I know, you’re thinking “More beaches, when will she stop talking about beaches? Its winter!”
Well, these were not sit in the sun beaches. Natalie and I spent the last 2 nights at Bayeux, a small villiage in Normandy about 10km from the D-Day beaches. After lots of drama and frusteration with not being able to get out to the Canadian sites (Juno Beach), we ran into a family from outside Ottawa who we shared a room with in our hostel in Paris for 1 night. They had rented a car and we asked them if we could go with them to Juno this morning before we caught the train back to Paris. So this morning we drove out to Arromanches, where the Allies built a harbour using concrete blocks they towed over from England, then over to Juno Beach at Courselliers sur Mer and walked along the beach (tide was high unfortunately so we didn’t have the same look as it would have when they landed), saw some pill boxes and then went through the Juno Beach Museum and learned about contempory Canada. It was a pretty good little display and there were lots of people going through it. We finished it off by visiting the Canadian War Cemetary before catching the train (the first time… but thats a story for another time. Suffice to say that Natalie still has her camera) back to Paris. Tomorrow we fly out for Dublin – back to English (or some form thereof) for the rest of our trip. The whole trip out to Normandy was a moving experience, especially since I know some people who landed at Juno on D-Day.