June 19th

Our Car

Tuesday was quite the eventful day. One of our group members and I decided that we, as true Americans, wanted to make the drive to visit Normandy. Everyone else decided that they would rather sleep in or shop around the city while we visited one of the most important places in the world in regards to American history. We began the morning bright and early, arriving at the car rental office at 8. We rented what was quite possibly the smallest car in the entire continent, leading us to believe that if we couldn’t parallel park the car we could possibly just lift it up and place it in a parking space. Since we were in a foreign country speaking a foreign language, we sprung for the GPS option to help guide us to our final destination. Ready to go, we navigated the tiny car through Paris’s rush hour and jumped on the A13 interstate. However, after a short time on the interstate, the GPS suddenly died and left us with no clue how to navigate to Normandy. With no other options, we stopped at a gas station and I grabbed a map of France and tried to figure out some way to get to Normandy. A few hours later we miraculously arrived at Omaha Beach.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Omaha Beach, Point du Hoc, and the American Cemetery. It was truly incredible to walk around a place steeped in such history. It was also nice to be able to walk around the cemetery to pay our respects to the thousands of service members who lost their lives on D-Day. Even though it was a little tougher than we imagined to get to Normandy, we were both incredibly glad that we were able to visit the hallowed grounds. We got back to Paris around 8 and spent the rest of the night packing our bags and figuring out how to make our way to the airport in the morning. 

This will end my blog entries for my trip to Europe. I cannot say enough how awesome an experience this trip was, and how thankful I am that I was afforded the opportunity to be a member of the trip. Thanks for following my blog.