It’s May 8th, and I haven’t posted any images since Paris. We left Paris on or abouts April 30th and headed to Caen via a very fast train. In Caen we rented a small car, checked out the local museem, and drove off to Bayeux, with the intention of visiting the D DAY landing beaches the next day, mostly winging it, no schedule. We stayed an extra night at the B&B in Bayeux and then made our way slowly towards Belgium, with Brugges being our goal. A few snags and a blown engine put a  new twist on things….as I’ll describe….

D DAY Beaches………

We arrived in Bayeux later in the day, after picking up our car in Caen and checking out the museem there. Very expensive museem by the way, but worth it. Bayeux is a  small, quaint town. Where we stayed for two nights at a B&B.

This is the first town liberated and is very close to the beaches.

Huge ancient cathedral in Bayeux…

Our B&B (below). Very nice and great food. Met a family from Paris the second morning. They were on holidays. the french take a LOT of holidays. Students too. They go to school for something like 5 weeks, then get 2 off. The school days are until 5:00PM however.

 It was  a struggle trying to speak french to them, but I had no reservations about giving it all I had. Only a few years ago I would have been embarassed and that alone would have made me draw blanks, however, not so anymore! I simply dug my heels in and gave it all I had. They had a 14 year old girl and 8 year old boy. Nice poeple, very friendly. Great for Danielle to meet them too!

Museem in Bayeux….

Cathedral at sunset….

The next morning, our first day on the Normandy coast! Yippeeee. Been looking forward to this most of my life!

Beautiful country….

First beach, Juno, where the Canadians landed on DDAY….. today:

Remnants of docks….

German pill boxes firing on assault troops…

The new Juno beach centre….great place!

More pill boxes…..

Danielle……

Here’s a video from You Tube of Juno beach on DDAY….

After visiting Juno beach and the new centre, we checked out the Canadian cemetary.

Here’s a quote from our travel book by american author Rick Steves…
“This small, touching cemetary hides a few miles above Juno Beach Center and makes a modest statement when compared with other, more grand cemeteries in this area. To me, it perfectly captures the low-profile nature of Canadians…..”

I guess he’s not the only one to say we keep a low profile Read this recent article by a UK writer:

HERE

Cemetary not far from the beach…

Did you know that Omaha beach (known as ‘bloody Omaha’..the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan depicted the fight) was the hardest, most brutal of all the beach landings. Which beach was the second hardest? Juno beach was, and the Canadians made more inland progress than anyone else, so much so they had to pull back some.

Ok, I gotta get to work and pay off these travel bills! I will add comments and more images later today and tomorow.

Heading out towards Gold beach…..

Remnants of the docks the english installed. It was a massive harbour, called Mulberrys, that Churchill created. A port was of utmost importance.

READ ABOUT IT HERE

Gun installations back behind the beaches:

Look closely. You can see four guns….

The view…

Omaha beach:

A new monument….

Gun placement at the end of the beach…

Over looking the “eye of the storm” where the biggest casualties occured. Same area where the opening scenes in Saving Private Ryan was depicted….

Looking up from the beach where they landed…..

Watch a video here from the opening of Saving Private Ryan,
which gives a fairly accurate depiction of what happened here……

One of the gun placements up on the hillside…

View onto the beach…

Behind the beach we found a smallish closed museem of sorts, and the add some cool things outside:

Landing craft……

German gun:

Flag and old tires….

Beach obstacles….

German guns:

Sentry box…

Point Au Hoc:

This place is amazing. It’s where the US Rangers scaled up the cliffs and reached their objectives: the German guns.

You can see huge bomb craters still, from the US planes that bombed the area beforehand:

View from the top. Imagine scaling that!

After leaving Point Au Hoc, we found yet another monument at the entrance to a nearby small town:

The next day we headed back towards Juno beach and steered north along the beach, with our goal being Belgium.

More stuff on the further end of Juno beach….

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