More pictures from Normandy D-Day beaches

The D-Day Beaches in Normandy

We stayed in Arromanches-Les-Bain, where the British built temporary Port Winston to launch the invasion, a feat of incredible engineering.

It's a pretty little tourist town now...

Filled with postcards and trinkets

WWII memorabilia is everywhere, including tanks in parking lots.

The museums tell the story of the momentous invasion.

The thousands of crosses and Stars of David, tell the story of sacrifice and bravery.

Normandy delights

My first Normandy dinner: Sole, fresh from the English Channel a few blocks away, local cheese assortment including rich Camembert, and apple sorbet with Calvados made from the nearby orchards.

Below is a true Normandy buckwheat crepe, which we had for lunch.

Naughty Little Squirt

Brussels' "mascot". the Manneken Pis, is a bronze fountain sculpture of a little boy...peeing.

If this isn't funny enough, there's a committee to select what he will wear at various times of the year. You can see above, he was au naturel.

In the City of Brussels museum, some 100 of his various costumes, which have been donated from around the world are displayed.  The current count is over 700 for the little squirt.

This costume was featured...it's been donated by Harley Davidson. Real leather.

Cases and cases of his costumes... My favorite was a white Elvis one.

There's even a life-size chocolate statue of him in the corner of this shop.

The highlight of the museum visit was a continuous film of various people's reactions to seeing him for the first time. A nun commented, "He looks like an angel."  Little girls and grown women giggled, a concerned young boy wanted to stop him before the basin overflowed.

Mostly, people seemed disappointed by his size - everywhere.

Mussels in Brussels

Here are some pictures from our first evening in Brussels, Belgium:

The beautiful Gallerie of St. Hubert, the first indoor shopping mall.

The Grand Square setting up for a beer festival this weekend.

Dinner at Chez Leon, mussels in Brussels.

You know you’ve had an “interesting” flight when...

you get an apologetic email from the airline after you’ve landed. 

It all started at check-in.

After planning this trip for over six months and saving our airline miles for years, I’d checked and rechecked our flight details. . The weather forecast was great in both Chicago and Brussels. Our check-in went smoothly until I glanced at our boarding passes and noticed our seat assignments had changed. I’d just looked at them in the morning on-line.

No one seemed to know why they were different. Yes, we were still on a Boeing 777. Once on airport Wi-Fi, I looked at our current flight seat map and realized there had been equipment change. The fantastic lie-back Business Class seats…gone.  Instead, the old seats from years ago.

The boarding area was chaotic as many people seemed to have no idea how and why their seats had changed. The confusion in the cabin continued and we took off about 40 minutes late because of it.

The flight attendants bore the brunt of the change. The airplane had been provisioned for the original configuration, so they were short on some meals. We heard storms in the Far East were to blame for the change. Our flight attendant told us there were only two planes in the entire fleet still not reconfigured – this was one of them. Our promised 150 channels of entertainment weren’t available, but economy had it worse: the AV wasn’t working at all.

 To their credit, the crew supplied superior and friendly service, apologizing for every inconvenience. The food that was available was very good, and the beverage service fantastic.

We arrived on time and the weather was beautiful, as forecast. As we deplaned, our Belgian flight attendant said, “Maybe I will see you on your flight home.”

I told her that would be nice, but better on a different plane.    

Big Bird's Gonna Fly...

After a great summer in Lake Geneva, Paul & I are ready to travel again...this time to Europe!
We haven't been back to France in the four years since we sold our beautiful barge "Imagine."
This trip, we're cashing in our United Airline miles and traveling to Brussels, then driving throughout France and Belgium.
It's going to be a great bittersweet mixture of familiar and new...
New to us: Brussels, Normandy, Giverney, Bruges, and Ghent.
Familiar: Paris and Burgundy...including our homeport of St. Jean de Losne.
We're seeing old friends from port, Rosie and Jamie, and meeting other friends who were with us the first year of cruising, Jo Ann and Richard.
Our big bird flies from Chicago's O'Hare next Tuesday, the day after Labor Day.
Stay tuned and feel free to comment. We'd love to hear from you!
Michelle and Paul