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!

Paris

After getting checked in at our hotel, we headed straight for the Eiffel Tower in search of crepes. Emily knew about a particular stand just beneath the Tower with the best crepes she'd ever eaten. On the way, my first glimpse of Notre Dame and the Seine River.

We happened upon a "South of France" festival complete with wine tasting

and passed a number of important looking buildings.

Then there it was!

And the crepes were delicious.

We then walked over to the Arc de Triomphe (started in 1806 for Napoleon, finished in 1836) which turned out to be much more massive than I had imagined.

We started the next day at the Louvre.

Some highlights from inside the museum:

The Nike of Samothrace,

the Mona Lisa,

Oedipus and the Sphinx,

the Venus de Milo,

the Sleeping Hermaphrodite,

Napoleon's apartments,

and the always funny "Gabrielle d'Estrees and one of her sisters in the bath."

 

Our next stop was Notre Dame, construction of which began in 1163.

Joan of Arc

Blurry--my camera was having trouble getting clear pictures in the dark

On our walk back toward the Eiffel Tower for crepes day two, we saw this mass of people rollerblading down the street. There were even cops on rollerblades with them!

The beloved crepe stand.

We began the next morning at Sacre Cour (Basilica of the Sacred Heart, finished in 1914).

No pictures were allowed inside--there was a beautiful mosaic of Jesus on the domed ceiling that I bought a postcard of.

From the sacred to the profane--our next stop was Moulin Rouge, situated on a street filled with sex toy shops and porn theaters. It was a little less spectacular than the glossy postcards had led me to believe.

On our walk through the city, we also stopped to look at the Paris Opera.

and La Madeleine, a Christian church built in the style of an ancient Greek temple.

We continued our walk toward the Marine museum near the Eiffel Tower.

The Marine museum was pretty cool. It featured paintings of and artifacts from ships and boats from earliest to modern times.

from a lighthouse