Normandy

Our D-Day tour service picked us up from our hotel in Bayeux. As it turns out, the tour only consisted of Emily, myself, an Australian couple, and a guide whose name he either did not give or I've forgotten. We drove out to Point du Hac, a clifftop west of Omaha Beach where Germans kept gun batteries. There are large craters in the ground where allied forces bombed the guns before the invasion.

a bunker

Next, we drove over to Omaha Beach which was covered in pebbles in 1944 but now is covered in sand.

Our final stop for the half-day tour was the American Cemetery where 9,387 American soldiers are buried.

Memorial listing the names of those missing in action

Back in Bayeux, we went to visit the Notre Dame de Bayeux, a cathedral built in 1077 which miraculously survived the French Revolution, WWI and WWII.

Though cloudy and rainy when we went in . . . .

bright and sunny when we came out!

I then went to see the Bayeux Tapestry while Emily enjoyed reading her Normandy Invasion book in the sunshine. No pictures of the 230 feet long (!!!!!) linen, of course, but I did take a picture of a display upstairs  which shows a very zoomed in view of the stitches.

I also bought what has proven so far to be a very entertaining book about what happened to the tapestry after its creation (the French Revolution, Napoleon, and Hitler all play a part).

Later in the afternoon, Emily and I walked over to the Bayeux War Cemetery containing mostly graves of Commonwealth soldiers from WWII but also some German ones.

We wandered around town the next morning before catching the train to Paris whence we flew out the next day. Goodbye Europe! It was lovely!