Dayna and I went our separate ways today. I was up early and walked into Bayeux to catch an Overlord Tour called the "Band of Brothers", after the TV mini-series that aired a number of years ago. Dayna, on the other hand, slept in and then did a little walking tour of the city.

My tour started at bloody Omaha Beach, which included the American cemetery . We then traveled on to Sainte-Mere-Eglise and all of the sites of Easy Company from the show. I won't go into all the stops here because you really want to look at the pictures so I'll make sure I label them well. Our last stop of the day was Point du Hoc. That is the huge gun emplacement on the cliffs that a Ranger Battalion had to scale to capture the gun emplacements. It was situated between Omaha Beach and Utah Beach. We returned to Bayeux about 6 p.m. The weather was rainy all day so there were times that we were pretty bundled up and had our umbrellas deployed.

Our tour guide was actually German, married to a French lady. He had four uncles, two killed in battle while enlisted in the German army during the war. He was very knowledgeable and saw the war from many angles. We were a small group of eight, riding in a mini-bus. Our guide's company has special permission to enter private property where the large tour buses don't, or can't, go. In fact, many of the places we went to don't even have places for the big buses to park and he had to unlock gates to get in . Overall, this was an awesome day for me!

From here on I will let Dayna take over:

While Tom braved the rainy weather to visit all the important WWII Normandy war sites, I took a day to myself. I slept in!! By the time I was ready to head out the door, it was raining so I drove into town and parked in a parking lot near the massive Cathedral (more on that tomorrow!). My first stop was to visit the Bayeux Tapestry, which is not actually a tapestry, but an embroidery. This incredibly beautiful piece of artwork is nearly 230 feet long! It depicts the Norman conquest of England -- think William the Conqueror. The earliest known reference to the tapestry is in 1476 -- 18 years before Christopher Columbus "discovered" America. It is possible the tapestry was completed about 1066 -- and is still intact. Quite lovely, and I am very happy I was able to see it. Photography was not permitted as the flash would damage the colors of the threads and linen fabric .

Bayeux is a cute and historic town. It was now past lunchtime, but I was hungry. The French seem to take a siesta in the afternoons! Even the restaurants close at 2 p.m., not to reopen until 7 p.m. for dinner. Go figure. I, finally, found a little place that stayed open all day and had a bowl of soup and a cappuccino. After warming up from the rainy day, I headed to the Bayeux Cathedral -- possibly the largest cathedral I have ever seen. It is gigantic!! From the outside, it looks like two churches but, alas, it is only one HUGE building. Gorgeous and well maintained, unlike many of the Church of Ireland cathedrals in Ireland. Of course, as we noted in Ireland, the Catholics take better care of and have more money for maintenance of their churches.

The Bayeux Cathedral was consecrated in the 11th Century -- 1077, to be exact! It was the original home of the Bayeux Tapestry. The architecture of the cathedral is awe inspiring -- the stonework, the stained glass, the woodwork are all beautiful .  

The Cathedral is so large, it took me an hour or more to see everything. I, then, drove around Bayeux trying to find the location where Tom would be dropped of from his tour. Even with the help of Lilith, I gave up and parked where I knew he would walk past. It was raining fairly hard and I thought he would be wet, wet, wet. At 6 p.m., I gave up. Thinking I had missed him, I went back to our "Motel 6." Lo and behold, 15 minutes later, Tom walked in. We were both hungry so we headed back into town for dinner.  

Tomorrow we are headed back to our timeshare and will be settled for a few days until we go to Paris on Saturday.

Au Revoir!!