The morning after our lovely but somewhat strenuous journey to Amsterdam we tried to relax but had a somewhat difficult morning doing the laundry. Chuck’s sister had only just moved into the hotel apartment and had been told that there was a laundromat not far away on its street. It should have been a breeze, but we made a few mistakes. We forgot our phrasebook and map. We didn’t look up the word for laundromat. We did ask in the lobby, but the clerk did not know of one. She asked someone else and told us to go to the next street. We reached the next street, but from there our search went downhill. We started asking directions and were led farther and farther a field. We did finally learn the word, “Lavarie” and eventually found one a half mile from the apartment. We figured out how to use the machines and the “central pay system”, but when we finished a hard rain was falling. We were tired and a bit soggy when we found our way back to our street and approached the hotel. There, less than two blocks away from our door, sat a fine Lavarie. We noted its location for Laurie. We had done her laundry with ours. She will have an easier time of it than we, next time. In the afternoon the weather improved slightly; the rain stopped but it became cold and breezy. Still, we elected to tour again, this time walking to the Arch of Triumph. We found it grand, but wind gusts drove us and other tourists from the plaza underneath. Laurie had obtained a car for the weekend, and with the weather forecast improving we decided to make a run to the area of the Normandy invasion beaches. We reserved a room at the Hotel de Bayeux on Friday night and were ready to breakfast at dawn. We elected to pick up the car in the suburbs Saturday morning rather than bring it into the City. This was a wise decision, but we had to take a train to get to it. Taking the car we had first to navigate to a highway. We accomplished this and followed the limited access road across the City of Caen before turning north on a rural road to the beach near St. Aubin-sur-Mer. We crossed a pastoral landscape and wound through tiny farm villages that appeared to date back for centuries. Most of the rural houses and barns are of stone masonry and unpainted. They are plain and fancy. The road is narrow and winding. Reaching the shore we found some modern vacation houses and apartments, but here too there are the old towns and the celebrated beaches, Sword, Juneau, Gold, Omaha, and Utah. Of course we knew of these beaches, but we really did not know the land. Chuck expected to find relatively flat terrain, much as along the Florida or New Jersey shores. Instead we found relatively short beaches in front of and between points of high ground. Ground on which very hardened fortifications of scientific German design had been fabricated and largely remain, massive and seemingly only slightly torn by thousands of pounds of high explosives on that date printed everywhere in high relief – June 6, 1944. We followed the highway along the “British Beaches” before turning south a few miles to the town of Bayeux, the “first liberated City” where we lodged. It was relatively quiet in the off-season, but still the shopping district was busy when we arrived. We enjoyed a fine dinner in a restaurant and found the sidewalks empty at nine o’clock. After marveling at a 16th Century townhouse and the Gothic cathedral, we attempted a chat with our French-speaking host, gave up, and slept well. He fed us breakfast and helped us navigate out of his narrow drive. We chatted with an Australian couple at breakfast. They left with us - the driveway was very narrow - and enjoyed hearing the rattle of a woodpecker. It was their first such experience. We drove back to the coast and found a narrow lane to a small beach near Arromanches les Bains. The road passed through a lovely wood where birds sang on this balmy if somewhat soggy morning and then by a small cluster of beach houses with a fine view of the beach below. Beyond them began the sacred ground. A grassy slope leads down to a narrow marsh and then the beach. The land is now a wildlife preserve. The beach sand is yellow, of shell and quartz. At the beach one car was parked and a couple walked across the sand as their dog ran ahead. Now at the beach we looked up the slope to see a few monuments, mostly simply columns with engravings, and the formidable and clearly broken defensive boxes that had made the landings so difficult. We walked on the beach and about the slope, finally climbing to “the American Cemetery.” We had expected the American Memorial to be significant, and we found it to be a beautiful and powerfully moving monument to America’s warriors and especially those who died in the endeavor of achieving victory in Europe and freeing the continent of the Nazi menace. France provided the land for the memorial, and the American Battle Monuments Commission created the cemetery and memorial. The site includes a museum and several monuments as well as gardens, woodlots, and a large neat interspersed lawn with rows upon rows of crosses and posts with stars of David. Each is polished and inscribed with a name and date for soldiers, sailors, and airmen who died in the Battle for Europe. The cemetery is above and not far from the sea. Some views out show tree-lined corridors rising from the waves and seem to represent the opening of this land to the world provided by the fallen troops. Needless to say the memorial is a spectacularly lovely park regardless of its purpose as a monument. The ground must be crowded at times in summer, but in January it was relatively quiet. A small French memorial unit appeared to be engaged in some tribute and small numbers of French and foreign tourists strolled along the walks and among the graves. We heard American spoken here. In this quiet season birds, blackbirds, robins, wagtails, finches, and even a kestrel hopped among the crosses and reflected the current peace. It was afternoon before we dragged ourselves away and started back toward Paris. We were certainly glad to have had such a fitting finale to our tour. We stopped for lunch at the beach town of Port-en-Bessin where we found a brazier open and braved the weather to dine on a covered patio watching the ocean and the gulls. Our return drive to the parking lot was successful after a few wrong turns, and we caught a train into Paris and made supper in the apartment. On Monday we visited with an old friend of Elley’s whom we had not seen since she was in high school. We met her at the Cathedral of Notre Dam and toured it with her. She showed us through her neighborhood and we wandered back to the hotel, our tour of Paris complete. On yesterday, Tuesday morning, we breakfasted with Laurie and caught an early train to the airport. We returned on Lufthansa – note: the European airlines provide better food and beverage than do the American ones – and landed at Philadelphia after circling it for almost an hour. We were bleary-eyed when we arrived home at ten p.m. (four a.m. Paris time) and went to bed. We were home!