Memorial Day Weekend in Normandy

I sometimes feel Josh and I live in a world of FULL of Murphy's Law, and frequently when things are suppose to go wrong, they do. However, I am overjoyed to say on our Memorial Day trip to Normandy this wasn't the case. Josh was able to leave work early and we took off in the early afternoon. We didn't run into much for crazy road conditions, and we made decent time to our destination. Yahoo! I had been proud of myself for finding a hotel deal - I found a hotel with free parking (which is rare, at times. Sometimes you have to hunt to find a hotel which has parking, or parking which is reasonable), and it was only $130 for three nights. I had told Josh (and I quote), "I don't care if it is a total dive, for that price, who cares?!" Who cares indeed. It's not that the hotel was a complete dive... I've stayed in worse. But the room was tiny, and old, with a horribly uncomfortable bed. The bathroom looked as if it was an RV bathroom which had been put into our hotel room. You really had to position yourself to sit down on the toilet without hitting your legs on the sink. That, and I was allergic to something inside of our room and every night my nose would become stuffy. But. $130 for three nights.

Anyway. Onto happier topics... like the awesomeness of our trip and the fact that we were able to take it, we were able to leave early on Friday afternoon, and didn't get stuck in traffic. We made it to our hotel on Friday evening. It was after 8, so we had dinner in our hotel. Normally I'm against this, but we were tired, worn out, and I didn't want to try to go find a place to eat. It actually turned out to be decent food. In fact, every night we stumbled into the hotel completely exhausted and chose to eat at the hotel instead of finding other food. Rare, for us.

Our first morning we hopped on the road to Mont St. Micheal. I had seen pictures of this and heard about it from my friend Andrea. Mont St Micheal is an old abbey built upon a rock which turns into an island every day when the tide goes out. There is now a road/causeway which leads out to the island, but it doesn't take away from the beauty of it. We got there in the early morning to beat the crowds. There really is only one street through the town which leads directly to the abbey. We wandered past the tourist shops to the abbey and wandered through it. Stunning views of the island and the surround areas.

When we finished at the abbey we had basically seen all of the island. It was great timing because just as we were leaving the crowds were beginning to arrive. We decided to head back to the town where our hotel was to see the D-Day museum. There are a lot of different D-Day museums in the area, but this one is the biggest. The day had turned rainy, and we figured it would be a better use of our time. It was one of the museums where you could have spent the whole day going through everything. The museum covered not just D-Day, but highlights of everything in World War Two which lead up to D-Day, and then what happened after World War Two. There was a lot of interesting information about the preparation for D-Day and things which happened during D-Day which was new to me. It's always interesting to hear the human stories. The nice thing was this museum was open late, so we were able to fit it in with our other half-day trip. We went back to the hotel to eat a late dinner and crash.

The next morning we got up early again and went to the American Military Cemetery. This Cemetery is located right above Omaha Beach, and it is the final resting spot for many soldiers (over 9000) from D-Day and days afterwards. We got there right when it opened, and didn't realize we were there for the Memorial Day Ceremony. I thought any sort of ceremony would be on Monday, but it was on Sunday. Something we weren't planning to see, but excited to stumble upon. We walked around the cemetery - it is HUGE! And beautiful. There really isn't anyway to describe it. The white crosses all stand in a row as if they are soldiers at attention. For Memorial day there were little American and French flags by each cross. There were a lot of people at the cemetery, and we saw a few people placing flowers on gravestones. Moving, to say the least. We stood to watch the ceremony - it is a very big deal, and many people there were there by invitation. Needless to say, we had to stand back behind barriers because we weren't invited guests. The ceremony itself was pretty standard I would assume... but I will say this. I consider myself a pretty middle-of-the-road person when it comes to patriotism. I'm not one extreme or the other. However. Being in a place where so many people lost their lives, sacraficed themselves to help others... to be in a place so full of beauty... and then to hear the national anthem played after living outside of the US for over two years (and I have probably only heard the anthem twice in the time I've been gone)... well, all of this stirs something inside of you. It is hard to NOT feel compassion or sorrow, and you can't stop the swelling of pride you feel to be a part of a nation which would help others in need. I have never in my life felt more proud of Josh for the work he does or for my nation. I was moved to tears.

After the ceremony we went to the side of the cemetery and went down to Omaha Beach. There are paths which lead right down to the beach. It was high tide, so there wasn't a whole lot of sand showing, but it was still amazing to see. The walk from the cemetery down really gives the perspective of what kind of circumstances soldiers were having to fight against - it is a rough and rugged climb from the beach up. It is hard to think, on a beautiful, sunny day, what it was like for those soldiers so many years ago.

After wandering up and down the beach for awhile, we went back up to the cemetery for a few minutes. We got in the car and headed on to Point du Hoc. This is an area where Army Rangers scaled up the cliffs. This area was heavily fortified by the Germans, and had a lot of mortar fire. There are still holes where explosions occurred. The area still has remnants of old German "pill boxes" as Josh calls them. It made for an interesting area to walk around and explore. Again, it was hard to imagine what soldiers were facing trying to scale up the cliffs with intense opposition.

We hiked around this area for a bit, and then headed to Utah Beach. I'm glad we saw things in the order in which we saw them, as it helped to paint a better picture of D-Day. The amount of soldier's lost at Omaha was much higher than at Utah Beach. Omaha Beach also had a steep embankment soldiers had to climb, where the bank at Utah Beach was quite small. To my understanding there was also less defenses in place and more support from the Navy at Utah Beach. The tide was out when we got to Utah Beach, so there was a lot of beach showing. There wasn't as much to see, so-to-speak, at this beach. We walked up and down it and looked for shells. It was kind of nice to walk and enjoy the simple beauty of the beach. Josh and I had a conversation about how this was, minus the history of it, a really beautiful place. We were enjoying a day full of sun (something we haven't see a lot of in Germany recently)... and it is strange to think of how such a wonderful place could be such a frightening graveyard.

After we finished at Utah Beach, we decided to go to nearby Ste-Mere Eglise. During D-Day, a paratrooper's parachute got stuck on the steeple of the church. As a way to honor this the town has a dummy in fatigues hanging off the church. It's kind of funny, but neat too. This town was in LOVE with Americans. Even though it's been 69 years, they all still remember and are still grateful for the American efforts during D-Day to liberate them. Many things around the town pay homage to the 101st Airborne, or businesses are named "American" or "Airborne." Not just in this town, but all over we found people to be welcoming and extremely kind to us... and not just because they wanted our money or business. It is a change from sometimes feeling you want to avoid talking about being an American for fear of retaliation (remember, we're not living on our home soil)... to feeling okay with talking about it. Or even acknowledging Josh's job.

After our full day we went back to the hotel and called it a night. In the morning we knew we were facing a long drive home... but we were considering making a small detour on our drip home to check out the city of Roune. After some debate, we decided not to go through there and just head home because we'd heard driving and parking could be a nightmare. But, as it happened, our GPS had one of its moments where it decides to send us on a crazy path... and it sent us through the middle of Roune anyways. So, we did get to see the city on the fly, so to speak.

We put off Normandy until now because it is a long drive - close to seven hours. We also have been putting it off because we knew we would have to fill up off base. While in Germany we can gas up at certain gas stations and pay US prices, but outside of Germany we have to pay European prices. Which we've been trying to avoid. I'm glad we finally faced our "fears" of paying for gays and the long drive. The 13 hours total (6.5 there and back), the 55 Euro in road tolls, and filling up three times on the economy at around 75 Euro ($100ish) a pop... it was worth every penny to have had the experience we did.