Room with a View in Siena

I am in an idyllic spot in Siena. I am in the pilgrim hotel for St. Catherine of Siena right next to her home when she cut off her hair to avoid marriage and stayed in a small cell. The view you see from my balcony is the unfinished Duomo, started in the time Siena was a rival to Florence. I made the mistake of not asking my hotel person in Florence the best way to get to Siena and came by train instead of the preferred bus - and found a 1 hour delay on a 1.5 hr trip plus had to come up from train station to bus depot right next to my hotel. So many hours lost. C'est la vie! Other picture is Il Campo, with a tower higher than that of the Duomo, showing the rising civil power over religious power.

Short Post from Florence, Italy

It's a bright early Friday morning in Florence. I can see Giotto's Campanile from my very bargain room in a "hotel" that only uses parts of 2 floors in a much larger building. This is my first experience  but in looking around it seems to be very common-only a step beyond renting a few rooms.

Today's sun is quite a contrast to the grey day I spent Sunday in Chartres. Still I believe the church in Chartres is one of my favorites. I have long been drawn to it by its history and the labyrinth on its floor that I have walked in so many sacred spaces. Even though the one at Chartres was covered with chairs, I found it powerful.

The last days in Paris were full of errands and long walks with my friend Sylvie who knows Paris intimately. I took a train Tuesday from Paris to Milan, Italy and then to Cremona where my friends through my brother met me and we enjoyed a lovely supper at their place. I hope to post pictures later as the app for transferring pictures isn't working on the current wi-fi connection.

I've been in Florence since Wed. just reconnecting with the city. As always, I wish I had planned to stay longer but am off this afternoon to Siena. A religious scholar on sabbatical I met in Chartres clued me onto Dan Brown's new book The Inferno whose plot is situated in Florence. So I downloaded it to my kindle and have been reading it as I visit the places in the book. It really brings the history alive.

Goodby to Baons Le Comte, Normandy!

The small village where Simone and France live - Baons Le Comte - has about 350 inhabitants. I was surprised that the little church there is from the 12th century! The house that has "Le Country" on it is now a private house but used to be a country western bar and dance place. France is the one who designed ans set up the great entry to the town - the flowers and train.

Sylvie and I took the late train and got into Paris around 10:30 pm. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday  continued to be days full of incredible food - often cooked on the big fireplace and new towns to see. On Wednesday Pascal and Sylvie took me to nearby Caudebec on the Seine as it nears the sea, with an enormous bridge. Sylvie remember having to take the ferry (or bac) here before the bridge was built. The ferry is the red boat in the pictures just in front of the bridge. On Thursday we visited Le Tréport, a port and vacation place on the way to Calais with huge white cliffs that sported a funicular and a large luxury hotel on top from the early 1900's. it seems the cliffs were not so solid so the hotel is no longer there.

My other big adventure was getting my hair done at a hair salon in Yvetot. I panicked when they presented me with books of cuts but somehow got across that I just wanted it evenly shortened - not a new style. I'm not ready for that type of adventures!

D-Day Beaches and Mont St. Michel

Monday I got my wish to visit some of the beaches in the landings on June 6, 1944. Pascal, my friend Sylvie's brother, offered to drive us there - about 1.5 hours each way. We started in Arromanches, which was the center of the action and where the artificial port was set up between the American troop landings to the west and the British and Canadian landings to the east. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by the expanse of the beaches by knowing the huge number involved in the landings but I was. And I only really saw Omaha beach. I did know I would be impressed by the American cemetery. I had seen so many pictures/documentaries. I hadn't realized it was right over Omaha beach. It makes sense, of course, that that's where they provisionally buried the dead from the D-Day fighting and days after that. Reading the grave markers does make it all come home. I found several who died on June 6 and one who died on August 18, the day after my father was killed in India. Then we went to the large Memorial museum in the nearby city of Caen.

