It was a Sunday and after three hours of driving Trevor and Heather arrived in St. Aubin s/mer to discover that the rental agency was closed (The French don't care much about promiscuity, adultery, alcoholism, or chain smoking but they take their Sabbath day very seriously). So they decided to get a hotel room in the nearby city of Caen.
At about this time Holly and her entourage had arrived in Paris only to discover that the minivan wasn’t the last of our silly assumptions. She had assumed that if you gate check your stroller in Los Angeles it would be waiting for you at the gate in Paris. She was informed that this simply was not possible. Due to a recent rise in stroller explosions they could no longer give you your stroller at the gate. Now for most people this would be a big inconvenience but for Holly this was a major issue. Brigham was not yet walking and Jacob, because of his cerebral palsy, could not walk either. My Mother had come along with the intention of helping but the day before the trip had broken her arm. She had a full arm cast on and was in no shape to be carrying kids through an airport. In the strong tradition of French hospitality the flight crew watched the Holly & Dorothy Circus struggle their way up the jet way without offering any help.
Holly quickly realized that this wasn't going to work so she asked if they could have a wheelchair for her handicapped son. The answer was "Non". Apparently you have to instinctively know that the stroller that doubles as a wheelchair for your son with not be at the gate in Paris and you will need to request a wheelchair before you leave Los Angeles. If not then you are out of luck because it is simply impossible to get a wheelchair once you have landed. Finally Holly threatened to move into terminal 23 if a wheelchair did not arrive soon (she hadn't even seen the movie "The Terminal" yet). Air France agreed to send one up - eventually.
After 30 to 60 minutes of waiting for apparently the only wheelchair in Charles de Gaulle airport they were ready to set off for baggage claim! It was quite the scene – Jacob in the wheelchair, a French guardian on the wheelchair pushing him, Holly walking and Dorothy carrying Brigham. Wait a minute! Why is the lady with the arm cast carrying Brigham? Holly realized this would look bad for the Christmas letter and quickly switched places with Dorothy.
After collecting the rest of their luggage they finally found the stroller in the odd shaped luggage area. And indeed it was shaped oddly. Air France had decided to create a sculpture worthy of the Pompidou Center for Modern Art with our brand new stroller. Holly was about to break the news to the guardian of the wheelchair that she was going to have to stay with us during the entire month of May when it was discovered that, with some effort, they could get the stroller open and use it. The guardian was dismissed, a damage claim was filed, and our group of weary travelers headed for the exit.
Now the adventure should end there but it doesn't. Apparently the French don't want just anyone leaving their airport. You have to pass a series of tests in order to accomplish this. There is no passenger pick-up per se. So Holly and Dorothy wandered the airport trying to figure out where Trevor and Heather might be picking them up.
Obviously they had to use elevators to get around to the different floors. But French elevators are different from American elevators. The French enjoy their intimacy and thus elevators have been designed to fit only two people, or 1 person and a stroller. So to go anywhere either Holly or Dorothy would have to take the elevator to a certain floor, decide if that was the floor they wanted to go to, come back down to tell the other person which floor to go to, return to the floor they wanted to goto and then wait for the other person to arrive. Needless to say it took quite awhile to go anywhere. They especially got slowed down when they found an elevator that only went to the toilets. That was all it was used for. Holly didn't discover this until she got to the top but decided to take advantage of the opportunity. Dorothy figured that Holly had been gone long enough that she must want Dorothy to come up. So Dorothy came up as well. So now everyone was in the elevator accessed bathroom and had to repeat the elevator relay race to get back down.
When they finally saw daylight it was 3 hours after their flight had landed. They were sure that Trevor and Heather were going to be furious after having waited so long. At that very moment Trevor and Heather were driving up to the Air France terminal after having stopped for several cat naps on their way back to Paris - sure that Holly and Dorothy would be furious that they were 3 hours late picking them up.
It didn't end there. It took them 1 hour to figure out how to fit all of the car seats, strollers and luggage into the MINIvan and then another 30 minutes to find the van key that had somehow been misplaced in the loading process. And where was I during all of this? I was sleeping soundly in Salt Lake City. I wouldn't arrive in France until Wednesday after attending a 2 day convention in Philadelphia. The good news is that we are still married.
We spent most of the month of May living in a comfortable house a block from the beach in St. Aubin s/mer. This beach was part of Juno beach where the Canadians invaded on D-Day. Trevor and I were taking photographs for our next Virtual Historian project, which will deal with the D-Day invasions. The trip quickly improved after the arrival. Trevor and I would wake each morning at 5 am and drive all over the Normandy coast taking photographs. Holly and Heather would load up the minivan and travel the French countryside. We ate crescents and crepes; we visited museums, battle monuments, monasteries, and cemeteries. I can honestly say that I have never lived in a more beautiful place. It was so humbling to visit the historical locations associated with the D-Day invasions. On our final day in Normandy we visited the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach one last time. This has to be one of the most serene locations in the world. Studying in such depth the sacrifices and courage of the men and women who had participated in the events on those beaches 60 years ago was a truly life altering experience. As we spent some quiet moments walking through the cemetery we felt a deeper sense of appreciation for the soldiers who lay there than we had 3 weeks earlier. From there we went to Paris where we spent 3 days and then onto England for a week. In England we visited additional sites where the Americans and British had prepared for D-Day. We couldn't help but gain a new appreciation for the strength of the British people as we learned what they had endured during World War II. One of the highlights of the trip was visiting the Imperial War Museum in London and listening to British Veterans who had participated in D-Day and the days following the invasion. They were ordinary, humble men who had quite literally saved the world.
