Plan du jour: my parents will go see the Bayeux Tapestry and then take a tour of the D-Day beaches while I head up to Cherbourg for an ocean-side picnic.

Following a lazy, sleep-in start to the day, the family Oakley-Winter makes its way to the train station with north-bound intentions. The son, who allegedly speaks something like the local language, attempts to procure the following:

  • Two (2) adult round-trip tickets from Caen to Bayeux

  • One (1) youth round-trip ticket from Caen to Bayeux

  • One (1) youth round-trip ticket from Caen to Cherbourg

After conversing with the clerk at the ticket counter, the son ends up holding the following things:

  • Three (3) adult one-way tickets from Caen to Bayeux

  • Three (3) adult one-way tickets from Bayeux to Cherbourg

If you compare the list of “things to buy” with the list of “things received”, you will notice that they do not match.

So, the son goes and sorts things back out, this time with a different clerk. All is set a-rights. Trains are put into motion.

After showing the family around Bayeux a bit, getting them oriented as to where to find The Tapestry and its location relative to where their D-Day tour would leave from, I headed back to the train station just in time to watch the 12:48 to Cherbourg pull away from the platform. I honestly don’t know how an hour and a half got away from me like that.

So, to kill the 90 minutes until the next train, I join a dozen or so other American college-agers at the Bar de la Gare for a beer or two. I read my book in German, they read theirs in (what I can only assume to be) English, and some Frenchmen talk about how their World Cup team is going to kill the Swiss that afternoon — all is as it should be. At some point, I walk over to the train station to find out more about a rumoured youth discount card for the French rail system (a handy thing, that [the card, not the French rail system]); the clerk, realising that we don’t share native tongues, draws me a little chart to show that 25% is less than 50%. I thank her.

After sleeping through every single station between Bayeux and Cherbourg, I groggily head off in the direction of what I hope to be the ocean. Just as my picnic basket and I are nearing the beach, the clouds open up at firehose strength. Since I’ve cleverly forgotten my rain jacket back in Caen, I take shelter in a park under some trees. The trees start to leak just as I realise that the park surrounds a bombed-out church, and I spend the next two hours crouched in the doorway of what was once a 12th-century rectory (cheerfully bedecked with big “watch for falling stones” signs). Time goes by, I get hungry and my picnic turns out to be somewhat less oceanside that I had hoped.

The rain lets up around 5:45. The last train leaves Cherbourg for Caen at 7:24. Since I have no idea how far off the ocean still is, I suck it up, accept the defeat and head back to town. To warm up a bit, I pop into the first cafe I see with a TV, grab a cup of coffee, sit down to watch France play Switzerland in Stuttgart and prompty realise that I’m the only person younger than 45 in the whole place. 10 minutes into the game, I further realise that I’m the only one cheering for Switzerland. I decide to keep this to myself. The guy behind me shouts so loudly at the TV that I figure a Swiss fan might not be his favorite person this evening.

Currently: sharing this entire train carriage with a French woman in her mid-40’s. We both just got scared shitless when a train passed by our open windows going the opposite direction.

Of course, now that I’m heading back to Caen the sun has come back out and everything is pretty again. To quote Dick Dastardly, drat, drat and double drat. I just haven’t had much luck with the seashore this trip. Oh well, I can always come back when le Tour swings through Caen for stage five.