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| Omaha Beach |
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| Monument at Utah Beach |
As I mentioned before, we've had mixed experiences with these groups. I would almost never recommend an organized trip through a military affiliated organization. That's not to say that those organizations are bad, but they generally aim to doing things as inexpensively as possible and are sometimes geared towards single soldiers. You'll get to see some cool stuff on those trips, but you may not be satisfied with the service you receive. The German companies, on the other hand, seem to have better connections with hotels and services in the places they visit. They cost more, but are typically more luxurious. They also seem to be less likely to cancel trips due to "lack of participation."
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| Utah Beach |
Our trip to Normandy was, by far, the best organized trip we've experienced. It was planned perfectly and included all the main sites without being completely exhausting and overwhelming. They also allowed you more ability to cater the trip to your interest level. You could chose to eat with the group, or venture out on your own. You could chose to visit all of the museums, or just spend the time exploring on your own.
When the bus first picked us up at 7 AM on Saturday, Greg mildly freaked out because the bus we were on didn't have a bathroom. As it turns out, that was just a shuttle bus to take us to the actual coach, which was a double-decker bus. Seats were assigned on this trip, but we got very lucky. Because we signed up so late, they didn't assign us a seat. Instead, our tour guide said we could sit in the bottom of the bus with "one other family." As it turned out, the other family was a couple our age with an extremely well behaved 15 month old. I think they thought they were "punishing" us by making us sit with the only child on the bus, but it was the complete opposite. Greg and I were able to spread out across 4 seats with our own personal television. The travelers on the top of the bus frequently mentioned how lucky we were to have such a great spot. We were asked a few times if we paid extra for the space to stretch out and rest. Needless to say, we took tons of naps and were energized for all the places we visited.
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| Mont Saint Michel |
I've been to France before, however, I was much younger and hadn't really experienced any of the rest of Europe to compare my experiences. Now that I've travel a bit more, my opinions have changed a little about France and the French people. First of all, the food in France is horribly overpriced. It's not necessarily bad, but it's also not particularly good. The cheese, wine and desserts are wonderful, but everything else is just... okay. A rotisserie chicken isn't going to taste much different in France than in Germany, but will cost you twice the price. We didn't have a single meal in France that particularly blew us away. The only place more expensive for food was Switzerland, but Switzerland is also just generally expensive anyway.
Food on the first night in Caen was particularly difficult to swallow. We went to an "American" restaurant right near our hotel that served 15 euro hamburgers. "Medium well" to the French basically means you want it to still be bleeding on the inside. I would really hate to see what "rare" means. Our meal cost twice what it would have in Germany and was not anywhere near as good as our favorite hamburger places in town.Aside from the food, everything else was awesome. Our first day of the trip was a visit to all of the main D-Day locations. We started at Utah beach, which was were 4th ID landed. For anyone who doesn't know, Greg's last duty station and deployment was with 4th ID, so he was pretty excited to see there history at D-Day. Unfortunately, the area we stopped at Utah Beach did not have a memorial to 4th ID. Our tour guide explained there are several other locations on the beach that may have a memorial. Either way, it was pretty cool to visit and see some of the trenches and foxholes that still remained.
After Utah beach, we headed over to St Mere Eglise where the 101st Airborne Division landed. There is a museum in St Mere Eglise dedicated to the Airborne. It was pretty awesome to see how thankful the resident of the town were for liberation from the Nazis. All around the town, there were symbols of their appreciation. The museum even had a section about the French civilians detailing their loses, but also showing how appreciative they were of the Americans. There were pictures of French children holding big signs saying "Thank you America!" and stories about nuns who collected all of the fallen parachutes and made packages of Normandy sand to send home to the families of the fallen soldiers. Most of the stores and cafes had their own mini "museums" with artifacts from D-Day displayed for visitors. It's an interesting side to the history of WWII.
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| Model of John Steele hanging from the bell tower of the church |
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| Paratroopers in the stained glass |
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| Items carried by the paratroopers |
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| A glider that they jumped out |
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| Grenades found on the beaches |
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| A "cricket" found on the beach to signal to friendly forces |
Our next stop after St Mere Eglise was Pointe du Hoc. Besides seeing movies about WWII, I wasn't particularly knowledgeable about the D-Day landings prior to our trip. If someone had asked me what or where Pointe du Hoc was, I wouldn't be able to answer. Luckily, we had an awesome tour guide and also watched The Longest Day on our trip to Normandy.
Pointe du Hoc is an area of cliffs that the Rangers scaled to capture a heavily fortified Nazi area. 220 Rangers started, but only 90 survived and claimed the area with no backup for 2.5 days. A lot of minor mistakes and miscalculations were made which caused difficulties for the soldiers at Pointe du Hoc and Omaha Beach. The Rangers did not anticipate how wet their ropes for scaling the cliffs would get during the trip, and ended up with only a few functioning ropes. Miscalculations sent some of the soldiers off course to the wrong area of the beach.
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| Nazi gun bunker |
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| Going inside the bunker |
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| Ranger Monument |
The first ruins of Nazi fortifications that we saw were at Pointe du Hoc. It was also very apparent from the group how many bombs and grenades had been dropped in that area. The ground was completely uneven and covered in huge holes. Tunnels were still noticeable with original barbed wire covering them. Inside the fortifications, the ceilings and walls were still in the burnt-out state they had been left.
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| Standing inside the Nazi bunker |
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| The roof is charged from bombings |
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| Holes dug out by bombs |
After Pointe due Hoc, we headed over to the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach. This was the most moving location to me. The sheer amount of graves covering the area was astonishing alone, but the whole idea of this massive cemetery being constructed on French soil just a 5 minute walk from the location where so many people lost their lives was enough to make you cry.
