Normandy

So this weekend I got to go on a really great IES field trip, a weekend in Normandy.
We got up at 5 am on Friday morning to meet at a bus stop near school to catch our chartered bus. We were in Caen, Normandy by a little after 10 am to see the Memorial de la Paix. It's basically a big museum that focuses on World War II but has exhibits on WWI and the Cold War as well. They had a lot of really interesting stuff, since a lot of it focused on France during WWII, but there was plenty of stuff about the conflicts in Russia and the Pacific as well. Something really special that we got to see was a temporary exhibit on September 11th. It choked me up a few times, because it was so strange to see that kind of thing in a museum...they had fragments of the towers, a crumpled police van, posters of the missing, profiles of the hijackers (something you really don't learn about in the US), even the twisted remains of the sculptures that used to be around the WTC complex. it was really interesting to get a foreign perspective on the attacks. We had lunch and I got to try kir, which is like white wine with anise in it, it was very sweet. We also got to watch two short films about D-Day before we left in the late afternoon.
We then drove the half hour to our hotel in Asnelles-sur-mer. The main building is a castle that is right on the beach...you don't even have to cross the street, there's just a sidewalk and then beach and ocean. So after we put our stuff down, Megan, Becky, Maria, Amy, and I ran around on the beach for an hour or so, drawing stuff in the sand and wading in the water and jumping around and being completely silly. The water was much warmer than it would be at home this time of year, it was actually pleasant to put our feet in (and the weather in general was gorgeous all weekend). When we looked out into the water, we saw these big blocks of concrete and wondered what they were...we found out the next day. After the rising tide threatened to get our stuff wet a few too many times, we decided to go for a walk around the (tiny) town. Normandy in general is beautiful, if quiet. Then we ate dinner and hung out for a little while before bed.

Saturday morning after breakfast, we headed to Arromanches to go see the Musee de Débarquement. It was only about a 15-min drive away, and there we learned that the big concrete blocks we had seen the day before were the remaining bits of the artificial harbors that had been built for the landings on D-Day...the beach we were staying on was one of the D-Day beaches. We got a guided tour of the museum, where a lot of the logistics of the landings and the building of the artificial harbors were explained to us. They were the original idea of Winston Churchill, and they were built in only 8 months. We then got to walk around on the beach, see one of the blocks from the artificial harbors up close (I even got to take a picture of the inside), etc. Then it was off to an oyster tasting that our bus driver brought us to...I tasted one and it pretty much tasted like salt. Not a fan. Then lunch, then we went to the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-mer and Omaha Beach. There are almost 10,000 men (and 6 women) buried there, and that's not even all the people who were victims of the campaign, since some of them are buried in the US. The territory is technically US soil, a gift from the French government. It's a beautiful cemetery, with statues and a chapel and poppies (poppies are the first flowers to grow on a battlefield). Each grave is marked by a white marble cross, in neat rows for acres. We didn't actually go down to Omaha Beach, since we only had an hour, and it takes 10 minutes to get down and 20 minutes to get back up the steep cliffs. But technically it's the same beaches we'd been on all weekend, just slightly farther west. Looking down the cliffs, it's impossible to believe that soldiers climbed them, and that it was even possible for us to win this battle. The contemplative day ended with an amusing incident...the bus stopped working and the ten guys on the trip had to push it while it was in neutral. This resulted in a bang and a cloud of black smoke, which apparently made the bus work again...

Once we got home, Becky, Maria, Megan and I decided it was time to continue our day in America in France. We went to a restaurant in the Marais called Breakfast in America...a fifties-style diner featuring milkshakes, fries, chocolate chip pancakes, and all the other lovely American food we'd missed so much. We ate until we were stuffed, and it was cheap, too! We sat there giggling for about an hour after we'd finished eating...when you're overtired, everything is funny.

The weekend was really interesting, particularly in terms of US-France relations (the topic of one of my classes, sorry, I'm a dork). Yes, the relationship is complicated, but here's a news flash for everyone...65 years later, Normans are still grateful to Americans, who they see as their liberators. Normandy is a beautiful, quiet region of farmland. Even after seeing videos of battles on the very roads we drove on, it's impossible to believe that those actually happened in those tiny, silent hamlets, and on those beautiful beaches. I have a ton of pictures to share :-) the usual link. I also put it on the left side of the blog, above the slideshow.