The Longest Day
THE LONGEST DAY*
October 22 - 23
First, my apologies to Cornelius Ryan and Erwin Rommel, the former of whom used the title in his definitive book on D-Day (also used by the classic movie based on the book) and the latter, from whose quote it was borrowed. Especially since the end of flights on the ill-fated Concorde over 20 years ago, flying over the Atlantic to Europe is a day's/night's work -- a full 8 hour shift. Our nonstop Air France flight left Atlanta at 8:05 EDT on October 22 and landed at Charles de Gaulle (CDG) airport in Paris around 10:15 AM CEST the next day. To give Susan's back a fighting chance we had driven to our daughter's in Birmingham on Oct. 21 and spent the night, meaning that we had a 2 1/2, not 5 hr., drive before an 8 hour flight ... followed by a 2 hr. train ride. As I mentioned in the prologue, we had decided to pay the freight for Susan to fly business class so she could lie down and sleep on the flight over. Their cubby holes look like this ...
Susan and I were both happy with our respective choices, and both of us got a few hours of sleep going over, something the airlines help by turning the lights way down and not pestering you once they've fed and watered you about an hour after takeoff.
Upon arrival at CDG we were helped by being members of Delta's Sky Priority and breezed through Customs, Security (basically an "eye in the sky" that magically scans arriving passengers) and found our driver of a private car that picked us up, loaded our bags, and whisked us across town to Gare St. Lazare (gare means train station in French), an enormous train station with which we would become very familiar. Jamal, our driver, was a prince! (His company, Euroscope, was on the ball -- had sent us a text telling us where to find our driver, that he had arrived, and checking that we had made it safely to that point.) He spoke fluent English and was incredibly helpful -- parked the car, unloaded and helped carry our bags into the train station part of the gare. [I should mention here for what is unlikely be the last time that it helps to pack very lightly when traveling in Europe!] Jamal then showed us exactly what to do, which train to board, where it would be, and when. As I said, a prince!
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| Gare St. Lazare, open since 1837 |
As mentioned above, Gare St. Lazare (hereafter GSL) is huge -- one of the 7 large train stations in Paris -- and is about 20 miles and an hour's drive from CDG. It is a tri-level facility that provides service for regional trains to and from Normandy on the top level, suburban trains on the 2nd, and the Metro (Paris's subway) on the bottom level. There is also a big shopping mall built around it. We had a couple of hours before our train would leave, so we wandered in and found a semi-fast food place to get something light like a sandwich and a salad. It sustained us. The only hassle was having to roll our bags around wherever we went -- and I should say here that we had done reasonably well on packing light, each having 1 checked bag and 1 small carry-on (mine a backpack), all under the Air France weight limit. Still at GSL we were a bit like pack mules until we boarded the train.
A word about trains in France: It's not like flying. Oh, the seats are wider and more comfortable, but there's no checked baggage and no orderly direction to the proper gate (in this case, platform) and car ... and few directions are given in English. (Interesting because most French in the travel, transportation, and hospitality industries, as well as tourist sites, spoke English well since they have legions of tourists from the US, UK, and Canada. SCNF, the regional train company, was the exception.) The challenges began when we tried to find the proper car in which our seats were located. (After boarding the wrong car, we learned that we had to know which #2 signage on a rail car was the #2 that counted). Then with 2 levels of the train, we had to lug our bags up 1 1/2 flights of steps and find a place in a luggage rack in the back of the car to put them in. Not a problem for me, but a bit of a challenge for a granny with a bad back, meaning I had to lug mine up, "swim against the tide" of oncoming passengers, and grab Susan's big bag to haul up. In all of the maneuvering, I managed to twist my hand and injure it slightly, rendering my handshake a "dead fish." Then the real challenge occurred: Susan lost her cell phone, or one of the highly skilled pickpockets that you're constantly warned about in and around Paris managed to steal it from her coat pocket at the train station. Damn.
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| Chateau de Caen (Caen Castle), built around 1060 |
Other than the "Case of the Missing Cellophone" we had an uneventful trip to Caen, a city of just over 100,000 and the capital of the Calvados region of France. It has been around since the 10th Century, and is where we would stay for a night. We were met by a driver who though no Jamal, was personable and helpful. Our hotel was a familiar name -- a Best Western (but this one was the BW Royal - Caen Centre!) in a convenient area, meaning near several walkable restaurants. The manager of the hotel was fluent, friendly, and helpful. But a word about hotel rooms in France: They tend to be small and to have tiny bathrooms which have those semi-useless half partitions for the shower. The BW Royal reminded us in some ways of our tiny 1 bedroom apartment in married student housing at the University of Florida in the 70's ... but in a better neighborhood and with considerably more amenities.
We were famished and exhausted and in bad need of a glass of that highly anticipated French wine. We made a reservation at the Boeuf & Cow (boeuf is beef, ergo a bit redundant), which is about 1/4 mile from the hotel, so an easy and useful walk. It's a friendly restaurant with good food and wine and reasonable prices. That taken care of, and refusing to think how long it had been since we left Birmingham on Oct. 22 (~20 hours if my arithmetic is close), we headed for bed and slept like it was our job for about 9 hours before our pesky alarm awakened us.
As U.S. Col. Charles E. Stanton reportedly said when American troops arrived in France for WWI, "Lafayette, we are here!" We were too.
*Field Marshal Erwin Rommel : Just look at it, gentlemen. How calm... how peaceful it is. A strip of water between England and the continent... between the Allies and us. But beyond that peaceful horizon... a monster waits. A coiled spring of men, ships, and planes... straining to be released against us. But, gentlemen, not a single Allied soldier shall reach the shore. Whenever and wherever this invasion may come, gentlemen... I shall destroy the enemy there, at the water's edge. Believe me, gentlemen, the first 24 hours of the invasion will be decisive. For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day... The longest day.
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