Hi again! Sorry to send this message so quickly on the heels of the previous one; you all are probably still trying to struggle your way through St. Petersburg. Just remember that you can always delete these if they’re too much. So there we were in Normandy! It was an unexpected gift to us; a real vacation because the students weren’t with us at any time except when we happened to be on the same bus or train. It was very nice to take an extra break, considering that we’ve had exactly one day off (July 17) during the entire voyage so far. Of course we had neither guidebooks nor fresh language skills, but we managed to acquire both fairly quickly. For me, using French again after all these years was like forcing open a rusty door; it was all in there, but I had to get past the other languages and whatever other barriers I had to get to it. Worse, I needed full facility right away, with just a day to prepare! People have very kindly spoken what English they have when I’ve hit a wall in my knowledge, but sometimes they just have no English at all and we just have to leap into the fray and do what we can.

Nearly every person we have spoken to this week has been courteous and welcoming, including in Paris, the city so famous for rudeness. I’m sure that much of the famous rudeness is determined by context and circumstance (and how many frustrated, shouting Americans that particular person may have encountered that day), but in any case we were so delighted to be right where we were at all times, and felt welcome at all times. But I have to say something: the war is everywhere. World War II has been an enduring theme during the entire voyage, and never so much as it has been in France. My previous visits to Europe have not given me the slightest inkling of how that experience shaped the lives and futures of so many millions of people, and how strongly it has had an impact on the places we’ve visited.

On our first day in France we walked the long walk into town from the harbor (100% of which has been rebuilt in concrete – all done by the same architect – since it was bombed to oblivion by the Allies), and wasted some considerable time looking for a place to eat. Rather spontaneously, we jumped on a bus and made our way to Etretat, the closest seaside village. It was just gorgeous! The weather was somewhat overcast, but it wasn’t really raining in spite of the famous Norman tendency toward rain. The bus dropped us off in downtown Etretat, and we made our way to the restaurant Galion (“serves the best that Normandy has to offer”). All three of us had duck in a stunning sauce, and Cary and I each had a glass of red wine. It was peaceful inside, and we loved looking at the hand-hewn beams in the walls and ceiling and admiring the collection of antique glass bottles. There were little carved figures above the windows inside. After lunch we walked out to the ocean – about five minutes away – and watch the waves from the tall seawall for a few minutes before venturing onto the rocky beach. The rocks were about two inches in size and well rounded, so it was a pleasure to sit on them and watch people shrieking and dodging the waves that came rushing up the beach and stopping short of us by about twenty feet. To our right was a tall chalk cliff with a small church at the top; to our left was another tall chalk cliff that had formed a sea arch, with a sea stack just beyond it. We got back up on the seawall and walked along it (past a bunker which I didn’t even notice at first). The path up to the top of the sea arches was paved with beautiful beach stones, and it was a marvel to sit up there at the top and breathe the fresh sea air, and to walk on something that wasn’t concrete or ship’s deck. We loved it. We made our way back down with the birds singing on all sides, and walked through town until we came to a place that served us coffee/citron presse (Morgan had hot chocolate) and profiteroles to share. We caught the last bus back to town and walked from the downtown area back to the ship.

After a little deliberation, we decided to go to Paris after all, without a hotel reservation, in the summer, immediately after the closing day of the Tour de France. No problem! We found a place right away in the 11th arondissment that had a sloping triple room on the 6th floor, with a small view of the tops of other buildings, run by extremely nice people. To Morgan’s utter amazement, the place had two very impressive resident cats (the cats are even mentioned in one of the guidebooks). As soon as we got settled we went out to a lovely restaurant with genuine art nouveau design. What a joy it was to have a Greek salad with lots of fresh raw vegetables after weeks of ship food! We easily found our way around on the Paris metro, and went to the Musée D’Orsay to visit the impressionists and post-impressionists. It was exactly – to me – like walking into a party filled with celebrities. I couldn’t believe it! The Absinthe Drinker! Two self-portraits by Van Gogh! FIVE of Monet’s Cathedral at Rouen series! One of the Starry Night paintings! A couple dozen Gaugins! All my favorites by Monet, Renoir, Degas, Van Gogh, Manet, you name ‘em. The lobby of the museum also had some sculptures by Rodin. In spite of how very crowded it was, I was very moved by what I saw there. It was our only museum experience in France.

We jumped on a bus (again, very easy) and went to Notre Dame, where Morgan saw her first genuine rose windows. Dinner was at a vegetarian restaurant (Cary and Morgan enjoyed theirs; my vegetable soup was entirely without flavor! How hard is it to make a vegetable soup interesting? On our way back to the hotel we decided to stroll along the Seine; it was a warm evening and plenty light enough. Many boats were slipping along the water, and I was thrilled to see, one after another, a series of dance clubs having meetings right at the water’s edge in these little alcoves. We watched a swing dance club go for quite a while (with recorded American swing hits playing); some of the dancers were very lively and skilled. Then we walked on and found a group of people all practicing the tango. And another doing ballroom dancing. The last group we saw were doing folk dances and had live music (fiddles and accordions and singing); it was the most intriguing because all the people looked like they might have come from Eastern Europe or Southern Europe, and the dancers were singing along. What a glorious experience to sit at the edge of the Seine and watch people dancing!