On Tuesday we visited the iconic Mont St. Michel, the monastery built on rock once separated from the mainland by the tides. For years pilgrims risked their lives to get to the mount as the tides come in very fast and the sand sometime becomes quicksand and traps them. My favorite travel guide Rick Steves tried to warn me that the place is now completely overrun by tourists and to avoid being there between 11am and 4pm. But I didn't have a choice about the time as I was not driving. We did get there about 10 after a 3 hour drive and the lines were already starting to really grow. After parking on huge expanses on the mainland the tourists are whisked to 350 yards below the mount on free buses that just come one after the other all day long. I thought the island had always been a monastery but found as I did the audio guide tour that it had been a prison also for many years and had only relatively recently become a Benedictine monastery again. My tour took me to the church just as the noon mass was starting.  I would have liked to have stayed but I knew Pascal and Sylvie wanted to go. We escaped the throngs and ate in a quiet restaurant well away from the mount.

Trying to fit in - country life in Normandy

I'm having trouble getting used to the rhythm of life in the countryside. It seems like we eat all the time and each day it seems to get later. Today we started supper at 9:30 pm and just finished around midnight. First, there's the aperitif - everyone must wait until all are ready to toast, including the 3 and 6 year-olds. Then we have the salad course, the meat course, the cheese, the dessert and coffee. Being Sunday today was even more laid back with breakfast at 10, lunch at 1:30 (lasted till 4), and dinner at 9:30.

Yesterday 5 people joined the household: a couple, one of whom is niece or nephew to Simone & France, 2 young boys and a brother in his 50's. so we all cleaned the house, did lots of shopping and moved Sylvie and me into a smaller room so the couple with kids could have the large room with bathroom. The husband is a farmer and hunter and arrived with baskets of tomatoes, huge cucumbers and zucchinis and deer and other meat - all of which he prepared for us so Simone could take a rest.

During lunch yesterday in midst of all the preparations we saw smoke coming out of the kitchen door (we eat in the gazebo). Simone quickly put out the fire caused by oil from making french fries but they called the fire department to come and check. So we had a lot of excitement before the company arrived. The big fire you see is not the stove fire but the fireplace which we used later to cook the meat for supper when the guests arrived.

Simone and France are wonderful women. I don't know their whole stories but Simone has lived in this house for 35 years and was an educator. France is an excellent photographer and avid painter. She reminds me a bit - size and accent/tone of voice - of Julia Childs. I love these women - so strong and capable, so interested in everything. France and a friend put out the commune newsletter for the small village they live in: Baons-le-Comte. I took a picture of an aerial picture of the village and their house. Their house is the big one with the red roof next to the big barn.

Today we went to the beach at a small town Veules-les-Roses. The boys, especially the 3 year-old, were ecstatic. When I had expressed an interest in seeing the D-Day beaches they said they were too far so I let it go. Then they said we could make a day of it tomorrow.

In Normandy

I'm in Normandy in a wonderful old farmhouse about 30 minutes from Rouen. My friend Sylvie met me at the train station in Paris on my way from southern France and we had to take the Metro to another station to catch trains to the north. Simone, the woman who raised Sylvie lives here with her  sister France. We had a quick tour of Rouen - the lace-like gothic cathedral, the ornate Palace of Justice and the spot where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. Yesterday we went the seaports of Fecamps and Etretat. It was a national holiday - Aug. 15 the Assumption, a long weekend for many and the beaches were packed and traffic was a nightmare - reminded me of coming home from the beaches on Sunday evenings in Lima. Always reminders of WWII. On the cliffs we saw what I think were German machine gun positions but were not marked so I could be wrong. The cathedral escaped complete destruction   in the bombings but did had major damage and had an exhibit on the reconstruction done between 1945 and 1956. And in Albi and Toulouse found many references to August 1944 - such a time of liberation yet much destruction. Also the month my father was killed in India.

We are being fed all sorts of delicious food by Simone and I am trying unsuccessfully to keep up with the fast moving conversation. Sylvie hasn't been to visit in over 15 years and her brother and sister live nearby. They came over with kids and a sister-in-law who lives in Switzerland. Tonight is more family visiting before going to Rouen to see the cathedral lit up with the projections of paintings of the impressionists.