Kyriad Caen Centre

... there. It was beautiful, haunting, and eerie to see the sight of where the troupes landed on D-Day. When I was in the museum, I was listening to an interactive audio recording of soldier’s experiences from D-Day, and the first button I happened to push was of a soldier from Mt. Vernon, IL! What a small world. To climb down to the actual beach part of Omaha Beach took awhile. It’s ...

... at each scene on the tapestry. Without it you would find it hard to depicher the story and miss the little details which bought the tapestry to life.
The town of Bayeux itself is gorgeous and miracouslouly escaped WWII bombing...even though it was only 10km inland from the D-Day beaches

... Britain along with steel floating docks. These docks provided the gateway for suppliers from Britain to France. The idea was masterminded by Churchill and it was an engineering first and still mind blowing all these years later. Not knowing much about D-Day the excellent 6 June 1944 museum situated right was shore proved to be extremely informative and a history lesson that we will not forget.

Arrived at Ouistreham just before dark and found an Aire de Service right on the beach and this time it was free! The downside was it was right next to the ferry terminal and the 6am ferry to Portmouth the next day was kill the tranquilo the next morning. Kim's Maison du Scooby cooked up a storm. Pork fajitas on rice - delicious. I gave it 5 stars.

The trip to Normandy was a lot to absorb. It's hard to believe, that my grandfather Kelly was there on D-Day over 60 years ago.I certainly do not think I would have survived. I am thankful he did, I wouldn't be here. Nor my mother and her siblings, my sisters, or my nieces. His sacrifice has not only affected the existence of my own life, but the daily lives ...

... news that my son William had received the Reg Barker Memorial Award from Queen's University. Inside the letter from Queen's there was a copy of a newspaper article written by John Ross Matheson of Gananoque. As I read the article I garnered a growing spooky sense that something otherworldly was going on. I could see that despite the fact that I had no known blood relation named Reg Barker, Reg and members of my family shared so many similarities that I was lead to believe that I ...

... that we had been suckered there was a bike park for locals no charge, 10 euros for cars. Very steep narrow roadways full of American tourists.....oh well its still a fantastic place and full of history. Back to the hotel as it was going dark then out for restaurant for dinner, great meal even had crepes for a pudding. Back on the diet when we get home! The next day it was onto the Normandy D day beaches to ...

... towns ~7am the navy & air force began the artillery barrage, unfortunately the navy was out of range & due to fog the attack wasn't very successful ~7:30am troops began to disembark from landing barges & make their way up the beach - There were very high casualty # in the first waves of soldiers because tanks & machine guns had not yet arrived In one of the first battalions on the beach only 90 of the 275 soldiers survived ...

Crepes, War and More Normandy, France conjures up images of Calvados, Camembert and slaughter. Caen, the capital of lower Normandy, has its fair share of all of this. First, food. Caen's center (an easy 20-minute walk from gare SNCF, the train station) is full of wonderful cafes, pastry shops and chocolateries. Along the waterfront are family-run Iranian, Armenian and Italian restaurants. Now, the slaughter. Caen has experienced all the horrors of war, from ...

... ourselves spending our last few hours in Caen train station, babysitting our bags and watching 5 (maybe 6) trains pass through the station on-route to Paris. It wasn't a total waste of time however; we managed to update our diaries (don't think any less of me... I only keep one on the road, a habit Meg was keen to share) and I worked a bit on our Caen Travelpod entry. We left the station about an hour before departure to get a ...