Paris Day Three: Caen Memorial Museum

I have always wanted to visit Normandy and see the beaches of the D-Day invasion, and Chris indulged me with a day trip on Saturday. We got up before it got light (we had to wake up the front desk guy to unlock the front door of the hotel) and walked the 30 minutes to the Paris CityVision office to catch the bus. The plan was to take the Metro but GoogleMaps got us lost and we ended up just hoofing it instead. Paris is completely different in the wee quiet hours of the morning when the only people out are runners, delivery trucks and crazy people. That was when we realized how truly dangerous Paris drivers truly are!

I wish we had taken more pics but we were so focused on getting there by 6:30am that we didn't. I snapped these while we waited for the ticket office to open.

The countryside between Paris and Normandy looks so much like the Willamette Valley. Especially when I saw this out the bus window...

Farms and little towns everywhere. But we noticed two things that were different than home. Everything is very monochromatic. It's like they only sell one color of paint in all of France. And no pick-up trucks. Not even out in farm country. We drove by big home improvement stores and wondered how people got their lumber home???

Our first stop was the Caen Memorial Museum to look at the exhibits and have lunch. It was a very interesting museum with lots of memorabilia and artifacts from WWII.

French newspapers published maps of the frontlines 

daily so people could follow military operations

French civilians were encouraged to send care packages

to the troops to help make up for a lack of supplies and bolster morale

This is a parachute and metal cage for 4 pigeons.

16,554 pigeons were dropped over France during the war. 

The UK gave 32 medals to pigeons for acts of bravery. 

Some of the stamps used to make false papers

the Nazis made new globes to show their world domination 

German winter coat worn on the Western Front

with straw overshoes made in the Polish ghetto

When Dresden was bombed in 1945, the bodies were piled up

to be burned. Estimates are between 35,000 and 130,000 dead.

the Bomb Tokyo game 

I had never seen a glass personnel mine before

This mine was found in 1987. 55,000 mines were placed as a 

blockade for German-occupied Europe by the RAF. 10,000 were laid 

along the coast of France. 

At lunch we met a man who was traveling in France on business and took a day to see Normandy. He has been all over the world with the company he works for. The company also has an exchange program for employees' children to live with host families in the countries they are in. Wow! 

There was just enough time to see the old headquarters of General Wilhelm Richter, who was in charge of defended the beaches for the Germans in 1944.