NI Day 7: Griffin Invades Normandy

We dozed on the bus after leaving the airport.  I know the best way to adjust to time zone changes is not to sleep till nighttime on arrival day, but sleeping on the bus doesn't count.  When we woke up, we were nearing Benouville, which is home to the Pegasus Bridge.  The Pegasus Bridge was secured by British paratroopers during the night before the landing on the beaches.  It is one example of everything going right for the Allies.  Holding this bridge gave the British a way to get off the beaches.  Our guide, Marc, was excellent.  We ate at a Cafe that claims to be the first home liberated by the Allies.  It was sandwiches and chips and a kit Kat bar.  The owner was annoyed that we were late, but we couldn't control the airlines.  The best was our coordinators arguing with our bus driver, who doesn't speak French, about the route.  At one point, she drove around a roundabout three times.

The bridge over the canal has been reconstructed to look like the one from 1944, because the old one could not support modern traffic.  The old one has been moved to the museum site.  Also at the site is a replica of a glider plane, which was made of wood and the French farmers burned them to get them out of their fields.  There is also a type of bridge that the Allies constructed to support tanks.  This particularly interested me because my Papaw Duncan served with the 3rd Armored Engineers.  The museum was good, the outside stuff excellent, but it's hard to appreciate museums when you are running on just a nap on the bus.

Stop number two was a museum built around a German bunker.  It had a lot of stuff to look at, and the best was the view from the top.  It allowed the Germans to see the beaches and call in coordinates to the artillery.  An invasion was not a surprise for Germany.  They had built fortifications along the coast called the Atlantic Wall, promising to throw the Allies back into the sea when the invasion came.

From there we checked into the hotel in Bayeux, the Novotel, a very American style place.  We met with our kids, and ended up with a group of 7 adults with C and her best buddy she has made on this trip.  We walked down to the pedestrian area and finally picked a place with a sign that said "Table de Terrior". It wasn't a terror.  I had a vegetable soup, Normandy pork, which is a white apple cider sauce with mushrooms, and an apple tart with ice cream for dessert.

We strolled back to the room and the adults enjoyed adult beverages and conversation in the hotel lobby.

Today's step count: 12858