TUESDAY, 9/6:
Loraine, beaches, chocolate, and cows.
Today was a perfect day.
When we got back into Ste. Mere Eglise
today after a long day of playing outside I saw the English language
bumper stick from which I stole the title of today's blog. In
slightly different words it's something I try to tell everyone when
they ask about our travels, or are looking for advice on what they
should do when traveling. Don't do the things everyone else does,
unless you really want to. Don't take the freeways or the interstate
to get from one place to the other. Instead, meander. Take the
roads less traveled. Go places most people don't go. Stay off of
roads solely designed to get you from one place to the other as
quickly as possible.
Zig when everyone else is zagging.
Oftentimes, you may find the most amazing things.
For instance, what was your view today
as you were eating lunch?
Here was mine--
And here's the story of how it came
about. Our big objective for the day was to finally locate and visit
a place called Fort de Roule, a museum and overlook located high atop
the cliffs above the port city of Cherbourg. When we were here four
years ago we tried to visit, but spent an hour driving around the
city in vain trying to find it. This time, armed with better
directions, we found the fort with its views of the city--
But the museum, for some reason, didn't
open until 12:30. Since this was at 10 and we didn't want to waste
the whole day waiting around, we decided to move on, to see what we
could see, and we started off by visiting Cherbourg's Public
Gardens--
Home, much to Loraine's delight,
to some weird waterfowl, including a wood duck--
From there, we just headed west to the
(literal) end of France, not taking the main roads, but finding
ourselves hugging small coastal roads, going up & down hills, and
stopping every few kilometers to check out views like this--
Or this--
And that's how we ended up at our lunch
site of Port Racine. We were just driving along, saw a gaggle of
hikers from Germany and Belgium admiring the view, and figured if
they could do it, so could we.
And so we did.
If we had taken the “main” road to
our next destination, if we had merely followed that straight line,
we never would've come across the panoramic outlooks, the winding
roads, the hikers from Germany and Belgium, or the amazing place to
have lunch. So the next time you're planning a getaway, keep that in
the back of your mind. After all, you never know what incredible
thing you'll see or do.
We saw and did all of that while we
were driving to the edge of France. And when I say “the edge of
France”, I'm not kidding--
That is the town of Goury, which sits
on the extreme northwestern tip of the Cotentin Peninsula—the
literal edge of France. Once you drive here, you can't drive any
more. In fact, the island in the background is one of the Channel
Islands—part of the U.K. And as we were checking out the
incredible sites Loraine saw something, led me down a path, and
showed me this--
She's the perfect woman. And with the
cows and the beaches and all the other sights along the route she
picked out, it became the perfect day.
Actually, once we found the edge of
France, we picked our way back along the coast, finding even more
amazing things like the town of Dielette with its harbor--
And its Tour de France sign--
I think I ended up taking almost 200
pictures today, more than the rest of the trip combined. And I would
have to guess that at least 170 of them were either coastline or Tour
de France stuff or cows. So consider yourself lucky that I'm not posting any
more than what's above!
Tomorrow we meet up with our friends
the Renauds for a museum visit before then meeting up with our friend
Thierry for a bit before heading back to Bayeux for the rest of our
stay. It kind of blows my mind that we left Marquette one week ago
tomorrow, but it's true. But at least we still have three and a half
days left to take those roads that aren't straight.
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