Paris, France - June 20th

Mom woke us all at the crack of dawn to shower, eat some bread and cheese, and get down to the lobby to meet our Normandy tour guide, Phillip, at 7 am. He pulled up and greeted us with perfect accent-free English, and we climbed into his silver VW van. It was a rainy day in Paris but the weather would be clearer, however colder and windy, in Normandy. It took about 3 hours through the beautiful countryside of northern France to reach the Pointe Du Hoc stop of our trip.

At this spot, 225 Army rangers scaled the 100 foot cliffs on D-day to disarm German guns aimed at Omaha Beach. Although only 90 survived the assault, they succeed in disabling the guns. The ground was covered in large craters caused by blasts from RAF planes dropping bombs. There were several bunkers we walked through. It was an amazing sight from which you could see Omaha Beach and Utah Beach as well as the English coast about 100 miles across the channel. Next stop on our trip was Omaha Beach. It was low tide, much like it was when the 35,000 Allied forces made their charge about 70 years ago. Phillip stressed just how easy a target the American, British, and Canadian troops were as they landed. Obstacles included mines, barricades, trenches, and 500 highly trained German soldiers high on the cliffs with their powerful .50 machine guns. It would take you a minute and a half of being completely exposed just to run from the edge of the beach to the low wall next to the road at the foot of the cliff. The victory was reached largely due to the huge amount of Allied troops and the limited munitions of the Germans.

The next stop was the American cemetery. We chose not to stay long because Dad wanted to see the Bayeux Tapestry while we were up north. Bayeux was a very beautiful town but we had a lot of trouble finding a place that would serve us lunch. At the time it seemed the people did not want to make money seeing as they close their cafes at 2. Eventually we found a sandwich shop and got lunch. From there we walked to the museum which held the tapestry. We walked around the room following the story of William the Conqueror as laid out by the embroidered cloth. It was getting late, and we didn’t want to run Phillip late getting home so we made the trip back to Paris.