In May, my sister came to us again and we did quite a bit of traveling with her. We took a trip to France. Our first stop was in Normandy. We were there for the Memorial Day weekend and we ended up very glad we took that weekend and not D-Day as it would have been a mad house with so many politicians around. Normandy is a lovely section of France. The people there are much nicer than in Paris. The weather was perfect. Not too cold and not hot although it did rain a day or 2. If I had to live in Europe somewhere I'd choose Normandy, but only if I could be very near the English channel. I did love that. The pictures you see here are 3 of the American cemetary
and 2 of
Pointe du Hoc. An interesting fact I learned here is that this land was owned by a farmer. After the war he could not farm it due to the huge pock marks from all the bombs dropped here. I believe he ended up having to sell it to a preservation society. We had a private tour guide the whole day one day and as he was telling us about this we had not yet arrived. After we arrived I understood it. It may not look so bad in this picutre but, those pock marks could hold houses they are so large. And they're every where. It's no wonder he couldn't farm it! It's now unusable land, but serves a good purpose to educate us about the real effects of war. There is a picture in there that shows my sister, me and our tour guide
Mathias. Do go to his website and click on "landscapes of Normandy". He has some fantastic pictures of the Normandy D-Day sites. When we went to the American memorial cemetary, Alan suddenly turned off and ran another way. I knew he recognized someone but didn't know what was going on until he turned back. As it turns out, he recognized Senator Lindsey Graham. He went to take a picture of him, but senator Graham's aide caught him and grabbed his camera before he could. Learning that Alan was a soldier he then offered to take a picture of him and the Senator together! So that was pretty cool. We admired that Senator Graham was there to pay his respects and tour the for himself at a time when the cameras were not rolling. It seems so many times, politicians only do those things for the cameras (TV cameras) but I can testify that he was there without the fanfare. I'll post more pictures later.
and 2 of Pointe du Hoc. An interesting fact I learned here is that this land was owned by a farmer. After the war he could not farm it due to the huge pock marks from all the bombs dropped here. I believe he ended up having to sell it to a preservation society. We had a private tour guide the whole day one day and as he was telling us about this we had not yet arrived. After we arrived I understood it. It may not look so bad in this picutre but, those pock marks could hold houses they are so large. And they're every where. It's no wonder he couldn't farm it! It's now unusable land, but serves a good purpose to educate us about the real effects of war. There is a picture in there that shows my sister, me and our tour guide Mathias. Do go to his website and click on "landscapes of Normandy". He has some fantastic pictures of the Normandy D-Day sites. When we went to the American memorial cemetary, Alan suddenly turned off and ran another way. I knew he recognized someone but didn't know what was going on until he turned back. As it turns out, he recognized Senator Lindsey Graham. He went to take a picture of him, but senator Graham's aide caught him and grabbed his camera before he could. Learning that Alan was a soldier he then offered to take a picture of him and the Senator together! So that was pretty cool. We admired that Senator Graham was there to pay his respects and tour the for himself at a time when the cameras were not rolling. It seems so many times, politicians only do those things for the cameras (TV cameras) but I can testify that he was there without the fanfare. I'll post more pictures later.
