Bonjour France! Today Auntie Shirley arranged a private tour for our group of eleven and we had a fairly large bus, which was essentially empty. We went and visited the Pointe du Hoc, Omaha Beach, the Normandy American Cemetery, Bayeaux, and Sainte-Mère-Église. At the Pointe du Hoc there were the remains of a bunch of German Bunkers, which were situated on the edge of a 100 ft. cliff. On D-Day a group of 200+ Army Rangers shot climbing hooks to the top of the cliff and climbed it in 10 minutes! Only 135 soldiers made it to the top, and after two days of fighting was over and the Rangers had secured the bunkers only 90 Rangers were left. Omaha Beach was kind of what I expected, but the tide was in so there were only about 5 feet of sandy beach instead of the 200+ yards that the soldiers had to cross.
The Normandy American Cemetery was a poignant (ya thesaurus!) site to see. The museum they have built there goes over the various stages of planning and strategizing for the D-Day operation and the cemetery itself is in pristine condition and obviously shows the dead the respect they deserve.
After the cemetery we had lunch in Bayeux in a restaurant that was at the base of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The food was tasty to say the least, after all, Normandy is the land of Calvados, Camembert, and last, but certainly not least, cream. I had a salad with duck gizzards, smoked breast, and foie gras that was awesome, then I had a skate wing with a leek fondue and for dessert I had an apple tart. As good as the mussels in Bruges were, this meal was easily better.
After lunch we hurried over to see the Bayeux Tapestry which is 230 feet long and 20 inches high (yeah, those dimensions are correct) and depicts the story of William of Normandy and the events that led to him taking the throne of England, It was better than I had expected and at about 1,000 years old, it's in really good condition.
In Sainte-Mère-Église we went to a church where American Paratrooper John Steele got caught on the steeple on D-Day. They had set up a mannequin hanging by his parachute, which was kinda freaky, but you got the sense of the predicament Steele was in. Inside the church some veterans had come back for the 25th anniversary of D-Day and given money to the church and with the money the church had new stained glass windows made that incorporated paratroopers into the designs. It must have been a pretty full day because as soon as we got back to the boat I crashed in our room until dinner.
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