End of My Normandy Weekend

Very early Sunday morning, I headed out from Caen to Rouen but not before making a stop at a really good boulangerie for one of the best pain chocolates that I have had to date. The key to this one was the two thick bars of chocolate baked into the flaky dough. My dream pain chocolate would have two halves of a Toblerone dark chocolate bar crammed into it, just saying . . .

I opted to not take the freeway and instead drove the scenic back roads of Normandy's farmlands. Lots of horses, cows and sheep were enjoying the morning with me even though it was rainy and raw.

Once I arrived in Rouen, I turned in my rental car and decided to check out a few more of this charming city's sights as the sun started to shine. After taking several pictures that I hope to someday download to a new computer and upload to this blog, I stopped for a long and delicious lunch on a quiet square at a restaurant named the Bar des Fleurs. It was a 90 minute affair that included a local "digestive" called Calvados . . . POWERFUL!!!

I was not scheduled to leave by train to Lyon for another five hours and had run out of things to do in Rouen. Thus I walked to the train station to find out if I could take an earlier train for the 90 minute ride to Paris. The answer was yes and the next one was leaving in a mere ten minutes, so I took it.

Once in the French capital, I still had five hours before my second train to Lyon. Since all of the earlier trains were booked, I was forced to roam the rues of the City of Lights. I decided to hop on the Metro and go to one of the most iconic sights in all the world, the Eiffel Tower. Given the now cloud free, sunny weather, it was a perfect day to roam the Seine River's banks and admire the Tower.

The first class seat on the train from Paris was roomy and comfortable and I got back to The Villa just before midnight tired but with many positive memories of the Normandy coast and the historic events that occurred there that changed the course of history for the better.

Monday only had a Cadet practice on the schedule. Since our new order of helmets and shoulder pads arrived late last week, this was the first time that all of our Cadets were in full gear. It was a good practice to be sure.

Reading Is FUNdamental

During the past few weeks, I have had time to finish three more books.

The first one was The Unlucky Lottery by Hakan Nesser. It was another very dark Scandinavian murder mystery, a genre that I have grown to love.

After that I polished off Stephen Clarke's A Year in Merde which is a fictional account of a Brit's culture shock when he moves to Paris. It was both funny and familiar to me.

I mentioned that I purchased a Lyon library card last week. The first book I checked out and read was  a compilation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Serlock Holmes stories called More Mysteries. It included three Holmes stories, Silver Blaze, The Three Garridebs and His Last Bow . . . both classic and good!