Normandy was a worthwhile day trip

December 28, 2004

If you’re in Paris long enough to spare one day for a side trip, Normandy is definitely worth it. We went there today, on the tour bus, and saw Omaha Beach where the Allied assault against the Nazis began. Also saw the American cemetary there in Normandy, and a couple other spots of interest as well.

It’s a rather long bus trip, two-and-a-half hours if traffic isn’t too bad. Then the first stop is a history museum in Caen (pronounced “con”) where you get to see some exhibits from the invasion and some movies. The movies aren’t so great–they are essentially un-narrated slide shows, apparently they didn’t want to figure out a way to provide multi-lingual translation so they went with no words whatsoever.

Then you get a quick buffet lunch, our menu was a chicken in mushroom sauce. Chicken was naturally a bit dry–it’s apparenntly so very hard in mass-production to get a nice moist chicken. Then the buffet was some salads and some really odd deserts–there was this chiffon meringue thing floating in a cream sauce. I’m told it’s called “floating islands” or something like that.

After the museum it’s back on the bus for another hour to get to Omaha beach. Depending on your tour guide you will either get two stops–one on the beach and one at the American cemetary overlooking the beach–or a single long stop at the cemetary. Our guide opted for the two stops, which I thought was good.

We also got to see some of the bombed out German bunkers, and a couple other spots. Then back on the bus for the trip back to Paris, with a stop along the way for folks who want to pick up a sandwich to eat.

It’s definitely a long day of touring–we left Paris at about 7:15 a.m. and arrived back around 9 p.m. But I think it was worth it.

Though after my experience with some of these French people, I’m beginning to wonder if it was worth the sacrifice of so many American lives to free them from Fascism.