Thoughts on Normandy

We posted a few pics yesterday, so I just figured it would be good to have some sort of personal account to go along with the pics. I will make Clay write one too, so you get both of our perspectives. The day after Mont St. Michel (so, yesterday) we woke up, and after breakfast, we went straight to the museum to see the Tapestry of Bayeux. Its a 1000 (yup, one thousand) year old tapestry that recounts the story of William the Conquerer, and how he became the kind of England. Its close to 70 meters long, and though its called a 'tapestry' its actually just a long piece of linen that has been embroidered.

We got in for 3 euro because we are students, which was nice, and took a little audio tour that explained each of the scenes on the tapestry. It was pretty cool. After that we jumped in the car and headed of to the beaches and took a self guided D-day tour, with the help of our roomie Andrew, who has been on a D-day tour before and also is a big WWII history buff, He took us to Utah beach, Pointe du Hoc, Omaha Beach, and then finally to the American War Cemetery. It was a really interesting day. The beaches were actually very beautiful, and peaceful, and tranquil... It was really hard to imagine such terrible things going to at that same location 70 some odd years ago. So beaches were really interesting, but my favorite was the cemetery at the end. There was a very nice little memorial/museum there, where we read and watched clips that brought it all to life. Then, walking out into the cemetery, which happened to be one of the most beautiful places I have seen, ever, was just surreal. It was manicured to perfection, with all of the crosses lined of in perfectly straight lines. The one question we had though, was why each of the stars that marked the grave of a jewish soldiers had little rocks stacked on it. Almost every single one we saw had on or several small stones set on top of it. We wondered why, but none of us had an answer. Anyway. Our trip was pretty incredible.