Our time in Normandy has been so much fun! We have gotten quite good at finding a local boulangerie and at buying our pain au chocolates and other treats. This morning the woman in the boulangerie suggest that we might prefer to buy our coffee at the bar next door because then we could eat our pastries and drink our coffee inside.

Back at our hotel I had a nice conversation in the parking lot with a British woman. She had her husband have a home in the south of France. They take the ferry over from Bournemouth and drive to their house. She was bemoaning how stupid Brexit is and how difficult it has made visiting their house. She complained about “Bloody Forage” and I complained about Idiot Trump!

From Crépon we drove east about 60 miles to Honfleur. We stopped at the Pegasus Bridge memorial where RAF glider pilots and their crews landed and captured the bridges over the Orne River and Canal early in the morning of June 6, 1944.

A little bit farther down the road we stopped for our picnic lunch.

Honfleur is a very old port town that still has a lot of its old buildings. We are staying on the third floor of a charming 100 year old house that was turned into a hotel. The hotel is called La Petite Follie. I’m sad to say our trip is almost over. But I must say that after carrying my bag up three flights of stairs to our room one thing I’m very glad about is that I won’t have to carry my suitcase up flights of stairs too many more times!

We had an excellent dinner at a nearby restaurant, Côté Resto. We started with shrimp, then had fish and octopus and ended with chocolate cake. I only took a picture of the shrimp

Today we explored the backroads around where we are staying. We are in the the British and Canadian sectors of the Normandy invasion.

Next we stopped at the Green Howard’s D-Day Memotial. It’s in Crépon near where we are staying. The Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howard’s) are the unit that captured Crépon on D-Day.

Just a couple of miles from Crépon are what’s left of a German Gun Battery. There were several big bumkers. According to the signs this kind of a battery would have been equipped with four 100 mm howitzers.

We also had fun taking pictures of the different crops we drove by and using the Apple plant identification feature to figure out what we were seeing.

Our next stop was a memorial to the squadron situated at the aerodrome that was built here after the invasion. The airfield was one of many built immediately after the invasion.

A bit farther away we stopped at the Benny-Sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery.

Mid afternoon we had a picnic.

After eating we checked out the memorial across from where we are staying. It is about the Belgians who fought with the RAF.

Today we moved a bit east on the Normandy coast. Last night we were in Viereville-sur-Mer overlooking Omaha Beach. Tonight we are just inland from Gold Beach, one of the Allies landing sites, and Arromanches, where the British built a massive artificial harbor.

This morning we went back to Trévières where we had breakfast yesterday and went to the same boulangerie for our pastries, then got our coffee at the same bar. In my opinion breakfast in France is one of the highlights of traveling here.

We checked out of our hotel at 11:00 then walked a bit.

Next we drove a mile up the road to the primary Omaha beach monuments.

Then we went to see the Bayeux Tapestry. It’s been on my bucket list for a long time. It’s kind of an embroidered comic strip 70 yards long, created to tell the story of the Norman invasion of England, and the battle of Hastings in 1066. It’s almost 1000 years old! I thought it was fascinating. You aren’t allowed to take pictures of the tapestry.

We had a picnic lunch outside of Arromanches. Our picnic table was next to the road. We watched a steady stream of bicyclists pedaling up the hill. At least 3 different cyclist said “bon appetite!!” as they passed our picnic. It was great!

Our final stop of the day was the D-Day Landing museum in Arromanches. It tells the story of the massive artificial port that the Allie’s built off the coast at Arromanches. I knew they built an artificial port but I had no idea of the scale and what an inprssive engineering feat it was to build.

We are staying at La Ferme de la Rançonnière near Arromanches. It is a wonderful place. We had an excellent dinner in their restaurant tonight.

Today was the nicest weather day we have had in several days. It was a perfect day to explore along the D-day Normandy coast. We started by going 9 kilometers into Trévières to find a boulangerie for pastries for breakfast. We bough our pain au chocolat and pain au raisin and then went to another shop to get coffee and to eat them. We also bought a baguette for lunch.

Then we went to the American cemetery. The visitor center was very interesting and the cemetery, with 9,386 marble tombstones is moving.

The Overlord museum is very near the American Cemetery. We didn’t go in but we did stop to look at the outside displays.

Next we headed to Utah beach, the other big American D-day landing beach. On the way we stopped far a picnic lunch in Angoville-au-Plain. This area was where the 101st Airborne division paratroopers landed in a heavily defended area. Two of the paratroopers who were medics set up in this chuch and took care of wounded soldiers here for 72 hours straight.

For dinner we had mussels and pizza in the hotel bar.

After dinner we walked out on the pier in front of our hotel.

It was a beautiful sunny day today. Before leaving Château de la Ballue this morning we took another walk through the gardens but this time we used their printed guide to the gardens and saw things we had completely missed on our first walk. We also got to enjoy everything in the sun light.

About 11 we left the chateau and drove north to the coast of Normandy. Tonight we staying at Hotel du Casino, overlooking Omaha beach, one of the beaches the Americans landed on on D-day.

Mid afternoon we had a very nice lunch in the hotel bar.

Later we went to Pointe du Hoc. U.S. Rangers scaled the cliffs here to disable the heavily fortified gun battery.