I've mentioned many times before that I love cemeteries, but have probably never taken the time to explain myself. More than any other piece of architecture or engineering, cemeteries reflect the culture of the people who created them. You can learn much more for visiting the cemeteries in countries than there churches or even some museums. In Prague, you could actually visualize the centuries of oppression in the Jewish ghetto and the people's desperate attempt to respect their dead in the best way possible. In Paris, the towering moselleums remind you of the glamour of the city with a cemetery so full of famous names. In Worms, you find yourself wondering how a city so rich in Christian and Jewish history managed to protect their cemetery from years of Nazi destruction. At Omaha Beach, you realize how beautiful it is that we live in a world where we are free to walk these grounds and pay respect to our dead in a country for which they only visited for a short time and now will remain eternally. It is very obvious how thankful the French people were for the support from the other Allied nations.
On our way to Normandy, our tour guide also pointed out several German WWII cemeteries along the highway. How interested is it that the French government respects and maintains these cemeteries despite the Nazi occupation? They could have destroyed them sent the bodies back to Germany. Instead, they upkeep them and respect them just the same as the Americans, only less glamorously. It's hard not to imagine what would happen if we allowed our dead to remain in any of the countries for which we've engaged in war in the past few decades.
There is also a feature at the cemetery (and on the internet) which allows you to look up where your relatives are buried. Greg and I are not aware of any relatives who died in France, so we didn't bother to look them up. Instead, we walked down to the beach.
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| Omaha Beach from the cemetery |
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| Ship ruins |
The tide was out when we visited and allowed us to see the remains of a transport ship sunken into the sand. There are supposedly areas with much larger and more intact ruins, but we didn't walk too far down the beach. It was actually a very beautiful beach.
We had one last stop before dinner that evening, which was a short distance from the cemetery. There is a location right by Omaha beach were the Nazis had several batteries and fortifications. These batteries are mostly still intact and suffered very little damage. We were able to see the actual guns, complete with shrapnel damage, and wonder through the same bunkers that once housed high level Nazi commanders. It's really impressive how well the French preserved these locations after the war to allow future generations to visit and learn this history. It's a bit spooky, but it's also pretty cool to learn about these things right were the history actually occurred. You could also see from this area down to the remains of the Allied Forces artificial port. Our tour guide told us that each year he visits, more and more of the port has been washed away to sea. |
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The next morning, we completed our D-Day visits with a quick stop at Pegasus Bridge before heading over to Mont St Michel. The original Pegasus Bridge has since been replaced by a replica, but is still on display in a small museum near the canal. Our tour guide told us that a nearby cafe has since turned into a local hangout for British WWII vets. He mentioned multiple times on his past trips that the vets would invite the group inside to tell them stories of the liberation of Normandy. The cafe was not open when we visited, as the owner had already gone to southern France for the winter. We did, however, get to watch the bridge raise as a Coast Guard boat passed through, which was entertaining for a few minutes.
I was pretty excited to get to visit Mont-Saint-Michel. I had seen beautiful pictures of it on Pinterest before moving to Germany. Mont St Michel is a monastery on top of a large island in a river delta that separates the cost of Normandy from Bretagne. There is also a small town at the bottom of the Mont. It use to be a religious pilgrimage to walk across the river delta at low tide. This is now highly discouraged without a guide because there is a lot of quick sand and must be timed correctly to make it back and forth before the tide starts to rise. They're removing parts of the dam now to restore the area to it's natural habitat. You have to park a bus ride away from Mont St Michel in order to get to the island.
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| View from the top of the monastery |
From a distance, Mont St Michel is beautiful. It's easy to see why it is the second most visited location in France next to the Eiffel Tower. Once you're in the town, it's pretty similar to most European towns. The monastery is beautiful, but very similar to many of the other churches. Monks still live at the monastery, but we did no see any on our visit. The views from the very top were gorgeous.
After we finished our tour of the monastery, we walked around the shops and stopped in a bakery for lunch. It was a pretty relaxed visit. There is honestly not much to do in Mont St Michel other than to see the monastery or shop. It was awesome to say that we've been to such a picturesque location, but it's not worth visiting again.
On our way back to Caen, we stopped in Bayeux to see a tapestry about William the Conqueror. I can't say much about the tapestry. It was interesting to understand how it was used to tell the story of William I, but it's not something either of us were particularly interested in. Before we left Bayeux, we stopped at the cathedral. They had a lot going on for Armistice Day. It was an impressively decorated Cathedral.
Our last stop on the way home the following day was in Paris. My last trip to Paris was when I was a Freshman in high school. Everything was about the same as I remembered it. We took a bus tour through Paris before having a few hours on our own to visit. You can't see much of Paris in only a few hours. We walked over to Notre Dame because we were so close to it when we stopped. The last time I was in Paris, I attended a memorial service for Pope John Paul II in Notre Dame. We didn't go inside this time.
I do want to go back to Paris for a more formal visit in the future. We didn't get to go to the catacombs when I was younger, which is I highlight that I would really like to see. Our short visit gave us a small taste of Paris, but we'll be back eventually.
France was a lot of fun and the French were much more friendly than I remember previously. I hope to be back soon to visit Paris again when we have a little bit more time to explore. I'd also really love to see the south of France and the lavender fields if we get a chance. Greg mentioned he would like to come back to Normandy in summer time if we are able to plan a trip. There are also some good mountains on the French & Swiss border near us that may be good for a snowboarding trip. I highly doubt this will be our last visit to France, but maybe the last of this particular nature. It's moving and interesting to learn about history by being immersed in it, but sometimes it's also fun to just appreciate a place for what it is in the moment- beautiful!
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