More France

Day 6 (in France)

We woke up early, excited to go to England. We left the hotel early and in a good mood (despite the fact that it was overcast, cold, and raining - perhaps a reflection of the city itself?) to walk to the ferry docks. Two hours later, dripping wet, and miserable...we were still walking to the ferry docks. After asking quite a few people for directions, which failed to get us there, and finding a colony of homeless people living near some harbor, we surreptitiously followed two people with suitcases to the ferries. We finally bought tickets, went through passport control (stamps on our passport!! finally!!), and got on the ferry. It was REALLY nice - like a mini cruise ship. They had stores with absurd amounts of liquor, 50-kg packages of Toblerone, facewash that smells like pineapples, and anything else that you could possibly need or want, along with lots of food that was better than normal cruise ship food. We got to England with about two hours to spare before going back to the ferry (yes, we did spend more time going to England than we spent in England). We marvelled briefly at the white cliffs of Dover before going to Dover Castle. The castle was really cool - definitely a good use of our time. Parts of the castle were built as early as the 1200s, and there was even a church (and lighthouse from the 1st century A.D.)from Roman times that we got to see. There were also medieval tunnels open for exploration that were built as escape routes, along with secret war tunnels built during WWII (since the castle was used then too - but we didn't go into the latter, lacking time). After this, we ran back to the ferry station, only to find that we had missed our ferry. Fortunately, there was another one half an hour later that we were able to get on. Once we got back to Calais (where it was overcast and raining, again) we packed and went to the train station. Absolutely thrilled to be leaving Calais, we got on a train to Paris, where we spent the night in a really out-of-the-way hotel that we didn't get to until 1 AM thanks to the late trains we'd had to take. End of day 6.


Day 7 - D-Day
Getting to the D-Day beaches turned out to be quite a fiasco - however, it proved to be well worth the trouble (at least for me - Katharina - and Sharp). As we have already mentioned, we weren't supposed to go to the D-Day beaches - we were supposed to stay a second night in Calais. However, due to my intent desire to go to the Normandy beaches, I convinced Gabrielle (Sharp was more than willing) to leave crappy-Calais and head to Bayeux. On a side note, for all of those who are wondering why we went to Calais in the first place, it was not my fault...well, it was not intentional. When we decided to move the "France-excursion" before the "Italy-excursion," I didn't think about when exactly D-Day was - turns out it is June 6th, which was when we were trying to make reservations. After about an hour of discovering that the hostels in Caen, Rouen, Cherbourg, and Bayeux were all BOOKED, Sharp looked up the date of D-Day and sure enough, that was the reason for our bad luck booking a place to stay. So, basically, the only thing on the coast that was available on the dates we wanted was Calais (surprise, surprise - it is never booked). So after a night in a Parisian hostel (it was nice, just out of the way), we woke up at 5:15 to catch a train to Bayeux, which was the first town liberated during Operation Overlord. During our layover in Caen (our first train to Caen was delayed for 20 minutes due to cows standing in the tracks so we missed our first connection to Bayeux), we met a 23-year-old boy, who was a member of the AirForce (currently stationed in England). His name was Frank and, like us, he spontaneously decided that he wanted to see the D-Day beaches. We got to talking and turns out, he was a quite friendly and entertaining guy. He hadn't booked any tours (I had tried but the particular tour I had contacted never got back to me) so the four of us arrived in Bayeux with no idea how to get to the beaches. Fortunately, about 100 meters from the train station, there was an advertisement for an afternoon tour of the D-Day beaches - I went ahead to talk to the owner (a VERY excited and enthusiastic Frenchman, who gave all of us - including Frank - a student discount), who confirmed the availability of a minibus (8 people, 1 English speaking guide) for 1:00 pm. Since we arrived in Bayeux at 11:30, we had about an hour to kill so we went and ate very good pizza next to Bayeux's Notre Dame. After quickly surveying the church, we rushed back to the excited Frenchman, who had repeated SEVERAL times the necessity of being back by 12:30. We didn't leave until 1:00 :). Anyways, once the tour started, it was really incredible. Our English-speaking tour guide wasn't really English-speaking but that was okay. We could still understand him. Our first stop was in Arromanches, which houses the D-Day museum. The museum itself was quite spectacular - it had all the original uniforms, medals, guns, gas masks, binoculars, etc. from D-Day as well as the original models for the amphibious invasion made by the generals themselves. Frank was quite taken with the beach the museum was situated on and hopped around with his camera and ultimately had Sharp take his picture (let me also note that Frank drank 3 beers on an empty stomach to kill time in Bayeux - he really was an interesting, very friendly character). After the museum in Arromanches, we headed to several German bunkers situated on a cliff overlooking the coast. They were well preserved and these enormous guns that could shoot up to 10 miles away. But these bunkers were nothing compared to the bunkers we saw at the very end at Ponte du Huc - but more on that later. After seeing the preserved German bunkers, we visited the American cemetery. It was a moving place - the layout of the cemetery is very dignified. As you walk between the tombstones (a mixture of uniformly white marble crosses or Stars of David), you become immersed in a sea of white - over 9,000 Americans are buried there - and you feel the gravity of the D-Day invasion. The chapel at the end of the cemetery, though small, has a mosaic ceiling depicting the ascension of soldiers dying on the beach into heaven with the help of angels. Really, there is no way to describe the feeling you have walking through the cemetery other than the fact that it was really amazing to be there. After the cemetery, we finally visited a beach - Omaha beach to be exact. We weren't there for long but it was enough to get the picture. Our guide told us that Omaha was the bloodiest of the 5 beaches (Gold, Omaha, Sword, Juno, Utah) and that it was in the first onslaught that the most men were killed by the German guns. You aren't allowed to take anything from the beaches but, alas, we are law breakers. Sharp took a rock, and I took a shell for Chris. It was after the beach that we came to the last and, arguably, the coolest part of our tour: Ponte du Hoc (note: had we not done this tour, we would have MAYBE seen the beach only - the buses don't run to all the other places so the minibus was quite a find). It was here that the American Rangers scaled a 250 foot cliff to take out 5 German guns - a lot of the Rangers were lost (100 out of the 250 remained to fight another day) but they were successful at taking out the German guns (which were actually hidden). But what really makes Ponte du Hoc amazing is the fact that it has not been modified since 1944. All along the coast, the farmers reclaimed the shelled areas for agricultural purposes. However, Ponte du Hoc was left alone - as a result, massive craters exist along the cliff edge. Huge pieces of bunker lay 150 feet away from where they originally were. Wire, mortar, and cement are scattered along the cliff, along with the massive holes in the ground. Frank found this to be the "most awesome" of the destinations, as did we- he ran in and out of the craters and we, again, took his picture for him. We stayed at Ponte du Hoc for awhile, just to take in this battlefield. It was pretty spectacular - in the space of 5 hours, we got the Normandy beach/D-Day experience we wanted. And up until now, it remains Sharp's (and to a degree, my) favorite thing we've done. After the tour, we hoped on a train to Lille and crashed in our hostel there - we'd been up for quite some time at this point. Great great day.