The Longest Day

Invasion landing point at Pointe du Hoc.

The American cemetery. The beach is below in the distance.

A bombed out bunker.

Yesterday we took an all day (and part of the evening) bus trip to Normandy. The whole tourist bit -- the two-story tour bus with over-sized windows, even in the ceiling, in case you want to bird watch perhaps. The tour guide was French but the tour was in English only, thank heavens. She talked almost the whole time, 7 am 'til 9 pm. I napped a lot. The first stop was the Memorial museum in Caen, which was packed with school kids, but after that we went out to the beaches and saw bunkers and the cliffs at Omaha beach, plus a few other stops. The American cemetery was very impressive and beautifully maintained. I enjoyed seeing the countryside which is mostly flat with green farm fields, cows, sheep and stone farm houses (refer to Bourne Identity, farm house where he shoots the other agent in the field).

Today the country had a general strike, but the buses were running so it didn't effect us. The students did march past our apartment but that's become the norm. Worked on our face tans while reading in the park and added two more churches to our impromptu tour of churches -- we spot a church and stop in and take a look. No churches have pews. They all have rigid little straight-back chairs with cane seats. That plus the chill must keep the faithful wide awake.

My godson wants a T-shirt that says something in French but so far our search has only turned up T-shirts with English on them. "I love Paris" won't due for a teenage boy. The search continues. -E.