This morning, I woke up at 8:00 to pack for our day in Normandy. I had a slice of brioche for breakfast. At 9:40, we departed for Normandy and arrived 1:00 PM. After we arrived at the Memorial de Caen, we grabbed lunch in the memorial’s restaurant. At the memorial, we saw an exhibition dedicated to the history of WW2, another dedicated to D-Day and the Battle of Normandy, and finally, we saw a film of D-Day. I was surprised to learn that as the Allies were preparing to land in France, they bombed the seaside cities and caused 20,000 civilian deaths. After the Memorial de Caen, we headed towards Omaha Beach, where the Americans landed to liberate France. At the beach, the weather was cold, rainy, and miserable (there was a brave soul trying to surf in the ocean). My exchange student, Elise, told me that regions like Normandy rarely rain, so I guess we were out of luck today. Due to the weather, we only stayed at Omaha Beach for a few minutes to see the monuments on the beach. During our time there, we encountered a parade of American military vehicles (and a couple of those little military planes). Maybe they were celebrating D-Day a day late? We later saw them again at the American military cemetery by the beach, which we planned to visit but was unfortunately closed. By 8:00 PM, we had arrived at our hotel near Mont St. Michel. After eating, we waited to take photos of Mont St. Michel and the sunset but were not able to due to the cloudy weather. I look forward to tomorrow at Mont St. Michel.
