I know, it's been a long time since I posted, but here's a brief report of our trip to France. We left Salt Lake City on June 14th, 2011, on a direct flight to Paris.
The first person we met was Mihie.
We spent the first day in Paris, visiting the Musee d'Orsay and L'Orangerie, where among other things we visited Monet's water lilly panels.
The rooms with these panels were featured in the movie Midnight in Paris and were spectacular.
In the basement of L'Orangerie, we saw some other interesting stuff, including some Picasso works.
We walked through the Louvre, then went to Notre Dame where we took more photos.
The next day, after not finding Mike's friend at the La Defense train station after searching for 90 minutes, we went to Giverny to see Monet's garden and workshop.
It was cool to see the workshop where he actually painted the water lilly murals.
From there we drove to Normandy and visited one of the sites where the German bunkers are still in pretty good shape.
In the distance, you can still see the structures they used for the harbor. I liked the wheat fields, though.
Next we visited Mont St. Michel.
We drove to Rennes so Mike could get a train back to Paris, but he ended up spending that night with us. Once he finally caught a train, Beverly and I went to Brittany. We took a ferry to Isle d'Ouessant, the furthest west point in France. Fewer than 1,000 people live on the island. There's a 45-kilometer footpath all the way around the island. We hiked about 1/3 of it, but walked back and forth to town a couple of times, too, which was about 3 miles from the house where we stayed.
The nest day we took the ferry back to Le Conquet and drove to Brest, where I was on my mission. We drove by my old apartment building, where we also had the branch meet, but the whole building was gone, replaced with a big pedestrian plaza.
We planned to attend church there but the area where it was supposed to be was also under construction, so we drove down the coast to the Carnac area and saw more ancient stones. The Carnac stones are prehistoric standing stones that, according to legend, were a Roman legion turned to stone by Merlin--if not pagan soldiers pursuing Pope Cornelius, who turned them to stone. There are over 3,000 of them still standing. They date back to somewhere between 3,300 and 4,500 BC.
The next day we drove to Le Mans, another of my mission cities, and met two Elders we had connections with. Beverly knew one's mom (for like 20 years in a book group) and she had the other's brother in one of her classes at BYU.
We visited the Chateau de Chenonceau, built over the river Cher.
Then we drove to the Chateau du Clos Luce, which was the last residence of Leonardo da Vinci. He lived her for the last three years of his life.
Da Vinci's last bedroom and a painting of his death bed.
Then we hurried to Chartres to see the cathedral.
We drove to Paris and stayed in a pretty lame, but inexpensive, hotel near the airport.
We were glad we stayed right by the airport because the next day they started the air show and public transportation workers went on strike. Plus, they had a heavy rain storm, so traffic was horrible (we hear).
On the way home, I took some photos of Greenland. Here's one showing the erosion from ice.
