1st Part - Normandy, France

In mid July, we took a vacation to explore the Normandy region of France and, of course, visit the D-Day beaches. Prepare yourself for a very mini and hardly expert history lesson. I welcome any corrections on my info because it is VERY possible that I am mistaken at times.

We 1st visited a small charming port town called Honfleur:
There, we began our vacation in slow fashion by having a delicious seafood lunch. Michael got this amazing fish in a wine cream sauce and mashed potatoes and loved it! After this, we wandered around the small town, Michael rode the carousel a million times, and we hiked up to the top of the town for views of Le Havre, another French port.

After exhausting Honfleur, we checked into Madame Sebire's bonafide farm, which was about a 10 minute drive from Arromanches. She had new calfs in the barn and real cows in the pasture. Michael L-O-V-E-D that. At the end of everyday in Normandy, he would ask us, "Go home to farm?"

The next day, we drove to Arromanches to see their memorial and the D-Day 360 movie. Here is the view of the town from the top. See the mulberries in the ocean in the distant? These were used as a man-made dock to unload supplies etc. for the Allies.
After this, we drove to Longues-sur-Mer, which is where 4 German artillery bunkers still stand today. You can see 3 of them built kind of into the hills here:
Despite being bombarded by Allied naval fire, they are still standing. Incredible. Here is a closeup of one of the canons:
After this, we drove to the American Cemetary, where we were in awe of how meticulously kept it was. It was beautiful, serene, peaceful, and such a great dedication to our nation's soldiers who died for something really worth fighting for, freedom:
If I am not mistaken, the walkway between these reflecting pools and the memorial behind the photographer is the exact point where American soldiers first broke through enemy lines at Omaha and penetrated the top of the beach. If not here, it is somewhere here along the cemetary that it is.

Michael at the cemetary:
From the cemetary, there was a tremendous view of Omaha Beach. There was a hiking trail that took you down there. Instead, we followed Rick Steve's recommendations and drove to Vierville where we parked...and walked 2 minutes to Omaha. I think I prefer that way!
Michael and Brian rolled up their jeans and went playing on the beach with another French family. It was a quite necessary part of the day as Michael had to be well behaved everywhere we went. So he needed that time to blow off some pent up energy!
Because one day full of history wasn't enough, we continued our D-day touring the next day at the Caen Memorial Museum. They had amazing on-site childcare with a certified childminder and lots of new, clean toys. It was like we had stepped back home to America instead of being in France. And it was FREE.

So us 4 adults had the chance to actually read the things in the amazing Caen Memorial. I won't go into details about everything we learned. But I will say that by halfway through the exhibit, I gave up and had too much of information overload! It was very well done though and we learned a lot. We also saw their very good D-day video which included German footage as well as American.

Continuing on our D-day tour, we also visited the Ranger museum in Grandcamp Maissy, which was actually very cool. It was very small...no where NEAR as big as the one in Caen or high tech. But it outlined the creation of an elite unit of soldiers called the Army Rangers whose first mission was to capture Pointe du Hoc. The trip was made really special because we were with a real live Army Ranger. Here he is at Pointe du Hoc: I learned a lot in that little museum. One special fact being that Aggie Lt. Col. James Earl Rudder was the Commanding Officer of the 2nd and 5th battalions of the Army Rangers at Pointe du Hoc. I'd seen statues of him at Texas A&M and there is an entire tower named after him...and it is just now that I know why. I hate to admit it, but there it is!

At Pointe du Hoc, Michael and Brian played in the craters that are still there today from Allied cannons:
I couldn't possibly post all the pictures we took. It was an amazing part of our vacation and we learned a lot. Stephen Ambrose's book on the D-day invasion made it even more meaningful as I learned about all the planning and execution it took to stage such a history-changing event.