After a somewhat difficult night of sleeping in our tilting 80 degree hotel room – Morgan slept quite well – we had a delightful, balanced breakfast of croissants and café au lait/hot chocolate, and the hotel proprietor was thrilled to be asked about his cats. It was quite the lively conversation! We caught the train to Chartres, where I explained to Morgan that this was some of the finest stained glass in the world, as well as being a pretty special cathedral with a labyrinth, and that I wanted her to see it simply because it was important to us. She saw it! I understood so much more about it during this visit, and loved it all the more. This was after a breathtaking lunch at Le Tripot, where I had mousseline of salmon with fresh cream (many meals in France seem to be made with fresh cream!). It was perfect. Cary had duck that he enjoyed very much. We had coffee, and they brought out little powdery truffles and tartlets that put us all in high spirits to visit the cathedral. Once we got back to Paris we sought out the best sorbet in Paris (Berthillon); I believe Morgan will have something to say about that in the Morgan Report. We also saw the Eiffel Tower from the train, surprising as ever. My only regret was that we did not get to see the George Pompidou Centre, one of my favorite buildings in Paris (it has an exoskeleton! Escalators and the infrastructure are all on the outside). But we’ll be back. We missed our train to LeHavre by just a few minutes, but we were stunned to find a Starbuck’s at the train station and sat there drinking iced coffee and eating our delicious dinner of Camembert and seed bread. Yum!! And we caught the last train to LeHavre, arriving on the ship at midnight.

On Thursday we went by bus to Rouen, the main city of Normandy. It’s where Monet painted his famous cathedral series, and the cathedral IS wonderful. We went inside and someone was singing a beautiful plainchant somewhere – we couldn’t see where the song was coming from, but it was lovely. Rouen was only partly damaged in the war; it still looks, in many ways, like a medieval city with its many half-timbered houses and giant draft horses pulling a cart around the city. Remember how I mentioned the omnipresence of the war? It was in Rouen that we saw a sign that read “Welcome to our liberators” with all the flags of the Allied forces. It was so unexpected, and so touching. Rouen is the place where Joan of Arc was martyred, and we got to learn more of her fascinating story. We had lunch at Le Maupassant – duck in olive sauce for me, lamb for Cary, salmon for Morgan. As Cary pointed out, “it’s the duck in France tour!” Dessert was a breathtaking hot chocolate soufflé where the inside is melted and pours out when your fork breaks into it. Accompanying the soufflé was a thin sweet cracker filled with pear sorbet. Ooh la la. When we got back to the ship we passed out for an hour and a half! It may be a little vacation, but it’s also exhausting.

Friday was intense: we signed up for a “D-Day tour” to the beaches of Normandy. We crossed the beautiful and famous Pont de Normandie – a new bridge that crosses the Seine almost at the mouth of the river. After an hour and a half in gathering dark clouds and rain, the weather cleared just as we arrived at the cliffs of Hoc, which the Allied troops had to scale. I am still amazed at how they made it work. There are very large craters where the bombs landed (cutting the communications cables of the Germans and thereby preventing them from knowing where to fire; not a single Allied ship was bombed from the cliffs). One of the most stunning aspects of it, to me, was the absolute gentleness of the sound of the surf curling lightly over the sand. Later at Omaha beach, they had one of the pontoon bridges that enabled the landing to occur, as well as memorials to the various divisions of the Allies that came ashore there. We then went to the American cemetery. That was the most powerful time of the whole day for us. You could see row after row of crosses and stars of David, nine thousand of them. Many of them had fresh or newly-wilting flowers on the ground in front of them. One cross had a small wreath with the words “Thank you” written on it. Since we were there at noon, the bell tower there began playing various American anthems, and I had to struggle to keep my composure in front of Morgan.

We later had lunch in the cheery seaside town of Arromanches, sitting on the outside deck of the lovely La Marine and looking out at the remains of the artificial concrete harbors that had been clandestinely built in the UK and towed secretly across the Channel. To think that for a while this was the busiest harbor in the world, constructed in just twelve days!! A million men landed there within the first month. On this afternoon, children were playing all over the broad and beautiful beach, and I remembered the words of (Irish hunger striker) Bobby Sands, who said “Our revenge shall be the laughter of our children.” With so much of the concrete harbor still there, no adult could forget what happened. Why shouldn’t children play on the beach? And so it was with profound feelings of gratitude and awe that we had lunch: cream of wild mushroom soup with 1⁄2” of cream on top, chicken stuffed with local cheese, and crème brulée with pistachios. Cary had foie gras and red snapper and hot chocolate soufflé with some kind of extra creamy ice cream. Don’t forget, everything in Normandy is made with fresh cream! It was such a classic-looking seaside town that we kept hearing the repetitive little theme song from the French film “Mr Hulot’s Holiday” going through our heads. We half expected to see someone selling taffy and renting bicycles. Our bus ride back to the ship included a drive through the beautiful medieval town of Honfleur (a favorite painting location for Monet and home to composer Erik Satie), which was not at all damaged in the war. We decided that our visit to France was simply wonderful, a great vacation, and a fine substitute for a visit to London.

This next week will be unusual: instead of sailing for a couple of days, then spending the remainder of the week in port, we’ve gone just one day and two nights and landed in Ireland, knowing that we’ll have to leave again by Wednesday night and head for Spain. Things will start moving fast and furiously! But oh, how frustrating to have exactly one day to teach everything I know about Ireland! I’m sure I was hired because of my knowledge of Ireland (and my willingness to do the trip), and I can’t help but fret that the students’ commitment to the classes on the ship – all the classes – is dissipating. I’ll do my best to pull them back into place, though. I sang a bilingual song in the Global Perspectives class – no Hard to Fathom Boys’ performance this time – and chattered away in the children’s class about Gaelic stuff in Ireland, then chattered at both classes about the basics of Irish history and how that affected the music and language and culture, then sat through the usual pre-port evening meetings frustrated at what was not being said (though I did my best to contribute by insisting on being included in the cultural preport lecture). We also moved the clocks back an hour to go to Ireland, which gave me an extra hour to prepare classes on the one day for which I needed no preparation.