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Alright...almost finished I promise! The second to last stop during my week touring France was Caen, in Normandy. There's really not too much special about Caen except that it is the closest semi-large city to the D-day beaches. Libby and I are both big history buffs so of course, this stop was a no-brainer.
We arrived in Caen at 8:30, April 24. Upon arrival we walked outside of the train station, looked at the hotels across the street, and picked one to stay in for the night. After leaving our stuff there, we hurried back to the train station to catch the next train out to Bayeux, the closest city to the American D-day beaches. We got to Bayeux and looked for the bus line that takes tourists out to the beaches. We found out that we had 2.5 hours until the bus left. At this point, we were exhausted from our pre-dawn walk through Rouen and our two train rides and really really sick of waiting around for things. But we had no choice, so we stuck out those two hours in the Bayeux train station. Finally it was time for the bus. For whatever reason, twice that day
I heard "Last Christmas" on the radio (we've heard it in Perpignan too). Pretty crazy, but I love that song, so I was rocking out on the bus. With the frustrating bus schedules, we could only get to one beach. We decided to visit Omaha Beach. This is also where the American Cemetery is located. Omaha Beach was the really deadly invasion because the Germans were more prepared and were ready for the Americans. Again, the weather was NOT cooperating, soon after our arrival it started raining. There was a little museum in the visitor's center with really interesting documentaries on all aspects of the invasion. After finishing the exhibit, we walked through the cemetery. It was really interesting. All of the markers are either crosses or stars of David for the Jewish soldiers. We rushed ourselves through the cemetery because we thought the bus back to Bayeux was leaving soon. We practically ran back to the bus stop only to find out we had THREE hours until the next bus. Dejectedly, we walked back to the cemetery. It turned out well though because we saw that they give tours. So we took a tour of the cemetery. We found
out lots of interesting little facts: all of the graves face West towards America, the government did not want the birthdates of its soldiers on their graves, the average age in the cemetery is 24, only 40% of the American soldiers killed in the Battle of Normandy are buried in the American cemtery (their families were given the choice of burial in the US or France). We were also able to see some important graves. Such as the graves of the brothers who Saving Private Ryan were based on and two sons of President Theodore Roosevelt (one of the sons was killed in WWI, but the family petitioned the cemetery to let him be buried next to his brother). After the tour ended, we walked down to the beach. If you just randomly stumbled across the beach and had no idea where you were, there would be no clues as to the battle that one there, except for one German bunker. We walked around that for a bit before really catching the bus back to Bayeux, and from there the train back to Caen. Once we were back in Caen we ate some dinner and went back to the hotel.
Pistons
the Pistons game on the hotel TV While channel surfing, I cam across a sports channel wiiiiiith....................THE PISTONS! I was so excited I screamed and started bouncing up and down. I got to see that last quarter of the game, and I don't think I could keep still throughout any part of it because I was so excited. It was the first of my sports I've been able to see while in France. The French accents on all of their names were really amusing...I had to pay really close attention in order to understand who they were talking about (not like that was a problem). Yep, it was really amazing and of course the won...so my life is now complete, haha.
That's it for Caen. I need to now take this opportunity to tell all of my aunts Happy Mother's Day. I apologize if you get the message really late. For some reason, for the past couple of days I haven't been able to call Mom or Grandma from my cellphone, so I couldn't relay messages through them. But yeah, hope you have a great day!
Freya
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