DAY 2, Sunday, November 4, 2012: Le Havre, France (Normandy beaches) – June 6, 1944

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2 ½ hour bus ride to tour D-Day landing beaches in Normandy, France. Those soldiers had a very tough time! They came across the English Chanel and then had very high & steep rocks to climb up before even hitting land. 1^ststop was La Pointe du Hoc beach and then Omaha beach. At Omaha Beach 34,000 soldiers landed with casualties of 3,000 which included wounded, MIA and dead. The barricades and bunkers that had been made are still visible. Some of the more agile men worked their way through the bunker caves and said they were quite intricate.

Then we went to the St. Laurent Cemetery, which is the American cemetery. 9,870 were buried there, but about 2/3 were returned to the USA at the family’s request. UK requires that soldiers be buried where they die and they have a separate cemetery.

We were then taken to a lovely restaurant where we were served a lunch of green salad, chicken w/crème sauce, 1 small potato, a few green beans and ending with a luscious mousse type dessert of strawberry, vanilla and chocolate flavors.

When then went to Arromanches to the D-Day Museum. We saw old video of the battle and lots of old uniforms, coins, medals, weapons, etc. Lots of souvenir shops and restaurants in the area so walked around a little bit. It was low tide and I have NEVER seen so much smelly seaweed – the beach was covered. I grew up in FL and I thought I had seen my share of seaweed, but this was by far the most and smelliest I’ve ever seen.

Then we started are 2 ½ hour drive back to the ship – many of us dozed off. Tired when we returned, but Roxie insisted we all go to dinner. Turned out Moises, our waiter from our 20090913-20091011 Baltic-TransAtlantic cruise, is now a Head Waiter and was on the Grand Princess for a few more days. He and his wife work on the ship and they left us in Lisbon for a 6 week holiday. They were off to Mexico and would return to a ship sailing the Caribbean for the winter. Was great to see him and we got to meet his wife. IMHO he is the best waiter we have ever had. Great man and very funny.

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