Roseyland

Click here to read all of my London & Paris trip posts in proper order.

Today is going to be a long day, but we are focused on a single subject rather than trying to jam in as many different things as possible. Today we are traveling by train to Caen to go on a D-day tour. When I was planning this trip and I decided to take the day trip to Windsor, Bath, and Stonehenge in England (see day 3), I also started looking for day trips in France. My first thought was to take a trip to some type of winery, but I quickly stubbled across a bunch of D-day tours, and that seemed a lot more interesting. Unfortunately, most of these tours were bus tours, and Normandy is about 3 and a half hours from Paris by bus. The idea of being stuck on a bus with 50 other random people in a foreign country didn’t really appeal to me. Just when I was about to give up on the idea, I found these trips on LinkParis.com. On the Link Paris trips, you take a train to Caen. The train only takes 2 hours to get to Caen and it is way more comfortable than a bus. Plus the Link Paris trips are small group tours (like 8 people) rather than the 50 people on the bus tours.

Here is a picture of the Gare St. Lazare in Paris. This is the station where we caught our train to Caen. Of everything we did on our trip, this was the scariest part for me. There was very little English in this station. All of the overhead announcements were in French and only French. Fortunately finding the train was pretty easy. It helped to follow the random scattering of Americans trying to pronounce Caen. In case you are wondering, Caen is pronounced like “caa-uhn” but all one syllable. It’s more like a grunt than a word.

We arrived in Caen and met our tour guide. At first I thought she was British, because it kind of sounded like she had a British accent. Then she explained that she studied English for 8 years in England. Poor girl, the British taught her to talk funny Actually I enjoyed her accent a lot, maybe a little too much. Moving on… I think there were 8 people on our tour. A college student and his Mom from California, two women from Canada, a married couple from Michigan (I think), and of course my Aunt and I. The college student was traveling to Barcelona soon to tour Spain for 19 days. Note to self, in my next life, take advantage of the travel opportunities in college, they don’t happen later in life. After we all met up in the Caen train station, we got in the minivan and headed to the Caen Memorial Museum. The video on the museum’s web page gives a good overview of the tour we were on, and it is narrated by our tour guide, so you can hear her accent for yourself. Here is a picture of the museum’s lobby. I love that plane.

We were given a guided tour of the museum, which gave a good overview of the whole D-day operation. One of the exhibits in the museum contained letters written home by soldiers who fought in D-day. There were letters from American, Brittish, French, and German soldiers, which was cool, but I could only read the French and German letters because they were translated into English. They just assumed that if you spoke English, you would be able to read the 60 year old handwritten letter in English. Not so much. After the museum we saw a movie with real footage from D-day and had lunch in the museum’s restuarant. I had steak and frites, but it did not come with a sauce like the steak and frites at Le Relais de Venise would have. After lunch we had time to walk around the gardens behind the museum. There were American, English, and Canadian gardens. Below is a picture of the American garden. In case you didn’t know already, on the allies side during D-day, there were mainly American, British, and Canadian troops.

Here is the front of the Caen Memorial Museum. All those flags probably mean something, but I don’t know what that thing is.

This is a picture from the Longues-sur-mer battery of the remains of the Arromanches artificial harbor. This is where the British built an artificial harbor to move equipment into France. The structures you see in the water are the remains of this harbor.

Here is a gun at Longues-sur-mer that could be used to fire on the Omaha or Gold beaches.

Here is a gun bunker that was damaged. I wish I could say that this was damaged in battle, but I think our guide said that this damage happened after D-day. Apparently the allies stored ammunition in this bunker, and one day it um… amunized.

The next stop on the tour was the American cemetery overlooking Omaha beach. Omaha beach was also called Bloody Omaha. Around 1500 americans lost their life fighting on D-day, many of them on Omaha beach. Here is the view of Omaha beach from the American cemetery.

