Our Tour de France

We are now on our the third day of our Tour De France. We are currently in Dinan in the Brittany region of France. We spent the last few days in Normandy, staying at Chateau Colombieres We were minutes from Omaha Beach, of D-Day.

The rest of our time in Paris was great. We had a nice dinner our last night at Benoit (4eme), where we had the ultimate French cuisine - escargot, duck foie gras, truffles, casoulet, veal saute, and a few desserts "to share". I also had two full nights of nighttime pictures in Paris, getting a few shots of the Eiffel tower, the Louvre, Hotel d'Ville, Notre Dame, St. Chapelle, and the Seine. Sumner and I hiked to the top of Sacre Coeur (including the dome), and had a nice view of Paris. One afternoon we met up with Virginie for lunch and then had a coffee at her Mom's place. Alex joined us for 3 days, and we travelled to some of her favorite shops, including two perfumeries. On evening, we had an HBS dinner with 10 HBSers - it was nice to enjoy dinner with the HBS crowd, sans HBS. The Musee Rodin had a beautiful garden with had most of the "must see" pieces (Gates of Hell, Thinker, Burghers of Calais).

We are now on day four of a seven day roadtrip through three regions of France: Normandy, Brittany, and Loire Valley. We were upgraded to a nice Mercedes E220 with GPS, and have had fun enjoying the beautiful French countryside. On the drive out to Normandy, we stopped at Giverny, where Monet lived for a while and installed a pond with the infamous water lilies and japanese bridge. Our first couple days in Normandy, we explored many of the WWII memorials, cemeteries, and battle sites. It was sobering to contemplate the number of people who died there. We also visited a couple small towns including Bayeux. One meal, I enjoyed an "whelts" (Bulots in french), where was a plate of sea snails, served steamed with mayonnaise - they tasted like corn, but were a little more rubbery than escargot. Yummy!