Sunday, April 15, 2012

Belgium and France 2012 - Normandy

Walking around Saint Bernardus

We checked out of our beer lover's lodging on Thursday morning and drove down to the Normandy region of France. We drove most of the afternoon to get down to Mont Saint-Michel, which is a rocky island that his home to an abbey. Until the late 1800's, you could only get to the island at low tide. Nowadays, the road is accessible all the time. The parking lots, however, are not. As we pulled up to park, there was a sign indicating that the parcking lot would be under water in 2.5 hours. It was less time than we thought we'd need, but we went for it anyway. It turns out that it was just the right amount of time for us to tour the abbey, stop in a couple tourist shops, get a crepe, and leave before the tide buried our car.
Mont Saint-Michel

We stayed in the town of Bayeux that night so we could explore the nearby D-Day beaches the next morning. We spent most of our time at the American Cemetary and Memorial at Omaha Beach. It's a breathtaking place containing over 9,000 graves of American military dead. I was really blown away at the number of people who gave the ultimate sacrifice here to literally change the world. Neither Christine nor I are too versed in WWII history but we learned a lot at their awesome visitor center. We were only thinking we'd make a quick stop here, but we ended up staying for a few hours. Well worth the visit.
American Cemetary at Omaha Beach

American Cemetary at Omaha Beach

On our way into Paris we made one last stop in Giverny to visit Monet's garden. We were going to skip it, but it turned out to be such a beautful day that a walk in the garden sounded great.

Monet Garden
Monet Garden

Monet Garden

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