the two bottom beds and panicked.  But then David figured out that the top bunks came out of the ceiling.  So clever!

Once we got to shore, we started to drive to Bayeux.  David had been to Normandy before when he was a teenager, so he recommended that we stay in Bayeux.  It’s a medieval village in the middle of the major WWII Normandy sites.  The village was spared by bombers (unlike surrounding towns such as Caen) so it has retained much of its charm.  Plus David loves the Bayeux Tapestry and wanted to ensure that we spent some time at the museum viewing the fabric.

The 3G on our phones did not work in France and we did not have a GPS, so I had printed off Google Map directions for us.  But almost immediately, we were lost.  Much like England, there are hardly any street signs in France and the signs to Bayeux were pointing in a different direction than Google was telling us.  One of the issues was the on/off ramps of the freeways.  When we were finally on our way, we had to stop and get gas and when we tried to get back on the main road, we couldn’t and ended up going half an hour out of the way just to get back to the freeway.

But one of the good things about getting lost is stumbling upon interesting sites we didn’t expect to see – like Pegasus Bridge.

On June 5, the night before D-Day, the British flew in to seize the bridges near one of their assigned beaches, Sword.  This would prevent the Germans from either blowing the bridges up or crossing them to attack the men landing the next morning.  The bridge was captured, but British officer Den Brotheridge was shot through the neck running across, and died.  He is considered the first Allied casualty to be killed on D-Day.

After nearly two hours of driving around Caen, and with an estimated journey time of only 30 minutes, we had arrived at our hotel in Bayeux, the Château de Bellefontaine.

If you look closely, you can see both the French and American flags hanging above the door.  I had never seen so many American flags outside of the states before.  Every town that we stopped in along the coast was flying the stars and stripes – in town squares, memorial sites, and even in people’s front yards.  To this day, the French are still so grateful to the Americans for helping to liberate their country.

One of the great things about working in the Finance department at Dell is that during the summer, our CFO gives his employees “Summer Hours” to encourage them to spend more time with friends and family.  So between May and September, if I finish all of my work for the week, I can log off at 2:00 on Fridays.

So while I worked through the morning and early afternoon, David and Jordan checked out Arromanches.

Arromanches is the site of the artificial harbor built by the Allies to get supplies and men onto the continent during the final stages of the war.  Today, the foundations of the harbor are still visible in the water.

Later that afternoon, once I was finished with work, all three of us headed to Utah Beach. On the way, we stopped at Angoville au Plain to see the church where two US medics from the 101st Airborne (paratrooper) Division spent the night tending to 80 people, including American and German soldiers, civilians, and one child.  Bloodstains from that night are still visible in the pews.

We also stopped at St Mere Eglise, the first town to be liberated, to see the famous church from ‘The Longest Day.’  Though we haven’t seen the movie, we all knew the story of Private John Steele, a paratrooper whose chute caught on the church tower.  Though stuck paratroopers were easy targets for the enemy, John pretended to be dead for hours while the battle for the town raged around him and the church bells partially deafened him.  He was eventually cut down and taken prisoner by the Germans.  

An effigy of Steele hangs from the church bell tower,

and inside, the stained glass window at the back commemorates the paratroopers. 

Utah Beach was one of my favorite parts of our tour of Normandy.

It wasn’t until we visited the beach that we realized just how treacherous the landings were.  The landing craft came in during low tide on the morning of June 6th so that all of the obstacles, like mines, were visible.  But during these periods, the beaches are incredibly wide!  The craft didn’t land right on the beaches either, so the men had to wade through the water and then make it all of the way across that long stretch of sand.

We learned a lot at the museum on the beach.  The museum was commissioned by Michel de Vallavieille, the former mayor of nearby town, Sainte Marie de Mont.  Michel was a French boy badly wounded on June 6th.  He was evacuated to England and stayed there until the following year, giving him time to recover.  He established the museum to honor the veterans of Normandy.

David standing in front of David Dewhurst Jr.’s B26 bomber, ‘Dinah Might.’  David Dewhurst Jr., a fellow Texan, flew 85 successful missions over Europe, including Utah Beach.  There is a video in the museum featuring his friends and colleagues, praising him for keeping calm under pressure (even when his plane was hit and damaged) and altogether being a stand-up guy.  Sadly, he died in a car accident a year after returning home from the war.  His son, David Dewhurst III, was also in the Air Force, a CIA officer, and is the current Lt Governor of Texas.

The next day, we continued our tour with an official guide, Francois.  There were five other Americans on the tour with us, an American woman from Paris and an elderly couple from Florida with their grandkids.

