Thursday, June 19, 2008

Paris: Day 5

Day 5, Thursday, was probably the highlight of the week. We took a day trip out to Normandy to visit the American Cemetery and D-Day Memorial.

We got there by taking a train ride from Paris into Bayeux, which is a small town about 7 miles from Omaha beach. The town itself was very neat and had an amazing cathedral which was built in 1077.

We took a local bus from Bayeux to the cemetery located at Omaha Beach, which took the heaviest casualties during the D-Day invasion in World War II. At this cemetery are 9,387 graves and a few memorials chronicling the history and strategy of the invasion. This was a truly somber and humbling experience to be among the endless sea of graves and the look at the actual beach. The beach si surprisingly long, at least 100 yards to the nearest dunes and gave a better picture of the sacrifice paid by that generation.

After the memorial we took the bus back to Bayeux and walked around the town and stopped for ice cream and a pastry before taking the train back to Paris.

We rode a "real" train this time, instead of the metro trains in the city

We passed several of these HUGE churches as we drove through the French country side. They seemed very random to us as they just popped out of the middle of no where.


In the town of Bayeux


The steps down the hill onto Omaha Beach



The US 101 Airborne Division (marked near the center of the map) is the division followed in Band of Brothers for those who have seen that mini-series

The Memorial






"Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God"

A small chapel in the midst of the cemetery




Back in the town of Bayeux




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