Okay - it isn't Flanders and the poppies are in the fields not the cemetery - but the spirit is the same. Today we visited the Normandy D-Day beaches and the war memorial museum in Caen.
Very impressive. They showed a movie at the museum in Caen that is so very haunting. No words. The left side of the screen is the Allied preparations for the battle. The right side is the Germans preparing. And then the battle begins and you see video from both sides.
It is amazing to me how much video they have of this war. Watching the soldiers storm the beach into the teeth of the machine gun fire, see the bodies fall and the men keep running by their stricken companions. It is a sight I will not forget.
The museums exhibits were also very impressive and very comprehensive. From the build up to the war, the war itself and then the cold war, the fall of the Berlin wall and finally some stuff about the current status of world tensions. Very well done.
The American Cemetery is very beautiful and very sad. There is a nice exhibit paying tribute to the solders who fought there. The sight of all of those crosses is very moving, of course. Looking over the beaches it is hard to imagine the carnage of that day when now it is to quiet and peaceful.
This area of France is beautiful, quiet and rural. We are staying the night in Bayoux - an ancient town. One of the claims to fame is a tapestry that tells the story of William the Conqueror. We will go see that tomorrow.
It is chilly now and we had a little bit of rain today. But it is a nice change from the heat of Italy.
And it is nice to be able to claim the best seat in the car and have the driver be willing to stop at any time and take any detours that look interesting !
We had a little trouble with all of our 'devices' today. Turns out that we didn't bring the proper cable to plug the GPS into the car to charge. So we tried to use it as little as possible as we drove around. We did end up in some beautiful and interesting places that weren't on our itinerary :-)
But by the end of the day we had found a bank to replenish our supply of Euros, found a hotel to stay at and Bill came up with a brilliant system late in the day to re-charge the GPS. He plugged it into my computer. The battery from my computer charged the GPS enough to get us to the hotel. Now everything is charged up again and we are ready for another day of excitement tomorrow as we make our way to Brittany to see Mireille. We will need to drive over to her island when the tide is out so the timing really matters.
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