Starting our Tour de France

The first night in Bayeux, the night before our tour would start, we met with Patrick the local guide.  He brought our bikes, route maps, and went through each day.   He said "Oh, there will be mistakes" with the directions and to let him know so they could be fixed.  No problem, I am the queen of constructive criticism!

Our bikes:

 But something was missing!  There, Bob fixed it.

In the court yard of our hotel on the first day.  We were lucky today that we were returning to the same hotel, so we didn't have to pack up, check out, etc.

This is the Canadian Cemetery, near Reviers.  They were pretty lucky in that a relatively small number of their troops died in Normandy, so it was a small area.  We were lucky because it started to HAIL and they had a few nice covered structures for us to hide in.

 We rolled on to Courseulles sur Mer (sur Mer=on the Sea/English Channel in these cases).  We stopped at the absolute first place we saw and had a great lunch.  My pasta with Carbonara sauce.  I tipped the egg into the dish, and mixed it all together, putting the shell on the table.  Someone please correct me if that was wrong.  I wasn't sure if I should, but I ate the lettuce too.

 Bob's pasta with "fruit de mer", seafood.    The tomato garnishes were fresh and tasty.

 From there we went to the Canadian museum at Juno Beach.  We spent too much time there, it was nice.

 Here is a shot en route.  We both exclaimed in surprise after coming around the bend.    It was beautiful and a highlight of the ride, scenery-wise.

 We tried to get a good picture with this backdrop, but really needed a taller tripod to capture it.

Again, wow.    The weather was all over the place this day.  Sunny one minute, rain and chilly the next.  I never took off my jacket other than inside or for that last shot.

 The town of Arromanches-les-Bains at Gold beach.  This is Mulberry Harbor where they towed out and sunk ships to create an artificial harbor.  Of course I managed to miss these in my shot...

 The other way.  Bob has a great panorama.  The part you can see in the water is part of a bridge built to carry in supplies.   After building this whole thing, a short time after a huge storm came in and ruined their work.

 (So far) the worst road we've had to ride on. I am NOT an off-road kind of girl, but I gutted it out.   Fortunately the tires on our bikes are pretty wide and forgiving.

 A typical road direction sign.  There are no cycle routes here, like in Switzerland, but the roads are numbered and the signs are pretty good.

We made several mistakes and ended up riding about 5-7 kms more than necessary.  The directions have an ongoing problem, which is they use familiar landmarks more than road signs.  Stuff like "Up on the plateau, at the T-Junction, turn left then first right".  We actually figured that one out, but it was mostly luck.  Unfortunately there was SO much to correct/clarify, we couldn't take notes to send feedback.  I plan to tell the tour company that someone needs to go through the whole route and of course we will volunteer to do it again and write instructions!  Ha ha.