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| unknown soldier's grave |
The Beaches of Normandy is where we spend our day today. This is going to be a long day (11 hours in fact) as the beaches and D-Day memorials are about 90 minutes away from where the ship is in Honfleur.
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| Canadian portion of museum |
Once we arrived at the area where the beaches
of Juno, Omaha, Utah, Gold etc are, we only make a drive-by of Juno and the memorial
to the Canadian soldiers. Chris and I knew this ahead, so we weren’t surprised
or disappointed. The cruise is filled primarily with Americans and the
excursions cater to them. It is too bad, but we aren’t surprised. Feelings of
pride and thankfulness can’t be escaped even when driving by the Canadian flags
and memorial to the Canadian soldiers. Chris and I are the only Canadians on a
bus filled with Americans.
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| remains of artificial harbour |
The D-Day Museum in Arromanches is
our first stop. Here we see a video describing the how an artificial “Mulberry Harbour”
was built by the Allies. This is fascinating and I’m a bit ashamed to say
completely enlightening…I had absolutely no idea about this artificial harbour.
Then we tour the museum artifacts – each participating country had its own
section with medals, uniforms etc. We then saw a dramatization of an account
written by a soldier. Next was a bit of shopping (looking, no buying today) and
strolling around the streets of Arromanches.
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| German bunker |
By the end of our visit to Arromanches it was
time for lunch. We were taken to a beautiful hotel in the countryside for a
meal of a green salad, smoked fish terrine, roast chicken and potatoes all
washed down with French wine…not too bad. Of course there was dessert…an apple cake
(of course…we are in apple country.) It was a bit weird enjoying ourselves at
lunch so much while learning about awful things.
After lunch we visited Omaha beach and Point du
Hoc. Point du Hoc was a spot heavily fortified by the German troops. Here we learned how the
allies took this place from the Germans. This spot is on 100 foot high cliffs.
The allies scaled the cliffs to attack the Germans. Apparently the Americans had
70 percent casualties. As we walked around this site we passed bunkers still
standing and huge bomb craters.
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| bus blogging!! |
Our last stop was at
the American Memorial Cemetery. Over 9,000 soldiers are buried here, each marked
with a marble cross. We were given flowers to lay at one of the crosses which
was quite lovely and very moving.
The ride back to the
ship took another 90 minutes so I took the opportunity to BLOG!!! Although on
the ship this portable wifi gizmo we have isn’t as slick as we’d hoped, it sure
is on land. There were a few times when we were in the middle-of-nowhere and
lost service, but that didn’t happen a lot.
1 comment:
Lisa, this is something I hope to see one day. I loved your account of it. I also loved the photo of you putting the flowers by the cross. I'm sure it was very moving.
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