Kelly Trips and Tours

It was a sunny, blustery day.  Very cold, very windy. This was our D-day tour.  We had a nice breakfast of croissants and eggs for Bill and croissant and apple for Karen.  As a side note, we discovered that Normandy is also known for apples.  There are apple dishes in all restaurants as well as cider. Now on to our tour.  We met our guide, Bridget and our fellow travelers - 2 couples from the US and two gals from Canada.  We started off at Longues-sur-Mer where the Germans had 4 gun batteries that could hit both Gold beach and Omaha beach on the bluffs.  Bridget gave us a lot of information, history and tactics.  The view from there was beautiful and sad at the same time. We then drove down to Omaha beach.  It was a beautiful flat beach with high hills behind it. The Germans had many bunkers on the hills from which they could attack the arriving troops.  The beach was beautiful and can be enjoyable in warmer weather except when you think of the tremendous loss of life that happ

Well it is time to say au revoir to Paris and move on.  Today it is still cold but the sun was out so it was a nice day.  We had time before we had to go to the train station so we walked to Karen's favorite place - Pauls for crossants for breakfast.  After packing up we had to leave our wonderful hotel and hit the road. We had tickets booked on the train from Paris to Bayeux and when Bill made the train reservations he wasn't paying attention and made reservations in first class.  Too bad!  We enjoyed a 2+ hour ride through the French countryside and arrived in sunny cold Bayeux. Carla booked Relais de la Louise, bed and breakfast here that is a small house that is 200 years old.  The Inn keeper, Will was born and raised here and now hosts 3 rooms for guests. We think the floors are original but thankfully the bathroom is new.  The room is lovely and we have a magnificant unexpected view from our bathroom.  Here is the picture. We walked into town and stopped at a

Yesterday's adventure took us by Metro, which was only 10-min from our hotel to Versailles, outside Paris approx 1-hr. The walk up from the Metro station in Versailles was a little chilly and took about 30-min to reach the Royal Chateau Palace,  which opened in 1632.  As you walk up to the Chateau, it's size is unbelievable.  In fact, the Palace has 2,300 rooms and 67 staircase's, and we certainly saw a lot of them.  The chateau was very crowded as there were lots of tours and of course, it was Sunday. Outside was much better and we very much enjoyed the grounds. Besides admission to the Chateau and gardens,  we also bought tickets in advance for a special tour of the living quarters known as apartments.  Because we had a metro challenge in the morning, we missed our tour time, but they were able to move us to the afternoon.  It was very exciting to see the beautiful and famous hall of mirrors. After spending time in a few thousand rooms, we then went outside fo

First of all, for all those traveling with us via blog, we apologize some pictures did not come through.  We hope in our next blog we finally have the tablet/blog photo insert figured out! In fact, we left the message picture on yesterday's blog then added missing photos based on a better understanding of how we were goofing. Thanks to April, she said when we added the pictures above the black window statement, the pictures appeared - so we'll see tomorrow. So, why the title "Blog - what blog" you ask?  Simple. We departed the hotel this morning at 7:45 am and spent the day at Versailles. We got back around 6:20 pm then headed out for dinner. After dinner we went on a 9:30 - 11:00 pm tour of Paris. With that, no time to do a blog today (Sunday). Instead we plan to work today's blog Monday while traveling to our next destination by train. Au revoir.

After a good night's sleep, off for another walking day tour - and we were blessed with sun today for a good part of the day...yea God! Our first stop was Paul's fresh bakery for a true French breakfast. Nothing like a pain au chocolat, hot chocolat and juice to get the motor started! After a 30-min walk, we reached Saint Chapelle Cathedral where we saw massive stained glass windows. It was well worth the time to see so many large glass murals. After spending time enjoying the Cathedral, we were off to Notre Dame, the medieval church known as the symbol of Paris that started in 1163. The Cathedral is enormous and beautiful inside and out.  It also had beautiful stained glass windows plus some mean looking gargoiles. We should also point out that the walk thru old Paris is wonderful, full of beautiful architecture, small streets and many side walk cafe's. Seeing all the the cafe's and pastries shops made us hungry, so we stopped at another Paul&#

After months of planning, we departed LAX this morning and boarded American Airlines for the long flight to Paris and beyond.  Of course flying Business Class makes it enjoyable with seats that lay flat for sleeping, plenty of leg room and pretty good meals. Our flight boarded on time at 11:05 am and arrives Paris tomorrow morning (Friday) at 9:40 am (France is 9 hrs ahead, so that's 12:40 am in California). Once we find our driver, or he finds us, off to our 4-star hotel where the adventures begin. We'll spend 3-days in Paris, then board a train for Bayeux, France where we'll spend a couple days touring Normandy, then rent a car and head to a Chateau in Mont St Michel. It will be hard to leave the Chateau, but we must drive to Rennes where we'll board a train enroute to Amsterdam where our 12-day Rhine River Cruise begins on May 4th. Chateau de Bouceel The cruise stops each day at a small German town and finally ends up in Basel, Switzerland on May 16th