Born on the Bayeux

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Well, with my first (and only) trip into western France, my wife Erin and her parents (Pops and Mama Gundersen) and myself drove the 6.5 hours (for some reason, our return trip took almost double this) from western Germany to the French town of Bayeux in Normandy. The town was a beautiful, quaint little town that had plenty of good eateries where one could get tripes (among other things) and raw goat cheese (Pops would later experience its full wrafth the morning after eating it). Pops and I had a wonderful time passing the bottle of local Calvados back and forth.

It was a wonderful few days, and Normandy is very beautiful. I apologize for not really expanding in depth on all of the WWII sights that we saw...it basically would take me a few pages to accurately describe all of the different emotions. I will say that we did get to the beautiful American Cemetary, Point du Hoc (the cliffs that were scaled in an attempt to destroy 2 large guns), Omaha and Utah Beaches, the in-depth WWII museum in Bayeux, and finally the small town of St. Mere Eglise. I'm very glad that we made the trip.

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Photos

American Cemetary
...this view greeted us upon first entering the cemetary

crosses
...thousands upon thousands

omaha beach
...memorial at omaha beach

point du hoc
...looking out of a gun emplacement

the gundersens...minus suzie Q
...pops, erin and mama with Point du Hoc in the background

Utah Beach
...one of the few remnants left

St. Mere Eglise
...this monument was in front of the infamous church of St. Mere Eglise

St Mere Eglise church
...this is the church where John Steele's parachute got hung up on the steeple when parachuting in the night before D-Day

inside the church
...look closely and you can see the paratroopers