The Battle of Blenheim

Last Saturday we attended a wedding. It was in Bavaria. It was a nice do.
We drove to the reception to a typical Bavarian establishment on a hill overlooking the Danube valley. After parking the car, we proceeded to go to have a glass of bubbly to wish the bride and groom God's blessings.
I noticed a rock - a memorial stone, commemorating the spot as being the place where the French commanders stood at a battle on 13th August, 1713. This was during the War of Spanish Succession.
I did wonder about that.
When I go home and was able to access the internet, I found out that it was the Battle of Blenheim. Actually the place in Blindheim and that was over the valley and was where the British and Dutch had their headquarters.
It was John Churchill of church, the Duke of Marlborough who was the commander of the British. Later he built Blenheim Palace in England and that's where one of his seed was born, Winston Churchill.

Normandy

Just after Pentecost, Elisabeth and I went to France for a few days.
Our first target was Paris. The weather wasn't too good though.
We found our Etap Hotel to the north of Paris and then went out to look at the sites - that we have seen many times in Paris.
The drizzle and the cold turned out to a bit much for us. We got back onto the metro and made our way back to the hotel.
We wanted to spend the morning in Paris and travel on to Normandy on Tuesday afternoon.
We decided to take the car instead of using the Metro.
Off we went to the Eiffel Tower. Although we found a parking spot, it wasn't easy finding out how to pay for it. The meter didn't accept money neither did it accept our credit card, so in the end, after viewing the tower for a short time, we decided to move on to Normandy.

On our way to towards the motorway, we saw signs to Versailles. But that wasn't in our plans. It was good not needing to be anywhere at any special time. We drove into Versailles and went into the palace gardens. It is really lovely there. We had a nice time just walking through the magnificent and very large palace gardens and most important of all - it didn't cost us anything!

Eventually we did move on and arrived in Normandy. We had booked into an Etap Hotel just outside the city of Caen.
Elisabeth needed some fresh air, some sea air. She had been having some trouble with a cough for a few months now and her doctor suggested a change of air would do her good.

We decided that we would go off to the coast. What did we discover? Of course Normandy is D-Day country. On nearly every street corner there was some commemorative plaque.
So we visited a few museums and walked on the beached, where the d-day landings had taken place. It was very interesting for me and Elisabeth beared up to it.