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Friday June 4, 1999
"Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies." W. L. Geroge
collecting paper scrap souvenirs
to send a postcard to the U.S.
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bleary to Bayeux It is around eight o'clock and I have sailed through immigration and baggage claim and customs. The plan is that my friends Pam and LG will meet me at a Hilton hotel near the airport. I don't know when they will show up. We have made some vague agreement that, if they don't, I will find my own way to the hotel near Omaha Beach and Bayeux somehow. I don't have a problem with this plan. Either way, an adventure, I figure. And I've traveled light. I find a place where shuttles for the hotels pick up and quickly catch one to the hotel. The few minutes that I wait are very pleasant in the cool, bracing air. Nobody asks if I'm staying at the Hilton. So, I climb aboard. The driver carries my bag in and sets it near the registration desk. I pick it up when he's gone and take it over to a couch area where drinks are served and people can wait and such. Then I start to wonder about the plan. If they show up any time between now and noon (the agreed on cut-off although I think LG said to 'wait as long as you want') then that will be fine. Assuming I don't fall asleep here and get arrested for being a transient. But if they are detained and, at some point, I decide to try to get to Bayeux alone then I've got to stay alert and find a cab or bus to Paris to a train station, get a train, and, at the other end, get to the hotel somehow. I get the attention of the waiter serving this area I'm sitting in and order a large espresso for 29 francs. I drink that. I try to keep from sleeping, I play hangman on my Translator and, when the word is guessed, translate it to French. I try to read but my eyes are heavy. I pick up my pack and roll my suitcase down a hall with some meeting rooms, find a restroom and get rid of some coffee and wash my face. Back in the lobby, I wander outside in the cool air, wait a few minutes and go back in. If they show up, one of them will come in a find me. I sit down on the couches again, not as sleepy now. The hotel is sort of familiar to me. My friend SuRu and I stayed here a night before departing France in 1994 after a trip that was mostly a chateau tour of the Loire. We had returned a rent car to the airport and we had a flight the next morning. We took all the francs I had left and took a cab into the city and had it drop us at the Musée D'Orsay. We stayed there a while and walked from there to Deux Magots and watched people go by. SuRu drank a whiskey and the waiter made an elaborate show with the ice from a small ice bucket and such. LG comes through the doors of the hotel, spies me, pulls a camera to her face and starts snapping pictures. I glance around and see puzzled gazes, people thinking, "Who is that?" Outside on the drive, Pam awaits and snaps a picture of LG leading me outside. We are laughing uproariously before I can even get in the car. They are in a station wagon, but it is pretty full of luggage. There is just room in the back for my suitcase. I toss the backpack in the back seat and relax. Boy, I'm tired. We briefly get stuck in traffic around Paris, but then the miles roll by on the toll roads with brief stops for throwing many francs at the toll boothes and for getting gas and going to the restroom. I buy some La Vache qui Rit and potato crisps shaped like French Fries and a bottle of water. I realize that letting American feed me in coach for nearly twenty-four hours has left me famished. It doesn't seem to take long ot arrive at the Hotel Mercure in Port-en-Bessin near Omaha Beach and Bayeux. It's kind of out of the way and we do a bit of searching in the car. I'm glad I didn't have to get here alone and carless although it would have been a fine adventure. We take a minimum of settle in time (brush teeth, wash face, change shirts) and go to Bayeux's Centre Ville. Near the dock we go to a little sidewalk café for Moules Frites and white wine. There is a passing parade of locals, vets, young people in vintage uniforms, vintage war-era motorcyles, vintage tanks and vehicles and even a few vintage aircraft floating across the sky. We go to the American Cemetery and get some schedules. We see the flags taken down for the day by smart young soldiers who seem slightly uncomfortable in the shadow of their elders' sacrifice. An hour or two of sleep works nicely before meeting for dinner at eight at L'albatros, the nearby restaurant serving the hotel and this golf resort. Our friends Hal and Jill have arrived in the interim, to join in our adventures. We have some great food. A good Burgundy with monk fish in a brown sauce, salad with grapefruit, white asparagus, tomatoes, avocado, shrimp and salmon. We even have a nice cheese course with Pont Leveque and some goat cheese. I'm on a French time zone now. Must sleep!
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