Ciao Mondo! : Bayeux, Mont Saint-Michel & Omaha Beach

I caught the train to Bayeux and arrived around 2:30 pm on a Sunday. Too late to do much. I was able to head over to the Bayeux Tapestry Museum that afternoon though. The weather was cold and drizzly when I arrived at the train station so I grabbed a small hotel room next to it and meandered in to town. Bayeux was the first French town to be l

iberated from Nazi occupation during the 1944 Battle of Normandy and survived almost completely unscathed.

The Bayeux Tapestry is a 230 ft. long cloth (not really a tapestry) which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England as well as the events of the invasion itself. I remembered learning about it in my History of the English Lan

guage class. It was in remarkable shape for being 1000 years old.

In the center of Bayeux, there is a huge cathedral, Cathedrale Notre Dame de Bayeux . The roads were blocked off due to a service going on and so I couldn't get in. They had set up a huge outdoor t.v. screen and hundreds of seats so that people could watch the service from outside. I watched a bit of it and could see a lot of clergy people there.

I headed over to the Churchill Hotel and booked

a trip out to Mont Saint-Michel for the next morning. Construction of the abbey began around the 8th century and according to legend, St. Michael the Archangel appeared to St. Aubert, bishop of Avranches, in 708 and instructed him to build a church on the rocky islet. Aubert repeatedly ignored the angel's instruction, until St. Michael burned a hole in the bishop's skull wit

h his finger. Nice bedtime story.

Mont Saint-Michel was majestic. I spent a couple of hours touring the abbey and the surrounding area. The tides can vary greatly, at roughly 46 ft between high and low water marks. You must stay on the causeway or risk getting swept away by the rapid tide or sinking in quicksand.

I returned to Bayeux with just enough time to catch the last bus to Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery. It covers 172 acres, and con

tains the remains of 9,387 American military dead, most of whom were killed during the invasion of Normandy. The story of the movie Saving Private Ryan is based on the story of the Niland Brothers, two of whom are buried in the cemetery.

There is an interactive museum that you walk through before going to the cemetery itself. There are taped accounts by people that were at Omaha Beach on D-Day that you could

listen to. I was very moved by it and it brought me to tears. I went outside to see the neat rows of thousands of graves overlooking the bluff.

The last train was supposed to be at 5:20pm, so I decided to head down to the beach itself and take some pictures. I stood there and imagined all of the dead bodies, blood and chaos that must have ensued during the battle.I decided to take some pictures with my tripod. Some English guy saw me struggling with it and offered to take a picture for me. Yep, just as I thought, it sucked. My tripod pic was better!

It was getting late and I didn't want to miss the last bus. I ran up the hill and to the parking lot. I had about 10 minutes to spare. 10 minutes went by, 20, 30....uh oh. I guess the last bus was at 5:00 instead of 5:20. I had to have the cemetery call a cab for me. It cost 35 freakin' Euros as opposed to 1.50. Oh well.

Approaching Mont Saint-Michel

Quicksand!

The tide going out at Mont Saint Michele

Old door

Looking down at Mont Saint Michele

The cloister at Mont Saint Michele

Omaha Beach

So, this nice guy saw me struggling to take a nice selfie on the beach. He graciously offered to take a picture for me aaaand...THIS was the result. Thanks guy, but you suck. Where am I? Omaha Beach or the middle of the Sahara Desert?