These children, a 12-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl, were so interested in the history of WWII and the various sites.  I couldn’t believe my ears when the little boy told us that his favorite thing in London was the RAF (Royal Air Force) museum.  The little girl spoke up and said that the Harry Potter movie studio tour was her favorite, but she equally surprised us when we asked if they play any sports and she stated that she’s a contortionist.

Who were these kids?!

It gave me hope that future generations will continue to want to learn about this part of our history, and be interested in visiting the old battlegrounds. 

Our first stop was Pointe du Hoc, the cliffs between the American sectors of Utah Beach and Omaha Beach.  An elite squadron of Rangers under Colonel Rudder was tasked with scaling the cliffs to destroy the German guns located there.  There were five guns total that had the long-range ability to reach Utah and Omaha, which would have been disastrous for the troops landing on those beaches.  Fortunately, the Rangers were able to scale the cliffs with their rope ladders and grapples and successfully took the area.  It came at a heavy cost.  By the end of the fighting, 135 out of the original 225 men were dead, wounded, or missing. 

The sheer cliffs around Pointe du Hoc

A partially destroyed bunker

The bombardment of Pointe du Hoc must have been incredible judging by the numbers of craters we saw.  The Germans were attacked from bombers overhead, as well as the naval ships out at sea.

French girls running through the craters.  Francois told us that as a little boy, he used to play war in the craters with his friends.  All of the local boys wanted to be American Rangers so they forced the girls to be German soldiers.  It wasn’t until the mid-80’s, when D-Day soldiers started getting older and dying, that tourists began arriving.  They said that their fathers and grandfathers never talked about the war, so they wanted to learn more about the events that took place and see the battle sites for themselves.   

The two grandparents in our group corroborated Francois’s story, by stating that both of their fathers were in WWII – one in the Pacific as an engineer and another was a paratrooper in Europe.  Both never, ever talked about the war and had a hard time adjusting to civilian life when they returned because there was nothing as exciting and stimulating as being at war.  Nothing back home could compare to it.  Their stories reminded me of the end of 'Hurt Locker,' when Jeremy Renner is standing in the cereal aisle of the supermarket, staring at the dozens of different varieties.  It must be incredibly hard to go from making life or death choices to making mundane decisions like what kind of cereal to purchase.

After Pointe du Hoc, we drove along the coast to Omaha Beach.

Again, this is a huge stretch of land the soldiers needed to cross

Unlike the landing at Utah Beach, Omaha was a complete disaster.  Nothing went according to plan and the casualties there were appalling compared to the 200 or so men that died at Utah.  Thousands lost their lives, yet we only noticed one memorial dedicated to the National Guard.  The locals were paddle-boarding in the water and there were dogs playing fetch along the beach.  It looked like a completely normal beach, unless you spotted the German pillboxes hidden in the hillside brush.

Luckily we had Francois with us to show us photos and explain how the invasion worked.  I am also reading Antony Beevor’s D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, so I had a lot of background information.  

Francois and his family have lived in the Normandy region for ages, so it was also interesting to hear his perspective on the war.  He told us that his grandmother lived in Caen and was there during the bombardment.  Until the day she died, whenever there was a lightning and thunderstorm, she was absolutely terrified.  And although 15,000 civilians died in the area, she and others always told Francois that it was the price they had to pay to get their country back.

From Omaha, we headed to the American cemetery.  During the war, families of fallen soldiers were given the choice to have the bodies of their loved ones brought back to the US or buried in Europe.  40% elected to burial in Europe.  There are over 9,000 men and women in the American cemetery of Normandy, and all of them (except one) from WWII. 

The exception is Quentin Roosevelt.  He was killed during WWI but his body was moved to be next to his brother’s, Teddy Roosevelt Jr.  At 56, Teddy Roosevelt Jr. was the oldest man to land on the beaches during D-Day (he had to petition his commanding officer to let him take part in the first wave of Utah after being denied).  About a month later, he died of a heart attack.

Among the rows and rows of marble crosses, there are a few Star of David markers for the Jewish men that died during the campaign.  However, it will never be known how many of the soldiers buried there were actually Jewish because it was not uncommon for Jews to officially enlist as Christians, in case they were captured by the Germans.

The cemetery also has a chapel, and a wall of the missing containing 1,557 names. Rosettes next to the names mean that the body of the solider has since been found.  Francois did tell us that remains are still being found, as Normandy is mostly vast farmland and empty fields.  Equipment, even mines, have also been discovered.

The cemetery was a really sobering and emotional place.  Set in a peaceful park above Omaha beach, it is a beautiful final resting place overlooking the sea.