Once in Paris-St. Lazare, we had enough time to find some sandwiches in the station and get decent seats on the train, which got us to Caen around noontime. On the train we met some interesting folks; a guy and a girl who were on a European vacation after college -- the guy had just finished getting his undergrad and masters in English education, and the girl had just done her undergrad; both were from Rutgers and were quite charming.
After walking off the train in Caen we explored around a little and
made our way to the Office de Tourisme under a light drizzle. (The City of Caen has a web site, but
it's only in French). The tourism office told us how to get to the Caen Memorial, a recently
finished museum that basically wants to serve as an exposition on war
and a reminder of the fragile nature of peace. The memorial claims
450,000 visitors a year, of which 1/3 are schoolchildren.
Major topics seen inside the Memorial were The Failure of Peace, The
Postwar Years, The Wild Years, The 30's, Totalitarianism, France in
the Dark Years, World War/Total War, D-Day, The Battle of Normandy,
Hope, and the Nobel Peace Prize Gallery. All of it was well-presented,
although a few of the Microsoft Windows-based exhibits were exhibiting
typical Microsoft-based functionality:
This was a neat reproduction of a letter from Einstein to FDR.
The Nobel Peace Prize Winners gallery was really cool; it had a short bio and description of the political events surrounding the awarding of the prize for every year which it has been awarded (and a description of why it wasn't given on years that it wasn't).
All exhibits in the Memorial were tri-lingual (French, English, German) and were well presented, although I had trouble reading some of the smaller type at distance. (I observed plenty of other folks squinting too -- you basically had to wait in line to get close enough to read some of the captions.)
After leaving, we ran into some older English folks who were on their way back to Britian after a vacation. They had sailed across the channel in some sort of schooner, although I don't remember the exact type. We finished off the evening with a good Italian dinner (not finding anything terribly French open) and then crashed around midnight.
On the train to Bayeaux we met up again with the Rutgers folk and two
other girls, all of whom provided interesting travel conversation. One
of the girls is going to attempt Mt. Rainier in Washington over the
July 4th weekend. This was interesting to Charlie, as he lives fairly
close to the mountain.
At Bayeaux the girls stayed on the train to catch a fairy to England,
while we walked with some Canadians to a youth hostel in town known to
rent bicycles. Unfortunately, the hostel (Family House) was out, as
all of the bikes were "kaputt." After that we found the Office de
Tourisme, where Charlie asked the woman about ways to visit the D-day
sites of interest. She proceeded to explain where to drive to, and
Charlie mentioned that we didn't have a car. This basically elicited a
laugh out of her, although there were a couple of bus tours available
for a significant amount ($50+/person). We didn't really want to spend
this much, so we inquired about bike rental places. Bike rental is
probably a perfectly viable way of doing the tour, although you'd have
to start a little earlier in the day than we did. We estimated the
distances involved to be no worse than 20 or 30 miles, which is
perfectly doable, but we ended up getting to the bike rental area at
around 12:30, which violates one of the fundemantal rules of
France. (That rule is that there is at least one National holiday a
week, and that *every* industry except food service shall shut down
completely during the hours of 12pm and 2pm.)
By a stroke of luck, a van full of college students honked at us as it rounded a corner -- it turned out to be the LSU group in search of some food. They stopped and invited us to come along (since they had a 9 passenger van and 7 people). Upon considering our options and the current time, we decided that it was probably the best idea.
This is the van they rented from Avis:
Thus, we had lunch with them at a cafeteria out there, picked up some
desserts, and headed out for the beaches. The first real stop we made
was at the American Cemetery (the largest one). My first thought upon
walking about 30 meters into the grounds was that the scene depicting
this in Saving Private Ryan doesn't even come close to doing
justice to the size or feeling one gets in person at the monument. The
incredible symmetry of the graves was broken in a few spots by
recently placed flowers. The entire experience was pretty incredible,
as I initially got lost for a few seconds in the beauty of the grounds
and ocean. It didn't take long to remember that I was standing in the
midst of thousands of graves, explored both by random tourists like
myself and by men looking at the graves of their friends.
I took some pictures.
After the cemetery we ventured down by Omaha beach, and then to La Pointe du Hoc, between the Omaha and Utah beaches. The point has impressive cliffs and was taken primarily by the 225 Rangers of the 2nd Battalion, under Lt. Col. Rudder. I think something like 90 of the men survived the attack. There is a separate page for La Pointe du Hoc that I've made that includes all of the pictures.
From there, we headed down toward Mont St. Michel, an impressive cathedral out on a small island. The trip was about 120km or so, and took us around 1.3 hours (due to some confusions with French roads). Unfortunately, we only had about 10 minutes to explore the actual site due to time constraints, but it was still pretty cool. Charlie and I ran up close enough to get inside, although we didn't get to do a tour or anything. I'm sure it was impressive, but I'm able to mentally map the inside of a cathedral on land into this one, so I was satisfied.
The LSU group had to catch a specific train back to Paris that evening from Caen, so they had to get the rental van returned and all that before the train left. Thus, we made good time from Mont St. Michel to Caen. Charlie's GPS claims that the fastest it's been in the last week was 152km/h, which isn't too crazy considering that the speed limit was 130kph most of the way. In fact, much like Atlanta, I remember getting passed by several cars when we were going about 140. In any case, the trip was uneventful and marked only by one wrong turn inside the city.
We returned the van to the Avis lot and locked the doors with 8 minutes left to departure, although the last few minutes in the city were surprisingly calm (no James Bond scenes here). To the best of our knowledge the whole group made the train. That evening Charlie and I (gasp) went to McDonalds and had big macs with large cokes. You still can't get ice, but it's a start. I don't think we would have been able to wait for real food. Afterwards, we explored Le Chateau Ducal some and then ran into a crazy festival downtown. I have a page about the crazy festival with pictures.
Upon arrival in Metz, Charlie and I grabbed some more food and then Charlie went to study for his test. I took a quick nap and then explored the Fort de Queuleu, an interesting remnant/park located only about 2km from the Georgia Tech Lorraine building.