Paris Part I

It was a beautiful day in Paris and we packed a lot into five hours. It was non-stop sight-seeing and picture taking - like true tourists. Being our first trip, we made sure to see the major sights - Opéra Garnier, Musée de Louvre, Pont Neuf, La Tour Eiffel, Notre Dame, Arc de Triomphe. To be truthful I found it a little overwhelming to try to do so much in half a day. But I'm pleased with the {over 200} pictures I was able to get, especially of random Paris apartment buildings.

Opéra Garnier

The setting of the Phantom of the Opera

 9th Arrondissement

Louvre

Pont Neuf

There's too much for just one post - for more, see {Paris, Part II}

Bayeux, Normandy

Bayeux is a medieval town rich in history and one of the only main towns in the area not to be destroyed during the war. It is rich in not only World War II history, but the famous Bayeux Tapestry is located here and this was William the Conqueror's stomping ground.

The Bayeux Cathedral 

is a Norman-Romanesque cathedral and was the original home of the Bayeux Tapestry.

The first night we ate at this Creperie and it was delicious, but like everywhere in Europe was expensive.

We found it best to buy food from the Boulangerie, which we did the second night and ate next to the Cathedral.

D-Day Tour Part 3

For Part I of our D-Day tour, go here
For Part II of our D-Day tour, go here

Band of Brothers at Brecourt Manor

Part of our tour went to key sites for the Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division made famous by the book and miniseries 'Band of Brothers' (which is now need to watch when I get home).

Statue honouring Major Winters

From the Overlord website:
"Spaced at intervals along that ditch, were 4 German cannon batteries consisting of 105mm guns. The guns were zeroed in on U.S. forces landing on Utah Beach, near Exit 2. Lt. Dick Winters of Easy Company led a small group of Easy Company men to this site, and systematically took out all four guns at this site, and was awarded the Distinguished service cross for this attack. Several other of his men were also awarded medals for their actions as well." 

Utah Beach

Next up was Utah Beach. It was the most successful of the landings on D-Day with the Americans taking the beach in just over a half an hour.

Later the Allies would build train tracks on the beach, linking up to the railway in Cherbourg and bringing much needed supplies to the Allies during the French liberation. Tanks and jeeps and all manner of equipment were shipped across the Channel from England to France via Utah Beach.

Sherman Tank and Hedgehog obstacles that were put on the beach by the Germans to prevent boats from landing too close to shore.

Angloville Au Plain

Two medics from the 506th, Bob Wright and Kenneth Moore, took care of 80 German and American wounded in this 12th century church for over 72 consecutive hours following the initial hours of the jump into Normandy.

Stained glass windows honour the paratroopers and medics who tended to the wounded in this Church.
Blood stains are still visible on the pews.

It was humbling to visit this area and to imagine the events as they unfolded in Normandy. D-Day was a pivotal point in World War II, and to be here where most of what I know about the Second World War actually happened was at times surreal. I can't say enough about how much both Kyle and I enjoyed visiting Normandy and learning about D-Day. If you have any questions, please ask - I would love to share.

More on the Norman town of Bayeux in my next post.

 

D-Day Tour Part 2

For Part I of the D-Day Tour, go here
For Part III of the D-Day Tour, go here

During our tour we passed through a number of idyllic French towns. Unfortunately we didn't stop and I wasn't able to get any pictures. But they were exactly as you would imagine little French towns would look. It made me want to come back, rent a car and spend days driving around the French countryside with Quinn. It is beautiful country and we loved the time we spent here.

Pointe du Hoc

After leaving Omaha Beach, we traveled through the countryside to Pointe du Hoc, which in English means 'Cape of the Hook'.

Pointe du Hoc was a significant gun battery as it faced both Utah and Omaha beaches. The 2nd Rangers Battalion was tasked with scaling the cliffs to take out the 105mm artillery cannons.

After doing so at great loss of life, they discovered that the guns were not in fact in the battery. The Germans had made fake guns out of telephone poles lying horizontally out of the ground which looked real from the air, and they had not even finished building the batteries.

