Bonding with my backpack.

From 5/28:

Today I woke up and my first pain au chocolate (chocolate croissant) for breakfast. Well...make that my first three. Viva la France!

It was another rainy day. I left my hotel for the train station under a misting of rain. I found a bus stop that I thought would take me where I wanted to go but after waiting for half an hour I lost patience. Wouldn't you know it, 10 minutes after I started walking the bus passed me. But it was a good walk and I always feel hard core when carrying my pack.

My plan was to go to the D-day memorial then catch a train to Mont St. Micheal where I would spend the night. A nice gentelman helped me navigate the tram/bus network to the memorial. I'm finding that if I try to speak French and fail, almost everybody knows a little English and we get along.

The memorial was very powerful. They had two films going, one about the invasion of France and one about what happened during the rest of the war and after. Niether had much speaking since they are playing to a very international crowd, but that made the images more powerful. If there is one lesson to take away, it's that even a war for a good cause has terrible consequences. So what does that say about wars for no/bad causes...

They also had an exhibit titled Worlds of Peace. It was very well done. As you walk you follow a dialogue between "The Philosopher" and "The Skeptic". I wish I had a copy of it because I can't remember everything they talked about. They also had an exhibit that was all in French called "Life without Oil?". It was pretty much Integration in large type. They had stuff about why you should eat local food, where most clothing comes from, and how we know we are already past peak oil.

Then I hopped a train and went to Pontorson. Pontorson is a very smal town 10 km from Mont St. Micheal. By small I mean I walked down every street in less than an hour, while stopping to take pictures. But it is beautiful. Not much night life though, so I think I'll go to bed early.

Good night from France!