On Day 5, I took a tour of Normandy by bus from Paris. We arrived in Caen just under 3 hours later to visit the Caen Memorial Museum.
The museum features an exhibit of the D-Day Landings and the Battle of Normandy, plus the actual bunker used by the Germans to orchestrate their troop movements and defence,
as well as other World War 2 and Cold War exhibits. After lunch, we went to the Pointe du Hoc, where several concrete bunkers were still on the cliffs above the ocean,
to see and walk down into. They were part of the "Atlantic Wall" of thousands of bunkers the Germans constructed/were constructing to defend against Allied invasion.
The American goal was to take out the German gunners in the bunkers at Pointe du Hoc, guns which threatened the troops landing at Utah Beach to the west and Omaha Beach to the east.
Next we next went to Omaha Beach for a brief stop, drove by Gold Beach where Britsh troops landed, and then finally made a stop at Juno Beach, where the Canadian troops
made their landing. We left Paris at 7 a.m., and arrived back in Paris at 9 p.m., just in time for sunset.
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Above: Fields on the way from Paris into Normandy.
Below: Picture 1 shows the Paris CityVision tour agency across the street from the Louvre in Paris.
Pictures 2 and 3 show us leaving Paris, driving along the Champs-Élysées by the Arch de Triomphe.
Pictures 4 to 7 show views of the French countryside driving on the bus into Normandy.
Pictures 8 to 10 show the front of the Caen Memorial Museum.
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