Our journey back home...

On our way back to Brussels, we decided to stop in another town that seemed interesting.  This time it was Pays d'Auge.  It was supposed to have a cool church (like every town here in Europe) to see and some castles.  Well, the castle was closed but we went to tour the Basilica of St Therese.  It was a very pretty church.  A lot of construction going on inside, so we didn't think it was being used.  The mosaic artwork was amazing and it covered the inside of the church.

After the church we found a nice place to eat...my hamburger had a fried egg on it.  It was yummy, sounds gross but wasn't.  I think I need to start taking pics of my food!  After lunch, we headed back home.

A cool bridge that we crossed over...it was even in the travel book

And shortly after we crossed the bridge, Mike got himself a ticket.  We drove 2 cars...Theresa and I in one and Mike and his parents in another with kids in both.  We were headed toward a toll booth (which are very frequent in France and can cost a fortune!) and couldn't decide which lane to be in, sometimes it's hard to tell when you aren't used to them.  We decided on a lane at the last second and had to swerve over to get in it.  Well, turned out to be the wrong one...we were heading towards an exit that we shouldn't be taking.  So good ole Theresa decides to drive over the quite large curb to get back on the highway.  It was pretty funny.  As we were sitting there waiting for Mike to do the same, we saw a cop coming and just figured that they were gonna get us.  But Mike was still at the booth and the cop was getting him.  When Mike swerved like we did it caught the cops attention and he saw Mike on the phone, a big no no here.  So, Mike got pulled over and fined 90 euros that he had to pay on the spot.  I read that they can impound your car if you don't have enough cash with you...kinda crazy, but good thing he had the money.  Theresa and I were guessing the rest of the way home what had happened because we had no cell phone to call them.  Mine was in their car and dead, Mike's euro phone was dead, and he took the US phone from me so he could use it for a conference call (obviously not a great move), and Theresa's phone wouldn't work outside of Belgium.  And to add to that, we were separated until we got back home...5 hours away!!  They ended up having to take the exit and cross the bridge again to get back on track.  We went ahead and took off, and when we got to the next toll booth where we were supposed to have gotten a ticket from the last toll booth, we thought we were in trouble.  The guy asked for the ticket, showed us a picture of what a ticket looked like (haha), and just made up something for us to pay.  I'm sure he was thinking "dumb Americans" as we drove off...we get that a lot!!  Well, it all worked out.  Emerson was in the car with him too, not me, but she slept the whole way. So we were lucky she didn't scream for 5 hours.
It was a great trip, and I think Preslee learned something and one day when she is learning about World War II, she can say that she has been to Normandy.  Kade too, but I think the boys were more interested in the fighting and guns aspect.
We also lucked out on the weather, it was sunny the whole time...not so common here in February.