Also in May, A trip to Normandy, France

With some folks from the Base, we took a long weekend trip to Normandy to see the little villages and visit the D-Day sites from WWII. It was a wonderful and thoughtful trip. We started out by taking the ferry over from Portsmouth, which was a nice little trip in itself. You could see

white cliffs (not of Dover) on the English coast and I was hoping endlessly for a sighting of harbour porpoises (the subject of my masters thesis). No harbor porpoises, but we loved being on the water anyway.

We arrived at our hotel in Villedieu in the early afternoon and took a little time to explore the town. Villedieu is famous for its copper products, orginally for the bells it made, but now it encompasses a variety of things from pots to statues.

The next day we took a day trip to Mont Saint Michel, which is an ancient monastary built on a large hill. There were lots of steps to get to the top, but the view was beautiful and it smelled like the salt-air of the ocean because its located on mud flats on the edge of the ocean. It definately has a touristy angle to it, but it was a charming trip.