Tuesday, May 02, 2006

The Beaches of Normandy







Sunday afternoon we went for a drive up to the Northern coast of France to the beaches where the D-Day invasion occured in June 1944. We stopped at Omaha Beach, one of the beaches where the US military invaded. It looks amazingly like the Oregon coast, and the weather on Sunday was about the same. Long sandy beaches (we happened to be there during low tide) with rolling green hills coming up out of the sand. There were the remnants of German bunkers which you could walk thru, but we spent so much time on the beach that we didn't have all that much time for the upper memorials of the area. The cemetary was closed so we weren't able to see that, but the monuments at the top of the hills were simple and striking. It was so quiet, people were very respectful, and the beaches so huge that we felt very calm and very alone there. Sophia wandered over the sand, threw rocks in the waves, marveled at her footprints behind her (and other people's footprints ahead of her), and generally ran as far & as fast as her legs would take her.