A Sergeant and another Ranger on patrol found the five guns, one in horrible shape, one in fair shape, and three pointed at Omaha Beach, but there were no German soldiers near the guns. The Rangers made the guns inoperable while the Germans nursed hangovers in a nearby hedgerow, unaware.

There are over 3000 craters at Pointe du Hoc. The area was closed for 10 years after the war to clean up.

Inside bunker at Pointe du Hoc

Our very French tour guide Stefan, recently retired from the French Legionnaires after 31 years of service. He was incredibly knowledgeable on the events of D-Day and had a great sense of humour. Here he is at Pointe du Hoc.

Sainte-Mere-Eglise

Our next stop was Sainte-Mere-Eglise for lunch and a tour of the museum. Kyle and I went into a Boulangerie and I competely ordered (in French) a quiche, a tartine, and two pain au chocolat for our lunch, which we ate in the sun on a bench across from the church.

In the confusion of D-Day, many paratroopers were dropped far from their intended targets, with some landing in towns instead of the countryside. One unfortunate paratrooper got caught up in teh steeple of Sainte-Mere-Eglise, and there is a stone statue complete with cloth parachute to mark it.

Museum

 More to come in Part 3.

D-Day Tour Part I

I don't usually go for tours, preferring instead to find my own way, but I knew with our limited time and the size of the area to cover that an organized tour would be our best bet. I found Overlord Tours online and read some great reviews. It isn't inexpensive at 85 Euros per person, but it is well worth the money. It would have been impossible for us to cover the ground we did today (160 km over 10 hours) or to find our way to the various locations. Plus on our own we wouldn't have learned even a tenth of what we heard from Stefan, our tour guide. I highly recommend Overlord Tours (plus I'm heavily borrowing from their website for this post).

The Batteries of Longues Sur-Mer

The Batteries of Longues-Sur-Mer are part of the Atlantic Wall, which was a system of fortifications built by Nazi Germany extending along the Atlantic coast of Western Europe.  There are four battery casements complete with 152mm German naval guns behind the control bunker, and we were able to climb in and around all of them.

Inside the battery looking out. See the

The 152mm guns were trained on the Atlantic across the English channel, able to shoot as far as the horizon. Here's a view from the batteries to the coast where the Allied forces landed.

 

Omaha Beach

We visited some of the better-defended German positions along Omaha Beach. The tides pushed all of the Allied forces well past their intended drop points, and in many cases the troops ended up facing conditions that they were not trained for.

This beach assault was a difficult assignment, given to US V Corps (General Gerow) whose Force O was made up of the 1st Infantry Division, 29th Infantry Division, the Rangers and several attached Units.

View of Omaha Beach from the bluffs of Colleville Cemetery

Normandy American Cemetery & Memorial in Colleville 

To see row upon row of crosses marking the graves of soldiers both named and unnamed gave Kyle and I greater perspective to the loss of life on D-Day.  The cemetery extends over 170 acres on the bluff above Omaha Beach and honours over 9300 American soldiers who lost their lives in Europe during World War II. 

The reflecting pool, looking down the cemetery toward the chapel.

Many soldiers were unidentified, and their crosses read "Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God."

The grave of Teddy Roosevelt, Jr. is in this cemetery.  The names of 1,557 Americans who lost their lives in the Normandy campaign but could not be located and/or identified are inscribed on the walls of a semicircular garden at the east side of the memorial.

Memorial to soldiers lost whose bodies were never recovered.

I have so many more pictures to post - Part I only comprises the first half of our tour. It's already 11pm and the s-l-o-w internet connection at the hotel means I'm going to have to finish this later. We have loved our time in Normandy and I can't wait to show you pictures of the rest of our tour and of Bayeux where we've stayed for the last two nights.

For Part 2 of our D-Day Tour go here.
For Part 3 of our D-Day Tour go here.

Off to Paris tomorrow morning!

As Audrey Hepburn said in the movie 'Sabrina', "Paris is always a good idea."