This was another snap decision trip. I seem to need this kind of motivation to make plans of this magnitude.
My friend, Sam, was one of my students in the SCA, and he has since retired from fighting due to health reasons. He retired from the Army and settled in Olympia, Washington, so I don’t see him that often. We usually only see each other at Pennsic, if he attends. He decided to ramble around Europe this summer in his VW camper van and see the sights. You can stay in the EU for up to 90 days, and he laid out a pretty ambitious plan to see almost all of western and northern Europe.
In June, Sam dropped by the house for a visit. He was in town to drop his van off in Baltimore where it will be shipped to Antwerp for his tour.
While talking over his plans, we got to talking about seeing the D-Day beaches in Normandy. As students of military history, that was an item on both of our bucket lists. And while Jess and I were planning on visiting France one of these days, that was not something she was looking forward to seeing. He suggested I fly over for a few days and we could check them out together. Jess was very supportive of this plan. Not only did she get to avoid a day or more of military stuff she didn’t care about, it cemented us going to France sooner rather than “some day.”
And, so, just like that, a plan was born. As the only one with a day job, I had to find a good time to take leave. However, this year, with July 4th falling on a Friday, Trintech was giving us both the 3rd and the 4th off. So, if I were to tack a couple days to that, I’d have plenty of time to get out to France and back.
The cheapest ticket to Paris was with IcelandAir, so on the evening of the 3rd, I would be taking the same 2030 red-eye that we had just flown the month before. That flight gets into Keflavik at 0630, and from there I would catch a connection to Paris, arriving at 1300 on the 4th. Bright eyed and bushy tailed after being up for more than 24 hours already.
Meanwhile, Sam would plot a course to arrive at CDG to pick me up so we could drive out to Normandy (about a 4 hour drive). He had booked us into Le Sainte Mère Logis Hotel in Sainte Mère Église. Which, for those not steeped in the lore of WWII, is a small town about 15 km inland from Utah beach.
I’ll have maps, but fair warning, all distances are in km. You can’t avoid total immersion in Metric from the country that brought you metric. And with the way they do road signs in France, you get really good at judging distances in meters.
I am counting time from the first full day in France. Day 0 is the evening of the 3rd to the 4th, since I didn’t sleep, it’s all considered one day. From there, we had three full days on the ground and then returned to Paris on the 4th day.