Bon jour from Caen, France!
After two train rides from San Sebastian, we arrived in Caen, the largest city in the Normandy region of France. This was the home of William the Conqueror, also known as William the Bastard (we don't know why he's called that). He, of course, later became one of the most important kings of England. This is also the spot of one of the bloodiest and perhaps most important battles in history:
D-Day and the World War II Invasion of Normandy.

JENNI: We arrived in Normandy in the midst of an unseasonable cold weather spell - about 60 degrees outside and very rainy. Even the locals say this is unusually cold for summertime, and we made the mistake of walking in the driving rain from one "complet" (sold out) hotel to another. We know better than this. We know that you don't leave the Tourism Office without making a few calls before setting out. Ah well. Lesson learned, again. I think that walk depressed our immune systems enough to allow a severe allergy attack on Friday to knock us both out. We spent Saturday in bed, drugged up on Benadryl and surrounded by tissues.

The people of Caen are some of the nicest we've met...the first people we encountered were a French couple at the bus stop at the train station. They helped us (in French) understand where we were to go and how much a bus ticket was. Then the bus driver didn't charge us for a ticket, and a passenger on the bus actually walked us to the Tourism Office! I thought something was definitely wrong, but that's just the Caen people.

JOE: Maybe we need to eat more vegetables and fruits or find some vitamins. The Memorial de Caen is our first stop. It's a giant museum dedicated to the story of World War II. The museum takes us through a dramatic presentation of the events before and during WWII including the French contribution (yes, they surrendered very quickly but that part is glossed over and more emphasis is placed on the resistance movement during the war.) Some of the more interesting items include: real-life blue-striped uniforms of holocaust victims, a bullet-ridden French wall replete with a 1940's bicycle, and an audio recording of a phone call from a French diplomat to his boss in which they discussed the surrender of France to the Nazis. The Nazis secretly recorded that phone call. The photos and films are moving as well. One film called, "Esperance" (Hope) is a history of the 20th century with many famous images including excerpts of speeches from Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy and George Bush. The history of war is chronicled from WWII to Korea to the Cold War to Vietnam, Prague Spring, the falling of the Iron Curtain and other conflicts in the 80's and 90's. Probably the most gripping piece of video is one I'd never seen before. It was shot just days, maybe hours, before the fall of the Berlin Wall. A woman was yelling passionately at an East German soldier who guarded the wall. She was pleading, "I just want to go to the other side of the wall. I've never seen the other side." The soldier tried to keep a stoic face but quickly sneaked a glance down and met her eyes. He looked away and stood his ground. Through her tears, the woman's voice crackled as she screamed, "Please … I want to go (to the other side). Is that so hard to understand?!"

JENNI: The museum was indeed moving, and I felt prepared for the visit to the beaches and cemeteries on Thursday. The skies cleared for the first time since we've been here, leaving only the chilly wind, and I wondered if this was the type of weather the Allied soldiers experienced when they landed. The Invasion on June 6 was delayed a day to let a cold, rainy storm pass, perhaps leaving only a chilly wind like this.

We started at Arromanches, where Churchill made his wild idea of artificial harbors a reality. The natural harbor at Cherbourg was too heavily defended by the Germans to attempt an assault - so Churchill and the allies built their own artificial harbors -- a novel concept at the time. They first built huge 5,000-ton concrete caissons in England and tested the idea in the Thames River. Immediately after D-Day, the blocks were placed carefully in a wide arc at Arromanches and functioned well as a "harbor" in just a few days. This allowed the Allies to cart in supplies and vehicles to keep the Invasion going strong. To this day you can still see the remains of those artifical harbors just off the Normandy beaches.
Pont-du-Hoc, another battlefield on the coastline, makes your imagination run wild. As you step onto the battlefield, you're greeted with razor wire barring access to prohibited areas. The razor wire really struck me - what you would normally see are nice, neat fences and signs warning against entry. Instead, it's razor wire. Next you see a weird yet beautiful landscape. Weird because it looks like giant ice-cream scoops gouged huge dips out of the ground; beautiful because it's all grassy, peaceful-looking, and gentle in the sea breeze. Those are the craters left from the Allied and German bombs. They are everywhere, as far as they eye can see, and very deep. Gigantic blocks of destroyed concrete bunkers litter the ground…I tried to imagine what the land looked like as the bombs fell.

The story of Pont-du-Hoc is sobering. Two hundred fifty US Rangers were tasked with destroying the gigantic guns at the top of the cliff around 6:30AM - a half-hour before the landings at Omaha and Utah Beaches on either side of Pont-du-Hoc. The current washed the landing craft too far down the beach below the cliffs, so the Rangers had to run back to the appointed spot to scale the cliffs with grapples and rope ladders in the morning light. To make matters worse, there were no guns at the top of the cliff. They had been replaced with fake, wooden guns. Only 171 Rangers made it to the top where they waited two days for transportation. In those two days, the Germans from the two beaches on either side bombed the area relentlessly, knowing that the Americans were stuck there. Only 91 Rangers survived.

The three cemeteries we visited - British, German, and American - were very different from each other. The British soldiers are buried very close to the road…in fact, the tour guide was running late so we just pulled over all saw the grounds from the van window. It was well maintained with English Garden-style plantings, and the graves are close together. The German Cemetery seemed a bit more out-of-the-way. There are more than 27,000 Germans buried here. The French government owns this land, and would only dedicate so much land. It's not enough land to bury one soldier per grave, so there are two soldiers in each grave here. The markers on the ground have the names of both people buried in the same space. The roughly-hewn black crosses marking the German graves are a stark contrast to the white ones at the American Cemetery.

The German and British Cemetery grounds are owned and maintained by the French government. The 172.5 acres of the American Cemetery is owned by an independent U.S. agency. The French government gave this land to the U.S. "without charge or taxation for perpetual use as a permanent burial ground." It is vast, beautiful, and a powerful reminder of what happened here during the Invasion.

JOE: Rows and rows of white crosses and Stars of David mark the bodies of teenagers, most of them. More than 9,000 headstones line the American Cemetery, marking the spot on Omaha beach where they lost their lives while helping win one of the most important battles in history.Their names are all-American. They are from all 50 states and all walks of life. For some, this was the only action they saw in the war and it was over in a matter of minutes as most were gunned down as soon as they hit the shore. (Only one-third of the American bodies are buried here. The rest were shipped home at the request of their families.) The cemetery has placed all of their headstones facing west toward America; their homeland to which they never returned. They barely got a chance to be a part of one of America's greatest generations. I saw an old man, perhaps in his late 70's, walking through the back corner of the cemetery. He became overwhelmed while looking at the names on the headstones. He turned to hide his emotions but I saw him pull out a handkerchief and wipe his eyes. He proudly walked away before his family could see him, but I think they know how much it means to him to relive this moment in history. Later, along Omaha beach, we saw another D-Day veteran and I told him I had a new appreciation for his sacrifice so many years ago. I said, "thank you" and he thanked me too. His generation will be missed. But, through the tremendous efforts of the Memorial and the cemetery, they will never be forgotten.

JENNI: Normandy was not on our original itinerary…we thought we'd go if we had time. I'm very thankful we had the time.