Europe Tour: Day 7

Tue. 09-04-07 -- Bayeux, France & The Normandy Beaches
Originally published on: 09-12-07

Today was pretty incredible! We got up early this morning because we had a train to catch to Normandy. We got to the station just fine, but then we didn't see our train on the board that showed which track to go to. We wondered if we had bought our tickets for the wrong train, but no, a quick look at our tickets confirmed that we were at the correct station on the correct date/time. I spotted the help desk, so we went over there and showed the guy our tickets. He flipped his monitor around and showed us that we needed to go to track 23. Sure enough, our train was on track 23, I'm still not sure why it didn't show up on the board!

The train ride was smooth and uneventful. We saw a few quaint looking farmhouses but mostly it was flat farmland. When we arrived in Caen, we went to the rental car company and got our car (€113 for one day including insurance). Kara navigated while I drove us from Caen to Bayeux. Driving in France isn't much different, though I often had to have Kara translate a street sign with our guidebooks. Another difference is no yellow lines on the road. A two lane highway is divided by a dashed white line and small roads often have no lines even though they have traffic in both directions. So I kept feeling like I was driving onto one-way streets! The only other major difference is round-abouts where you have to circle around the intersection until you find your street to turn off.

So, we made it to Bayeux without any major snafus, but we didn't have a map of the city to find our hotel. So I parked the car and walked to the tourist office where they not only gave me a map, but circled where the hotel was on the map. It wasn't far from where we were parked, so we just left the car and walked our bags over to our hotel. When we got there, there was no one at the counter, so we had to stand there and wait for maybe 10 minutes! When the lady came, she didn't speak English, so checking-in was confusing. Our room was supposed to cost €68/night, but she tacked on tall these fees (which I'm guessing was just B.S.). So our bill actually came to €78. Part of the additional fees were for breakfast and when I told her that we didn't want breakfast, she either didn't understand or played dumb so as to keep the charge on there. As if we weren't ripped off enough, she made us pay right away, and in the confusion of her pointless blabbering in French she (and I'm assuming this was intentional) short changed us by 10 euros! I didn't realize it until we were at least a half hour down the road. So our €68/night room ended up costing €88... Oh well, I've learned my lesson on trusting that I'm being treated fairly.

So we dropped our bags in our room and then walked back to our car. On the way we stopped in at the grocery store and bought lunch. We ate the lunch outside on a park bench, then got back in the car and headed out to Arromanches to start our D-day tour. Arromanches' claim to fame is as the sight where the Brits created a huge artificial harbor to drop tons of troops, equipment, and supplies on France in a short amount of time. They did this by creating a breakwater wall by sinking their own ships and 100 yard long concrete barriers off the shore. A good number of these concrete 'mulberries' are still visible from the Normandy beaches. We arrived in Arromanches & parked our car up on the cliffs above the town. From there we could look down to the sea and see the remnants of the artificial harbor. We walked around on the cliffs for a while, then we bought tickets to the 360-degrees movie about the D-day experience. The film was a mix of modern day Normandy mixed with footage of D-day and the days after. The movie was a good reminder of what the soldiers had to go through. After the film, we walked down to Arromanches town and walked on the beach. It's strange to realize that the Normandy beaches look & feel just like any other beach. If it weren't for the monuments, you'd think you were at the Oregon coast or any other cold water beach. It's almost impossible to keep in mind that this was a place of great death only 60 years ago.

We took a trolley back up the hill to our car, and then drove west along the coast to Longues-sur-Mer. There, in a field 300 yards off coast are 4 great big gun batteries build by the Germans. The enclosures are almost all completely intact and 3 of the guns are still there and pointing out to the sea. I've seen a number of gun batteries in my lifetime (Oregon & Washington coasts, most recently Diamondhead Crater) but these were the first I'd seen that actually were used heavily in the war and they are also the first enemy fortifications I've seen! I kept having to tell myself (all day) "people died here." I thought "one day Germans were manning these guns, and then one day the Allies captured them." It seemed so unreal! We hiked down a nearby road and found the lookout pillbox for the guns. Both stories of the box were open, so we went inside and peeked out the slits. I stood where German soldiers kept lookout for Allied ships! We hopped back in the car and drove down a narrow road to the shore and looked back to Arromanches. We were quite a ways down the coast, but we could still see the concrete blocks off shore.

Our next stop was the American Cemetery that overlooks Omaha Beach. We took a long walk through the memorial and cemetery, and it was staggering to see how many tombstones there were. Every one of them is perfectly aligned, so it is kind of mesmerizing to watch the patterns as you walk past the graves. It almost seems like an optical illusion, like it isn't real, and then I got close enough to read the names on the nearest row. Then it was very real, all of these crosses were real people that died within a few miles of here. Even now I know that it is true, but I can't really fathom it... After the cemetery, we drove down and walked on Omaha Beach. We walked down on the sand, and then walked back on the top of the grassy sand dune next to the beach. I tried my hardest to picture the carnage that took place, but I failed. I could only see a peaceful, beautiful beach with rolling waves and squawking seagulls.

We drove west along the shore of Omaha Beach (it's quite long) and ended up in the Charlie section of the beach. There was a monument to American soldiers built on top of a large German gun battery where the giant gun is still attached. The monument was a thank you from the French to the soldiers and it spoke of "the hundreds of brave men who died within sight of this monument, some even killed by the gun on which this monument was built." (not an exact quote, paraphrase). Reading that gave me chills and helped me, if just for a second, picture what happened here.

After Omaha, we went to the Pont du Hoc Ranger Monument which, as I had read earlier, was the most heavily bombarded Germany position on all of D-day. I had read it, but I hadn't thought through what that meant until I saw the first HUGE crater. Kara said "Is that a bomb hole?!?" and I said in astonishment "I... guess... so?" Then we looked up and saw that the ground out to the cliff was like swiss cheese. There were giant craters everywhere, the place was completely torn up! There were also a number of German concrete batteries & pillboxes, but most were split and broken and scattered. It was a bombed out wasteland and the far-flung chunks of concrete formed an eerie Stonehenge of death & destruction.

Our final stop was the German cemetery outside the village of La Cambre. I wasn't quite sure how I should feel about visiting the place. The visit to the American cemetery filled me with feelings of awe and respect, but I didn't really feel anything going into the German cemetery. I even felt a little guilty like I shouldn't be there because I wasn't there to pay respect... I was there to gawk as a tourist. But seeing the endless rows of graves gave me what I hope was an appropriate feeling... sadness that so many people have died in war. Where the U.S. Cemetery is bright white with perfectly cut handsome crosses, the German cemetery had dark nameplates (2 names per plate) and roughly hewn stone crosses. The cemetery was still attractively laid out (with a monument/mound in the center that you could climb and see that the graves truly do reach as far as the eye can see) it just had a dark and sad feeling. As I left, I saw a mural by the foundation that maintains the cemetery. Their poster said that they maintain this (and many other war cemeteries) as a monument for peace. I hope it's effective...

With our D-day tour complete, we drove back to Bayeux and grabbed dinner at the grocery store (baguette, stinky cheese, 2 pears, & tabouli salad for €5.11). We cut it all up in our hotel room and ate it while watching CNN international news (wow, this room has a T.V.) This room also has a shower which we both thoroughly enjoyed using as it has been our first shower since we left London! All clean and all caught up on my journal... time for bed!