Wednesday morning found the Bilodeaus and us waking to an alarm at 5:15 a.m. to be ready for a cab scheduled for 6:15. It was a splurge to "cab it" but was nice to avoid the extra time needed for the metro at that hour. Upon arriving at the travel agency we were immediately immersed in the typical tourist routine - all Americans on the bus, everything in English, and too little time to do the things we wanted.....but it was certainly the only way to see the Normany coast in one day.
Our first stop was the "Peace Center" in Caen. This museum presented a history of WWI as a prelude to WWII, then went through WWII. We could have spent twice as long there, but the movie was next. It was phenomenal. It had a split screen - on the left was footage from Allied photo journalists, on the right was the same event from the point of view of the German photographers. Later computer generated graphics explained the timing and events---all without words. Very moving and effective.
After lunch the first stop was Point Hoc which gave a view of Utah beach and the cliffs which were scaled on our left and Omaha beach site of the water landing on the right. The ground leading up to the beach was full of German bunkers, pill boxes, artillery batteries, and craters. It really hit us what had happened on that site.
Later we stopped right on Omaha Beach and then went to the American cemetery where something like 20,000 American soldiers are buried---all died on or around June 6, 1944. Again we followed Barack Obama who had spoken there on June 6. It was raining all day and somehow that seemed appropriate for this somber experience.
The requisite stop at a cute little town for souvenirs --- we had chocolate crepes in the rain --- and a brief stop at Juno beach where the Canadians landed rounded out the day. Arrived back in Pantin about 10:00 --- just in time for the fresh cherry torte that Dick Mann had made with fruit harvested that day from the back yard tree.
The next day even our flight home was eventful. We almost didn't make the flight even though we had arrived at the airport two hours early. Seems there had been some scare that morning which brought everything to a stop and American was very inefficient about catching up. But we made it....climbing the last several flights of stairs in France!
Half way home we had a big treat! We flew over Greenland and got some fantastic pictures of the glaciers, mountains and snow fields. Very cool!
Very cool as, indeed, was the entire week! J'adore Paris!
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