Meet Me Under The Arrivals Board

After almost nine months abroad, I'm back in the States! Although I just got home a week and a half ago, my trip already feels like a faraway dream. Everything here feels so familiar (except for the new development at Dunn Loring metro?!) that it's almost as though I never left. I'm so glad that I kept this blog ‒ rereading my posts is like a pinch reminding me that it all actually happened!

The last two months were a blur of travel, our engagement, exams, more travel, and the move, so I have a lot to catch up on, starting with the rest of my spring break in mid-April! After a wonderful trip to the Cote d'Azur and the Verdon Gorges, I spent a whirlwind week traveling in Normandy and the Loire Valley with the lovely Barbara Finkel! It was a tight turnaround: I said goodbye to Becky at an ungodly hour Sunday morning as she left for the airport and then caught the earliest train to Paris that same day to meet my mother.

Mom had already savored her first croissant and cafe au lait by the time we met under the giant Arrivals/Departures Board at Gare du Nord, so we hit the ground running! Stashing our luggage at the consign in the station, we took advantage of a blue, sunny sky in Paris to walk around a bit before heading to Normandy. We strolled from the train down to the Seine, past Notre Dame and the Louvre, stopped in the Shakespeare & Co. Book Store to purchase a guidebook for our trip, cheered for the participants doing the Color Run, walked over the famous love locks bridge over the Seine (just before the locks were removed!), and basked in the sun in the Tuileries Gardens. Not bad for a couple of hours in Paris!

Ready to hit the road, we picked up our bags from Gare du Nord and schlepped across to Gare Saint Lazare (word to the wise: Gare Sainte Lazare does not have luggage storage!) to catch a train to Normandy. Since the ticket prices from Paris to Bayeux are standard and don't go up as the date of travel gets closer, we'd decided not to buy the tickets in advance to give ourselves the flexibility to stay in Paris for a few hours if the weather was nice. We hadn't taken into account, though, the possibility that all of the second class train tickets would sell out! We ended up having to buy first class tickets so we wouldn't derail our itinerary. It was more than we had expected to spend, but once we found two seats on the train, our travel-wearied bodies were totally content to sit on the seriously plush seats in first class all the way to Bayeux!

It was windy and cold when we stepped off the train that evening. It was so chilly, in fact, that the first thing we did after checking into our hotel was buy Mom a hat! Bundled up in coats and hats, we walked around historic Bayeux a little bit before grabbing dinner at the hotel restaurant and promptly crashing for the night.

Boulangerie window in Bayeux

 

We woke up bright and early the next morning to give ourselves time to eat breakfast before heading out on our tour of the DDay beaches. Climbing into a minibus along with our guide, Yannick, two couples from Georgia, and a couple from Denver, we spent our first day in Normandy visiting the most important sites, from the American perspective, during the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6th, 1944. We stopped in several places in the morning, including the Longues-sur-Mer Battery, Omaha Beach, the American Cemetery of Colleville, and Pointe du Hoc.

Longues-sur-Mer Battery, which was part of the German anti-invasion fortification along the Atlantic coast

 

Omaha Beach

German bunker on Omaha Beach

The American Cemetery

  

Map of the DDay Landing Beaches

Omaha Beach Stop #2 at Vierville-sur-Mer

 

Omaha Beach seawall

Pointe du Hoc ‒ The US Army Ranger Assault Group captured this outpost on DDay after scaling the cliffs

Pointe du Hoc

The view from the tip of Pointe du Hoc

After a full morning, we took a break for lunch at a small cafe in Sainte-Mère-Eglise (Mom is still raving about "the best omelette of [her] life!") and then picked back up with the town's WWII museum and church, La Fière, Utah Beach, and Angoville au Plain.

The Airborne Museum (to the left of the flags) in Saint-Mère-Eglise was very interesting!

The Sainte-Mère-Eglise Church has a memorial to a paratrooper named John Steele whose parachute got stuck on the spire of the church and was captured by the Germans. He was later able to escape and continued fighting during the war.

The stained glass windows in the Sainte-Mère-Eglise church honor the American troops who fought to liberate the town, the first one liberated in France during the war.

La Fière was one of two critical bridges providing inland access.

Utah Beach memorial

Utah Beach

Stained glass window at a 12th century church in Angoville au Plain that honor two American medics, Bob Wright and Kenneth Moore, who cared for 80 wounded American and German soldiers for four days after the invasion began.

Saying goodbye to Yannick, our excellent guide with Overlord Tours

It was a long but moving day. My grandfather was part of the first wave of soldiers to land on Omaha Beach on DDay (his story from the war is incredible ‒ he received a Purple Heart for his wounds and his bravery), so the tour was particularly meaningful for us. I'm really glad we did a guided visit of the area rather than trying to see it on our own because we came away with a much deeper understanding of and appreciation for his experience.