FRANCE - Europe by Eurail 2015: Touring Europe by Train - page 195

The memorial is open daily 0900 to 1900. A half-day tour time is recommended.
Check at the information desk for the starting times of the English-language pro-
grams. A cafeteria is located on the second floor for refreshments.
Returning from the memorial to the station, take bus No. 17 in the direction of
Grace de Dieu. The bus makes a stop in the center of the town at Tour Leroy near
the tourist office (Office du Tourisme). Walk along boulevard des Allies and pro-
ceed 1 block to where it intersects rue Saint-Jean. From this point, the tourist office
sign may be seen across the street to the right. The tourist office can advise on ac-
commodations in Caen and the Normandy towns close to the beaches. For each
full-priced ticket purchased at one of the museums, you get reduced rates at all the
other ones in the D-Day Landings and the Battle of Normandy region.
Tours of the invasion beaches start in Caen and proceed west through the
Anglo-Canadian sectors of Sword, Juno, and Gold before arriving in the American
sectors of Omaha and Utah. With a Hertz rental car, proceed west from Caen on
Route 13 past Bayeux, LaCambe, and Carentan until reaching Ste.-Mere-Eglise,
the first town in France to be liberated on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Visit the Airborne
Museum with its CG4-A glider and a C-47 airplane, and gaze in wonder at the
Eighty-second Airborne paratrooper's predicament when his parachute caught on
the church steeple opposite the museum.
Proceed from there to the Utah Beach Landing Museum at Ste. Marie-Du-
Mont. An audiovisual presentation explains how Utah beach was used to land
about one million soldiers on its shores. Your next stop should be Pointe-Du-Hoc,
which was captured by the Second Ranger Battalion in a spectacular assault on
June 6, 1944, scaling 100-foot cliffs to destroy a German battery of coastal guns.
The Rangers made it, but they paid a high price for their valor—77 dead, with an
overall casualty rate of about 60 percent.
Leaving Pointe-Du-Hoc, head east to Colleville-St.-Laurent, where on a sum-
mit overlooking Omaha beach, you enter the American cemetery. Pay your re-
spects to the 10,000 Americans resting there. To paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill,
“This part of a foreign field shall forever be American.”
En route back to Caen, stop in Bayeux at the Memorial Museum that you
passed earlier while en route to Ste.-Mere-Eglise—time permitting. Otherwise,
plan to return there the following day, and visit the Anglo-Canadian sectors as well.
Day Excursion to
Chartres