Trip to France

This past weekend we too a four day trip to France. The whole weekend was absolutely AMAZING!!! Paris was great as expected. We walked all around the town seeing the different sites, Eiffel Tower, Arc of Triumph, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Palace, the Louve with the Mona Liza, Statue of Liberty, the Avenue of Champs, etc. We went to a few of them several times just so we didn't miss anything (Eiffel Tower four times, two during the day and two times at night. It's breathtaking at night).

Eiffel Tower

Arc of Triumph

Arc of Triumph and the Avenue of Champs

The Louve (art museum)

This is what we thought of the art. I guess we aren't art people.

The Opera House


La Defense

Notre Dame Cathedral

Great Palace

The Seine River

The Statue of Liberty, same as what's in NY, but smaller. There are two of them in Paris.

U.S. Embassy. We walked up to it to take a picture and got approached by guards. They didn't like that.

An Oblisk at the end of the Avenue of Champs

The view from our hotel window

This is how most people got around. The roads were way too crowded for cars.

We spend two days in Paris and then went up to northern France, Normandy. Jay was in heaven!! Our first stop was Point Du Hoc. It was almost chilling. Nothing had really been touched for the past 60 years. Their were HUGE bomb craters all over the land. It was so interesting to see. There were also a lot of bunkers, many that had been blown up. Everything was just how it was. So if a bunker had been hit, the concrete would be crumbled into a hole or possible blown several feet away. The rerod (sp?) was sticking out of pieces that had been hit. Seeing the cliffs and imagining guys climbing them was crazy. They were straight down. It was so neat.

Jay was having fun pretending to attack!

We then traveled a little further west to Utah Beach. It was a wide open beach full of sand and then huge cliffs to get back up to the mainland. It was beautiful. Jay collected some sand to remember it.

The little ship the guys took from the main ship to the beach.

Trying to show the size on the bomb craters. HUGE!!

Next stop was Sainte Mere Eglise. We saw the church where the paratrooper got caught on the steeple. They had a parachute hanging from where he got stuck. We were also able to go inside the church which was really neat. They had stained glass windows that had airplanes and paratroopers along with the angels.

We spent the night in Bayeux and then headed to the American cemetary next to Omaha beach. Wow, amazing!!! The crosses were beautiful and so perfect. It was a vert beautiful area, right off the beach. It is so well kept up. We then went down to Omaha beach. It was very similar to Utah beach with the wide open beach. Jay had to collect some sand from there too!!

Then we went to another spot close to the water that hadn't been heavily hit by American bombs. There were four bunkers still standing, with only one being hit. Three out of them still had the HUGE German guns in them. These things were massive!

Next stop was to another town to see the Pegesus Bridge. Very huge and very neat!

By this time, it was 5:00pm on Monday night and we both had to work Tuesday morning. We started home, but come to find out, the main road we needed was closed do to the snow. So... we had to take another route that took us up into Belgium and then back down into Germany. We got home shortly after 5:00 on Tuesday morning. We both stayed up, got ready for work, and headed out the door again. We made it through the day, but Jay crashed as soon as he got home. Surprisingly, it never bothered me!! So... that's about it in a nutshell. Normandy was just so neat! I learned so much from Jay, the museums, and actually seeing the sights.