June 8 – Cherbourg, France

Weather – 16º, rain with periods of deluge, the sun came out eventually

German bunker

Steps – 7,519

Humidity – 80%

We are visiting Cherbourg (pop. 25,000) for the first time today. We’ve been to the area when we visited northern France about 10 years ago, but not to Cherbourg. I shouldn’t really say we visited Cherbourg today – more accurately would be to say that we docked here and visited outside Cherbourg. This isn’t any different to other ports, if what we want to see is outside the town. It’s always nice to at least meander through on the way to wherever…today we got out right away.

When choosing this tour, it seemed like the main attraction would be a visit to Utah Beach, but the focus was more on a stop in the tourist town of Sainte-Mère-Église.

Utah Beach memorial

The last time we were here, we visited Omaha Beach – all American, but the tour takes you where the tour takes you and when our travel companions are mainly American that’s where you go. In the end we technically visited Utah Beach, but due to the weather and the design of the tour, we didn’t spend nearly the time we expected at the Beach and accompanying museum.

Utah beach flags and memorial

The day started out with cloudy skys but then turned to showers throughout the morning. Despite our crossed fingers, our afternoon tour was wet. The wettest part of the tour was while we were on the bus, so that was a blessing, but we didn’t do as much outside as we would have had it been dry.

As we drove toward Utah Beach, Emanuelle our guide, described what life was like in this part of France during the occupation and subsequent liberation. We learned about D-Day and John Steele, an American paratrooper who had his parachute hooked on the spire of the church in the small village of Sainte-Mère-Église where he hung for several hours before being taken prisoner.

pretty cool Utah Beach cafe

replica parachute up there

We made a stop in Sainte-Mère-Église (pop. 2,896) for longer than we should have. Sainte-Mère-Église is basically a town built on the tourism of WWII and the John Steele story. We visited the church where he caught on the spire while Emanuelle described stained glass and other items inside the church. Then we wandered with
her through the town to the city hall and that’s about it.

We had an hour here when 30 min would have

sufficed. We filled the last 20 minutes sipping a cloudy French cider which I’ll never be sad about, but it seemed like the time could have been better spent on the Utah Beach museum which for some reason wasn’t part of the

city hall

tour.

cool tree

There are bunkers all over the place between Cherbourg and the 5 beaches where landings were made – we stopped to see a couple bunkers. Bunkers are super interesting with their 3-meter-thick walls, but the interesting parts are inside which we didn’t see – plus, it was raining, so I was happy to be back on the bus.

At Utah Beach we were sent on our own to walk the beach, see the gift shop and use the facilities. This was a bit of a let down compared to our last visit to Omaha Beach, and…no visit to the museum. Had it not been raining, we would have

I'm in the back

spent more time outside, instead we sprinted the beach, saw the memorials and found the café and shop for a wine, a beer, and a poppy scarf.