Normandy

After a Managing People exam last Monday, I took a trip to the Normandy region. Most of you will recognize this as the beaches that the Allies (mostly US, UK, and Canadian forces) landed on D-Day, quickly pushing the Nazi regime back. While, this was the main reason I went, you must know that this region extends further then these beaches and has a lot of amazing sites.

Back to the story, we (Danijela, Elycia and I) drove from Paris to Mont Saint-Micheal. This is a little mountain with a big church. The big attraction at this place is that at certain times of the day, the tide will rise high enough to surround the whole mountain. Unfortunately, we were not there at the right time of the year to see this natural art.

Nonetheless, at night it felt like I was on the set of Les Misérables.
See Exhibit A & B.
The place is astounding at night...
It's not too bad during the day either.
After a night and morning there, we heading up north to Bayeux (the 1st town liberated by the Allies). We checked out a WWII museum, which was remarkably interesting. We then headed to the American Cemetery.

Here is the view when you walk in.. all those white things are tombstones.
The cemetery holds close to 10,000 tombstones for American soldiers.
A fact that mildly surprised me was that it is owned and maintained by America, on American Land, in France. The more surprising fact was that there are about 5 German cemeteries in the area. 3 hold about 10,000 each, and another has over 20,000. Those are astonishing numbers! Plus, they must be run by Germany (don't quote me). I guess this means that everyone is friends again. Unfortunately, as time was limited, we did not get to those.

Omaha beach. Pretty crazy to think about what transpired on this beach. Saving Private Ryan anyone (although that may have been steps over on Utah beach).
Inside one of the bunkers.
I think this was a big gun here.
Since this trip was a trip that I had been waiting for since I arrived in France, I thought would have been disappointed due to over anticipation. However, that was very far from the truth. I experienced where the world changed and I walked on land that too many people took their last breath on. Yet, even though this is a horrible thought, without this tactical operation, the war would have extended even longer. Or could the Russians have won it all by themselves from the east? Think about that for a sec.

In any event, I recommend this trip to every one that comes to France. After all, it's only a 2 hour drive from Paris.