No wifi part three - and- weeeee're back!

        Monday morning, we find that it had rained during the night in Bayeux...it was supposed to rain later in the day. Luckily, as we set out, it's not actually raining - just a light mist. We're extra glad that we made it to Omaha Beach yesterday - it was much nicer to gather dry sand than wet or damp would have been. We decide, since it's raining, and we don't know exactly where the Bayeux Tapestry (also called the Tapestry of 1066 - a 70 meter embroidery of 8 panels joined together that tell the story of William the Conqueror's rise to King of England and Duke of Normandy) is located - although the sign says where we're parked is one of the places to park for it...we decide to drive. We drive to the building, cannot find parking, (not full, just couldn't find the alleged free parking), and realize we've driven around the block. Our paid parking ticket was still good, so we parked where we'd left and walked the short distance to the Tapestry. Handheld audio explanation was part of the entry to this museum (most others, it was an additional fee) - but we had already decided this would be the place to get an audio guide. It was so interesting - it looks like comic book characters embroidered on linen - and is mounted behind glass - it was made in 1066. There was actually a comic book interpretation which I bought, because it had a lot of information in a more fun format than the books with tiny print.

 


      We had driven around a little bit yesterday trying to find the American Military Cemetery, and somehow managed to miss it. We stopped at the Omaha Beach Museum for directions - it was opposite of where we'd tried yesterday (unfortunately, it was too late yesterday when we got to the Military Museum, and we didn't have enough time today to go to that, too), but the employees at this Museum are as British as they are French. Omaha Beach is on the English Channel, and that made asking for and following directions a lot easier for us. We made it to the cemetery;  it was an experience somewhat like boarding the memorial in Pearl Harbor. The rain was falling lightly - more than mist, but not enough to be soaking us for the length of time we walked around...seemed somehow fitting to have a light, yet chilling rain for our visit.

    We headed back to Versailles (that's where we had rented the car, because we wanted to be out of the city from the start with the car), and had most of the rain we experienced during the entire trip. It was steady, and enough that if we weren't in the car, we'd have been wet - very wet. Funny aside -

   

when we got the car (an Opel Zafira - pretty close in size to my Envoy) - I noticed "DSL" on the tag and asked the clerk if it was diesel. He said no, no, and told us which gas to put in - hi-test, of course. We made sure it had a GPS - it was a built-in one, with many language choices, but English instead of American, and it seemed to get pretty good gas mileage. We stopped for gas, and "DIESEL" is written all over the gas cap, and on the rental car company envelope information, yet our Saturday-morning Europcar agent highlighted gas and insisted it wasn't diesel. Some very nice, helpful German men who were traveling in a motorhome confirmed our thoughts that we should put diesel and not the hi-test gas into this vehicle, after looking up information about an additional blue cap near the gas cap - which turned out to be additive to help the fuel. I guess Saturday morning is not the happiest time to work for that guy - he really didn't know what he was giving us...but it was a great car and rode smoothly and was comfortable, so all was good. When we returned the car, it was raining, still, and we had to park it across the street (the rental agency was a storefront), and the clerk called a taxi for us - 5 minutes. It took about 25 minutes for the taxi to arrive, but at least we were out of the rain. A commuter train (RER) ride back to "our" place, and we picked up "take away" galette and croque-monsieur, because we were hungry, and I had agreed to connect via FaceTime with one of the classes at school. We only had about an hour to eat, and, in France, we've found that if you actually sit down in a restaurant to eat, it will be at least an hour and a half. That's turned out to be kind of nice...relaxed...but we had a deadline so we just ate here. (It wasn't very good - not recommended to stop at "take-away" stand on way from train!) Although we had connectivity problems (it was not the wifi here - that's steady and reliable, we've tested it with streaming video), it was such a cool experience for both me and the kids and teachers who were there in Wickliffe. Hard to go to sleep, knowing we only have tomorrow, really...trying to hang on to every minute. This Eiffel Tower picture is one of my many favorites - taken tonight after the rain mist had lifted: