Third Full Day in Japan.

Today we took a cooking class from an amazing cook, Yuka Mazda.

Yuka has been in the culinary industry in Japan for over thirty years. She knows everything there is to know about preparing Japanese food.

We decided to take a class on sushi preparation. According to Yuka the key ingredient to good sushi is perfect sushi rice. We spent the first hour of our cooking class discussing and preparing perfect sushi rice.

To make perfect sushi rice you need to start with good quality rice. According to Yuki California grows great sushi rice.

The rice needs to be rinsed three times. The cooking time needs to be followed to the minute and the rice needs to be worked in the wooden bowl to keep the rice from getting mushy.

From the left, bottom to top. Salmon nigiri, scallop nigiri, scrambled egg nigiri. Next row, salmon roll, fatty tuna roll, salmon roll. Next row, fatty tuna roll, fatty tuna roll and salmon roll. Fourth and final row, salmon roll, salmon roll and fatty tuna roll.

After we prepared our sushi we had a sushi feast. It was soooo good.

This afternoon Sara went on a shopping excursion, Dana decided to chill, whatever that means and I decided to walk over to the Hama-rikyu Gardens. This was the family garden of the Tokugawa Shogun and functioned as an outer fort to help protect Edo Castle.

In 1868 the Emperor Meiji defeated the feudal shoguns and became the emperor of all Japan. This is called the Meiji Restoration. Emperor Meiji modernized and westernized Japan. As a very rough analogy, think of Emperor Meiji as Japan’s George Washington.

After the Meiji Restoration in 1868 the garden became the detached Palace of the Imperial Family.

The Garden is a beautiful well tended oasis in the middle of a bustling city of seventeen million people.

The Garden’s flowers were primarily past their full bloom but this bush was a beauty.

This is the restaurant where we ate dinner tonight.

This was a very small restaurant. A table that seated ten and a bar that seated six people. A group of three were seated at the bar and Sara, Dana and I sat at the table. We were there for almost four hours. It was an amazing meal. The owner/chef trained in France for ten years and then moved to Japan where he trained for another ten years. As you can see from the menu, the meal was a combination of dishes from France and dishes from Japan.

The owner/chef delivered every course and explained the dish and the sourcing of the ingredients. It was an amazing meal.

That’s it from Tokyo. I hope you are having a great day wherever you are.

Second Full Day in Japan – Guided Tour

From left to right, Rika our tour guide, Sara, Dana and Mark.

Rika spent the morning and half the afternoon showing us around Asakusa. We had a great time. Rika is a fabulous tour guide and a genuinely nice person.

Our first stop was the Senso-ji Temple. A temple is a place dedicated to Buddha and a shrine is dedicated to Shinto. At this temple complex there is a large temple and a small shrine.

This temple complex is over one thousand years old. It has been destroyed by fire, earthquakes and war over ten times, but it has always been rebuilt.

This is a shot of the shopping arcade leading from the main gate of the temple complex to the temple itself.

This pagoda is part of the temple complex.

Rika was not only a great tour guide, she did an excellent job coaxing Sara and Dana into posing for pictures with dear old dad.

As lunch time approached Rika told us we were going to a restaurant where she was going to cook us lunch! We walked for about ten minutes and arrived at the Monia Koboreya. The hostess was an old high school friend of Rika’s. The hostess led us upstairs and seated us at a corner table. The table had a hot griddle in the middle and Rika started ordering food.

First course. Cabbage and cheese and dried octopus.

Rika dumped all the ingredients on the griddle and with two metal spatulas she chopped and stir fried the ingredients into a steaming pile of deliciousness. We had our own little spatulas that we used to remove bite sized portions of the finished product.

Third course. Cabbage and green onions and an egg.

Final course. A crepe with a filling made of sweetened red bean paste.

This meal was so good. When Rika was in high school she worked in a Monia style restaurant so she really knew what she was doing. What a wonderful lunch.

After we finished our tour with Rika we took the subway back to the hotel and took a little siesta.

After our siesta we took the subway to see a baseball game. The Yakult Swallows were hosting the Chunichi Dragons.

The ballpark was swarming with beer vendors. The beer vendors are teenagers with kegs strapped to their backs. If you want a beer they pull out a glass and pour you a cold draft beer. Amazing!

Beer vendor with a keg in an insulated backpack.

The home team fills the right field stands with their rabid fans and a band to help them with their chants.

The visiting team occupies the left field stands with their equally rabid fans and their band. The fans in these sections stand throughout the entire game and chant and sing songs while their team is up to bat. It is a real hoot and I highly recommend attending a baseball game if you ever make it to Japan.

That’s it from Tokyo. I hope you are having a wonderful day wherever you are.

First Full Day in Japan

On this Memorial Day let’s all remember and commemorate those who gave their lives so we can enjoy our lives.

First thing this morning we took the subway to Meiji Garden and Temple. No one says a word on the subway and it is spotlessly clean.

This is the gate at the entrance to the Meiji Garden.

My prayer for health and happiness for all of you is contained in this envelope.

This a rooftop observation deck with a great view of Tokyo.

We had a glass of champagne and enjoyed the view. I am so lucky to have two such amazing daughters.

This is the famous Shibuya crossing. There are five crosswalks at this road junction.

For my mother, Saint Rita. She loves Snoopy and so do I.

We went to dinner at a tempura restaurant. This is the first course. Shrimp Tempura.

Shrimp wrapped in seaweed paper. Roll it up and eat it.

It was a great meal and I am stuffed. That’s it from Tokyo. I hope you are having a wonderful day wherever you are.

Travel Day to Japan

I have been dreading this flight. I can just barely tolerate the eight hour flight from Denver to London. How in the world was I going to keep myself entertained for twelve hours. Thank goodness United was featuring the Band of Brothers miniseries as one of their in flight entertainment selections.

When I went to France last fall I spent a week in Normandy and spent a day doing a Band of Brothers tour. We spent all day going to the sites of the battles fought by Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division in Normandy on and after D-Day. I loved the tour and I highly recommend this miniseries. It sure kept me entertained on the long flight from Denver to Tokyo.

Dana, my youngest daughter, was on the flight with me and she prepared healthy and delicious food for us to eat on the plane. Thanks to Dana I was able to avoid the awful airline food and drink plenty of water. I did not feel too beat up or jet lagged when we landed after the long flight.

Super Mario was at the airport to welcome us to Japan.

I was surprised at how long it took us to go through the immigration process and then go through customs. During both of these processes we had our pictures taken and our fingerprints electronically scanned. This took an hour. In London the immigration process takes five minutes and there is no customs checkpoint.

After Dana and I found my oldest daughter Sara, who flew from Houston to Tokyo, we caught an Uber to our hotel. We are staying at a very nice Marriot hotel in the Ginza District.

Sara found a hole in the wall ramen restaurant that seats 12 at a bar. We had to wait outside for three seats to open at the bar.

This was hands down the best ramen I have ever eaten. I am stuffed and ready to go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.

I hope you are having a wonderful day wherever you are.

Good night from Tokyo.

Sunday, September 22, 2024 – Travel day from London to Denver.

It was a cold, dreary, rainy morning in London. I took a shuttle out to Heathrow and getting through security and passport control was a breeze.

Heathrow is huge and it was quite a schlep to my departure gate.

I was two hours early so I got a bite to eat and did some people watching.

My plane was delayed for about 45 minutes but once we got airborne it was a fairly smooth flight. I landed in Denver at about 2:00 PM and I am in an Uber on my way home.

It was a great trip but, as Dorothy said: “There’s no place like home.” I am glad to be home.

I hope you enjoyed reading the blog as much as I enjoyed putting it together every day.

That’s it from Denver at the end of this adventure. I hope you are having a wonderful day wherever you are and whatever you are doing.

Saturday, September 21, 2024 – Travel Day from Bayeux to London

This morning I took the early train from Bayeux to Paris. My Airbnb host Jasmini insisted on driving me to the train station in Bayeux this morning.

What a nice guy. I am beginning to like staying in Airbnbs.

The train to Paris was right on time. The trains over here are always on time. The train pulled out of the station in Bayeux at 7:50 AM and arrived in Paris at the Gare Saint-Lazare at 10:10.

All the trains to and from Normandy operate out of this train station.

My train to London departs at 1:00 PM. This gives me a little time to wander around Paris on my perambulation to the departure train station a couple of miles away.

I wasn’t going to leave Paris until I have one more heavenly Parisian croissants. The croissants in Bayeux were more like the crescent rolls you buy in the dairy case and pop in the oven for Thanksgiving or wrap around hot dogs and make pigs in a blanket. You would get the guillotine in Paris if you tried to wrap a Parisian croissant around a hot dog.

After I finished my croissant I continued my walk and just about fell over when I saw this poster.

I thought I left Abe back in Denver. He was a pain in the neck on this spring’s Portuguese Camino with his constant complaining about the weather, the food, the accommodations, etc. He must have stowed away in my suitcase and waited until I got to Paris to jump ship. It looks like he has made quite an impression on the Parisians in a short period of time. I think I’ll let him spend the fall in Paris and see how he feels about coming home after the election.

The Eurostar departs from the Gare du Nord. I am not a big fan of this train station or any train station the charges a fee to use their restrooms!

The Eurostar is the high speed express train that runs from Paris to London under the English Channel. The French bristle when you call the body of water separating England and France the English Channel. The French call it La Manche or The Sleeve. Why not call it the French Channel? Who knows.

The Eurostar train departed at 1:12 and arrived in London at 2:15. It is a two hour train ride but there is a one hour time difference between London and Paris.

The Eurostar trains operate out of the London Saint Pancras Train Station. What a beautiful train station.

I had lunch near the train station and had a double scoop of stracciatela gelato for desert. Then I took the Tube out to Heathrow and walked to my hotel. Tomorrow I depart Heathrow at 11:00 AM for my return flight to Denver. I am ready to be back home.

That’s it from London. I hope you are having a great day wherever you are.

Friday, September, 20, 2024 – Screaming Eagles Tour.

This is William. He was the guide for today’s 101st Airborne Screaming Eagles Tour.

As I was walking downtown to start today’s tour I stopped by a boulangerie and bought a chocolate croissant and a bottle of apple juice. I have had croissants from four different boulangeries in Bayeux and they aren’t half as good as the croissants in Paris. I wonder why?

The first stop on our Screaming Eagles tour was Sainte Mere Eglise. This is a little bit of a repeat of yesterday’s tour but William said it was necessary to set the stage for the rest of the day.

Statue of Eisenhower in the square at Sainte Mere Eglise.

The altar in the church at Sainte Mere Eglise

An hour or so before the paratroopers from the 101st division, the Screaming Eagles, dropped on Sainte Mere Eglise one of the houses near the church caught fire and was burning furiously when the paratroopers were dropping from the sky. This illuminated the paratroopers and allowed the Germans to shoot a number of them as they floated down to the ground.

Major Dick Winters was the most famous member of the Screaming Eagles and was the star of the HBO series Band of Brothers. This series is “must watch” TV.

Dick Winters Leadership Memorial outside Sainte Mere Eglise.

Dick Winters landed about a quarter mile north of Sainte Mere Eglise. He gathered together as many paratroopers as he could find and under the cover of darkness walked for two hours to get to a command post near Brecourt Manor. Our tour followed this journey and the skirmishes Winters fought along the way

When Winters got to the command post he was ordered to attack and destroy four big guns that were located near the command post in a field near Brecourt Manor. Winters had 13 men with him and attacked a four gun German battery that was protected by 60 Germans and 4 machine guns. Winters and his squad attacked this position and destroyed all four guns. The tactics Winters employed during this skirmish were so exemplary that they were taught at West Point for years after WW II. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his leadership during this action.

This is the line of trees near Brecourt Manor where the Germans placed their four guns. William took us into this field and spent 30 minutes walking us around explaining the skirmish step by step.

This is the memorial to the Screaming Eagles near Brecourt Manor.

Next we went to this excellent museum near Carentan.

This is a life sized replica of a C-47 that the paratroopers flew in on D-Day. We sat through a simulated briefing and then we were loaded in this plane and the plane simulated what the flight must have been like for the paratroopers.

We went back to Sainte Mere Eglise for lunch. After a quick sandwich I spent half an hour exploring the town.

This is a memorial to all the paratroopers who dropped on D-Day.

This is the first in a series of markers commemorating the American’s journey of liberation from D- Day to the end of the war.

After we finished lunch we made a brief stop at the church/aid station I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post.

This is a memorial for the paratroopers who died when their plane crashed near this church.

Kennith J. Moore was one of the paratrooper medics at this aid station. In his will he requested that his ashes be spread from an airplane. He said he was and always will be a paratrooper and that this would be his last and final jump.

We stopped at this memorial in Carentan. Joseph Beyrle was a Screaming Eagle who jumped on D-Day. After four days of fierce fighting he was captured and sent to a POW camp in Poland. He escaped and hopped a freight train to Russia and fought with the Russians. He returned to the United States after the war ended. He is one of the few soldiers who fought in World War II who earned service awards from France, the United States and Russia.

The end of today’s tour. William was a great tour guide and today’s tour was incredible.

That’s it for today from Bayeux. Tomorrow I take a train from Bayeux to Paris and then another train to London. I stay in London Saturday night and fly home on Sunday.

I hope you are having a great day wherever you are.

Thursday, September 19, 2024, D-Day Tour.

I did today’s D-Day Tour with Overlord Tour. Great Company.

Oliver was our tour guide. He is Dutch and was a middle school English teacher for seven years. He got tired of teaching and now he is a tour guide. He is so knowledgeable and made the tour a memorable experience.

Our first stop was a grouping of four guns overlooking Gold Beach.

If you are on one of the invasion ships approaching the Normandy coast, scanning from your right to your left, you would see the following invasion beaches: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.

This is the first casemate we visited in the four gun battery. The gun in this battery could cover Gold beach in front of it and it could also swivel to the left and cover Omaha Beach and to the right and cover Juno Beach.

This is the second casement. After British soldiers captured it they decided to take a break and brew up a pot of tea. Their stove fell over and ignited the shells in the casemate blowing off the top of the casemate and killing the soldiers.

This is the third casemate. The concrete used to build these casemates was not as strong as it should have been. The slave or conscripted laborers who built these casemates scrimped on the cement and loaded up on the sand when they mixed the concrete.

This is the fourth casemate. In the hours before the first troops landed on Gold Beach this area was shelled by an armada of warships. No significant damage was done to the guns or the casemates. However, the shelling cut the telephone wires from the casemates to the fire control bunker so the guns could not be aimed accurately. This gun battery fired a total of 110 shells and did no damage before the German soldiers abandoned them.

This is a marker in the surf memorializing the D-Day landing.

On the hills overlooking Omaha Beach the Germans had placed 85 machine guns each one capable of shooting 1200 bullets a minute. In addition the Germans installed cannons, mortars and flame throwers. The first three waves of American troops who assaulted this beach suffered over 90% casualties. The water and air temperature was hovering around 50 degrees. The soldiers were carrying packs that weighed 70 pounds dry. They had to wade through chest deep water for 200 yards before they were on the beach. I have no idea how these young men did what they did. I was moved almost to tears being on Omaha Beach while our guide described the horror of the assault.

My Father goes with me when I travel overseas. He was a combat veteran in the Korean War and was awarded two bronze stars for his service in Korea. I spread some of his ashes on Omaha Beach.

Our next stop was the American Cemetery. Nine thousand three hundred and eighty-nine American soldiers who were killed in the Battle of Normandy are buried here.

This is a memorial plaza. As I was walking toward this memorial a bugler started playing taps. Everyone in the Cemetery stopped, turned toward the memorial and stood in silence until the bugler blew his last note.

After the Cemetery we went to Pointe du Hoc.

This is a good summary of what happened at Pointe du Hoc.

The Rangers scaled 100 foot cliffs to get to the top only to find that the Germans had moved the six big guns guns and replaced them with telephone poles to fool the Allies into thinking the guns were still there. The Rangers started out the assualt with 225 men and within 30 minutes they were down to 125 men. After three days of fighting they were down to 80.

After Pointe du Hoc we stopped for lunch.

After lunch we visited Sainte Mere Eglise. This was the scene of a major American paratroop drop and subsequent battle.

The D-Day sites are very well marked and explained.

This is the famous church steeple where a paratrooper was hanging by his parachute for hours watching the battle rage below him.

We spent some time in the Airborne Museum at Sainte Mere Eglise. Twenty three thousand paratroopers jumped on D-Day.

Next it was on to Utah Beach. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong on Omaha Beach. Everything went according to plan on Utah Beach.

Teddy Roosevelt Jr. led his men ashore on Utah Beach. The youngest soldier who landed on D-Day was a seventeen year old private who lied about his age when he enlisted. The oldest was General Teddy Roosevelt Jr. who was 56.

Teddy Roosevelt Jr. was awarded the Medal of Honor for leading his men ashore on Utah Beach and died of a heart attack two weeks later.

Another shot of the Higgins boat memorial.

Nice shoutout to Andrew Jackson Higgins.

Columbus, Nebraska was the driving force behind this memorial.

Our next stop was a small church where two medics set up a field hospital and for two days tended to 93 wounded paratroopers while surrounded by German soldiers.

Our final stop was the German Cemetery. This hill is where they buried the German soldiers they could not identify.

Twenty-one thousand German soldiers who died in the fighting in Normandy are buried here.

That’s it from Bayeux. I hope you are having a great day wherever you are.

Wednesday, September 18, 2024 – Museum of the Battle of Normandy and the Bayeux Cathedral.

First stop this morning was the Museum of the Battle of Normandy. Thursday and Friday I will be touring the Utah and Omaha beach D-Day landing sites, where the American troops came ashore. The Museum of the Battleground of Normandy covers D-Day on all five beaches, Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword and the fighting after D-Day that drove the Germans out of Normandy.

The museum had an excellent display of equipment on the grounds outside the entrance.

This is a German tank destroyer called a Hetzer.

This a German twin mounted 105 millimeter gun that was placed in a concrete casemate on Omaha Beach.

This is a Canadian built assault tank called a Grizzly.

I got into the museum using a ticket my Airbnb host gave me. This morning he stopped by to see how I was doing and brought clean towels. He also invited me to help myself to the beer in the fridge, no charge, and insisted on taking me to the train station Saturday morning. What a nice guy.

This is a map of the entire D-Day operation.

This is a Bofors 40 millimeter antiaircraft gun. It was designed by a Swedish company and manufactured in the United States under a licensing agreement. This gun is so well designed that it is still being manufactured and used today.

This is the German MG 42 machine gun. It is reputed to be the best machine gun used in WW II. It is so well designed that NATO forces still use it as the primary machine gun in their arsenal.

This is the German Flak 88. It is reputed to be the best antiaircraft gun of WW II.

Did you know that Ernest Hemingway was a war correspondent in WW II?

Hemingway participated in the D-Day landings at Omaha Beach. Andy Rooney was also a war correspondent during WW II. He wasn’t just a grumpy old man on 60 Minutes.

This is the gift shop. You can’t get out of a museum or tourist attraction in France without going through the gift shop.

Did you know that there was a K-9 contingent to the airborne troops that dropped on D-Day? This is a tribute to Private Emile Corteil and his dog Glen who parachuted behind German lines on D-Day. They were both killed and buried together with full military honors.

After I finished at the museum I rushed to make my 1:00 o’clock lunch reservation. All the nice restaurants in Bayeux are reservation only and book well in advance for dinner. I did get a reservation for lunch at this place.

I don’t think I can handle a full gastronomic experience without Sara’s assistance so semi-gastronomic will probably be about as much as I can handle by myself.
Elegance and gluttony! What a strange combination. I hope this restaurant is light on the elegance and heavy on the gluttony.

I started out with a glass of Chardonnay and a shot glass of gazpacho. Not even close to gluttony.

Second course was a salad of creamed lentils with smoked salmon topped with a sesame vinaigrette and parmesan crumbles. Delicious but not gluttonous.

Third course was roast filet of cod with smoked bacon and a curry sauce accompanied by puréed vegetables. Very good but I am still waiting to see the gluttony side of this meal.

Fourth course was a chocolate and nut cake with whipped cream and a peanut butter coulis. I had to look that one up. A coulis is a puree. Why not just say puree instead of coulis?

Fifth and last course. This was a test. It is a meringue and the chef made me guess what spice was in the meringue. I guessed butterscotch. The correct answer was cinnamon. I guess I failed the taste test but the chef failed the gluttony test. He said the reference to gluttony on the website was tongue in cheek. He told me that I could do gluttony when I got back to the United States. All in all it was an amazing meal.

After my two hour lunch I went across the street to explore the Cathedral.

This is the front of the Cathedral. The original Cathedral was built in a Romanesque style. Most of the original Cathedral was lost in a fire but the front of the original Cathedral was saved. The Cathedral was rebuilt, keeping the Romanesque front entry but switching to a more ornate Gothic style for construction of the new parts of the rebuilt Cathedral.

This is the Gothic part of the rebuilt Cathedral.

The dome of the rebuilt Cathedral was stone and started collapsing in the 1870’s. The Church removed the stone dome and replaced it with a copper dome.

A tribute to the one million British soldiers who died during WW I.

The stained glass windows are amazing.

They even have a little Botofumiero, or swinging incense burner, like the one they have at the Cathedral in Santiago.

That’s it from Bayeux. I hope you are having a wonderful day wherever you are.

Tuesday, September 17, 2024 – Mont Saint-Michel.

I booked an all day tour of Mount Saint Michel through Normandy Sightseeing Tours.

This is Anne-Sophie the van driver and tour guide for today’s excursion.

The trip started at 8:30 AM in Bayeux. There were seven people in the tour group. Anne-Sophie took backroads through the French countryside on our almost two hour drive to the parking lot at Mont Saint-Michel.

We waited in line for 15 minutes to catch a shuttle bus that takes you from the parking lot to the causeway that goes across the bay to the Mount.

This is the causeway across the bay. In this bay the ocean rises as much as 50 feet between low and high tide.

Mount Saint-Michel is the most visited tourist attraction outside Paris. Over three million people visit every year. It is a UNESCO world heritage site.

Legend has it that in 708 the archangel Michael visited Archbishop Aubert in a dream and instructed the archbishop to build a church on a rocky island in the Bay of Avranches. Archbishop Aubert ignored this instruction.

A little while later Archangel Michael, Michel in French, visited Archbishop Aubert in a second dream and repeated his request. Archbishop Aubert ignored this second request. Archangel Michael was not accustomed to being ignored and decided to make one final request. He appeared to Archbishop Aubert a third time and pressed his index finger against Aubert’s temple so hard that it seared the request into Aubert’s brain and left a festering wound. Pro tip – When an archangel tells you to do something, you do it. Don’t make him ask a second or third time.

Archangel Michael drilling a hole in Archbishop Aubert’s temple.

Aubert finally got with the program and convinced a group of Benedictine monks to start construction on a church and abbey on what Aubert now called Mont Saint-Michel.

A lot of people were walking around the sea floor of the bay that was exposed at low tide. Anne-Sophie said that you need a special guide to walk in the bay because there are pockets of quicksand in the bay. She specifically looked at me and said: “Don’t even think about it!”

Anne-Sophie led the group on an informative three hour guided tour of the abbey and church. The tour was an aerobic workout as there are 350 steps to get up to the top level of the Mount and 350 stairs down.

Before they built the causeway people used this fountain to wash the sand off their feet after they crossed the bay at low tide to get to the Mont.

There were a lot of seagulls hanging around begging for food.

While we were climbing the last flight of stairs to get to the top of the Mont the church bells started ringing, calling people to attend the noon Mass.

This is a picture from the top of the Mont looking up at the spire of the church.

A Mass was in progress as we toured the church.

This is the dining hall. There was breakfast and dinner but no lunch. No talking during meals. A monk would read from the Bible and everyone else ate in silence. That sounds pretty grim.

Notice the scallop shell design in this window. After construction was completed on the church and abbey Mont Saint-Michel became a big time pilgrim destination.

The monks supported themselves by copying books. Gutenberg ran the monks out of the book copying business when he invented the printing press. During World War II thirteen hundred of the abbey’s books were taken from the Mont and stored in the nearby town of Saint Lo in order to protect these priceless treasures. During the fighting in Normandy the town of Saint Lo was almost completely destroyed and only seven of the books were saved.

The steeply sloped ramp in the center of the picture was used to haul construction materials up to the upper floors of the church and abbey.

This is the hand operated capstan that was used to haul the construction materials up that ramp. The monks that operated the capstan got extra food as a reward for their hard work.

After the tour I grabbed a ham and cheese sandwich and, instead of taking the claustrophobically crowded shuttle bus, walked back to the van.

On the drive back to Bayeux I think Anne-Sophie was the only one who didn’t take a nap.

That’s it from Bayeux. I hope you are having a wonderful day wherever you are.