Here is a picture of the American flag over the American cemetery. This cemetery contains the graves of 9,387 American servicemen (and a few women). The American cemetery is considered American soil, although I’m not sure what that means. I think it means the United States owns the land and does not pay taxes on it. However, I’m pretty sure that if you commit a crime here, the French police will still arrest you, but I could be wrong. You probably want to ask something like, wasn’t being in this cemetery an overwhelming emotional experience? To which I must respond that if you think I’m going to share my emotions on this blog, you really don’t know me In all seriousness, we were only there for 45 minutes, and it was so visually stunning that I rushed around to make sure I got every possible picture. In other words, I didn’t really have time to process it all. I will say that it was very surreal to have such a distinctly American experience in France, and of course it was beyond humbling to think of the sacrifices made in this place by these men (and women).

This is a picture of an unknown soldier, and it might be my favorite picture from the entire trip. I hate to ruin the moment, but in this cemetery, the Christian soldiers get cross gravestones and the Jewish soldiers get star of david gravestones. Which makes sense, but the unknown soldiers all get crosses. Isn’t that a bit presumptuous? What if they are Jewish? or atheist? Okay, in war there probably aren’t many atheist, but you get my point. Oh!!!! that reminds me. As I was walking out of this cemetery, I heard a little girl ask her Dad something like, “Why does God let people fight wars and kill each other?” All I could think was, good luck with that dude. He had a pretty good answer though, something about free will and choices.

Here is another picture of the gravestones. I love the way you can see the Atlantic ocean in the background.

The cemetery is fairly big, and I felt sorry for the guy who was in the very back corner. I mean hardly anybody comes by to visit him, so I decided to take his picture and make him famous on my blog. Daniel J. Knapp, welcome to Roseyland!

Here is the reflecting pool and memorial area of the cemetery.

After the cemetery, we were taken to Omaha beach, which shockingly is no where near the city of Omaha. I tried to imagine what it would be like to see thousands of soldiers running on this beach with gunfire and motor blast everywhere, but it was hard. I mean it pretty much looks like any other beach, but colder.

Here is a picture of our tour guide (the woman). I have to admit, I had a little crush on her. First she had the whole French/British accent thing going on, but she was also a total history nerd and she obviously loved her job and meeting all the people who take the tour. It was also cool to be around a French person who wasn’t from Paris. I don’t know why, but she seemed different than a Parisian. Which I’m sure she was, but you wouldn’t think that as an american it would be noticeable. Of course this is probably all in my head, but it’s my story and I’m sticking to it

Here is the site of the first American cemetery on Omaha beach, which has since been moved to the American cemetery that we just saw.

This is la Pointe du Hoc, the sight of an army ranger assault on D-day. The army rangers had to scale these cliffs, while being shot at by the Germans, to reach the top and disable a few heavily fortified guns. It turns out the guns had been moved, but the rangers successfully took Pointe du Hoc none the less. This site is also considered american soil, but again, I’m not sure exactly what that means.   

This is the ground at Pointe du Hoc. It has been left pretty much the same since D-day. All of these craters are from allied bombing attempts to destroy the guns. Kind of makes you wish you could give them a few laser or GPS guided bombs, doesn’t it?

Here are are some of the German fortifications at Pointe du Hoc, which are all heavily damaged. While I was climbing around one of the bunkers, I came across a group of German tourist, which was kind of weird. I wonder what it’s like to be German and see something like this. I felt like they didn’t want me there, but that’s probably just my imagination.

After Pointe du Hoc, we were taken back to the Caen train station. We had some time, so my Aunt and I decided to eat at a local restaurant. This was a mini adventure in itself, because the waiter spoke virtually no English and the menu was of course only in French. I ordered the cheeseburger and my Aunt ordered fish and chips, which were the only things on the menu we could read. Before our entrees, the waiter brought us these. We started to eat it, but it didn’t taste right to me, and I became convinced that it was some type of condiment, and that we would look dumb if we ate it. So we stopped. It turned out we were supposed to eat it, and it is some form of beet juice. I don’t like beets. This was the only food I came across during our trip that I didn’t like.

I think this was my favorite day of the trip. Not only was the tour great and the D-day history amazing, but it was also great to see the French countryside. I definitely feel like I’ve experienced more of France by getting out of Paris for a day. Only one more full day left. Thank god, my feet hurt. Tomorrow we will try to see everything we haven’t yet seen in Paris. You can see more pictures and a few videos from my trip here.