Report on Billi Pod’s Normandy Adventure - Day One.

Greetings my loyal and faithful readers. It is now 11:00pm, Paris time, on Sunday and David and I have settled back into his Paris apartment after completing a wonderful 3 day adventure going to D-Day landing sites and then inland for a scenic tour including some cathedrals.

I haven’t posted anything because at our hotel in Bayeax the promised WiFi service wasn’t working (no need to go into details ), so let me begin with Friday, aided immeasurably by David’s input --

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Armed with a Hertz rental car with a GPS guidance system (in English) Billi Pod and David were on our way out of Paris at 9:00am and headed to the Beaches of Normandy for our planned D-Day adventure. My first experience with a GPS system was fascinating in that when we left the Gare Nord (a major transportation hub) in Paris, with David driving, the system predicted that we would arrive at our programmed destination of the Memorial Center for History and Peace in Caen in 2 hours 37 minutes==>it proved to be only two minutes off. Awesome!!

The museum was like none I had ever seen. It traces through photographs, memorabilia, movies and rare artifacts the World's path from World War I, though the depression, the ascendancy of Hitler, the rearmament of Germany, World War II and the War Crimes Trials in Nuremberg. It has special emphasis on the Normandy D-Day Invasion.

We spent about 3 hours there and it proved to be an excellent way of orienting ourselves for the next 2 1/2 days in Normandy, even though we only had time to explore half of the museum.

When we left the museum, a 20 minute drive from Caen took us to the famous Pegasus Bridge about which I wasn’t familiar until I read a book, PEGASUS BRIDGE, by Steven Ambrose, as mandated by David in preparation for this day.

Very briefly, the capture of this very small bridge was vital to the entire success of D-Day because it held the key to preventing the German army from moving their tanks and troops from the east part of the French coastline where they had been concentrated to the Allied invasion sites on the Normandy Beaches. After capture it had to be protected for use by incoming Allied troops and equipment. 3 gliders were towed across the English channel and were released with a small detachment of highly trained British troops. Miraculously all 3 landed within 60 yards of the bridge a few minutes after midnight on D-Day, June 6, 1944, 6 hours before the invasion began. With this silent approach the troops were successful in capturing the bridge. They then repelled numerous counterattacks. It has been cited by British air historians as the most brilliant fete of aviation in World War II.

A newly opened Memorial museum is dedicated to the heroics of these airborne troops commanded by Major John Howard. We walked across the bridge and went to the glider landing sites. Because I had read the book as required, the whole scene felt alive to me, it really did. What an experience. One I will never forget, that is for certain.

Then we drove along the beach passing the "British sector” beaches, until it got dark. We then turned inland to our hotel in Bayeux, home of William the Conqueror and the starting point for our D-Day van tour on Saturday morning.

It was an adventure unto itself to find our hotel, gain access to the reserved parking area and check into our rooms. It was 8:00pm. We found a nice bistro and had a bite and then came back to our rooms. It was at this point that we discovered the WiFi problem(s) - as I said, I won’t bore you with the details.

Day One of our Normandy Adventures was complete. AWESOME!!

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Details on Saturday and Sunday will be posted tomorrow morning, Paris time.

Billi Pod

“Don't pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.”