Normandy D-Day Beaches france: A Journey of a Lifetime
Visiting the Normandy D-Day beaches in France has been on our list of trips to do for years. I will be honest, I was a little intimidated booking this trip. It had a lot of moving parts. We were constantly on the go. We traveled by plane, train, taxi, and bus. It was so worth it! We booked this trip about 6 weeks out, so I was moving quickly to get tours booked. They sell out fast in the area.
When I first booked our trip to the Normandy D-Day beaches in France, I had tried to get tours from Rouen, where we had planned to stay for four days. There was no availability, so we moved to Hotel Hôtel La Fontaine Caen Center after two days at the Hyatt Place Rouen. I booked a tour through the Caen Memorial Museum via Viator. This ended up working out great for our family. Caen is not as picturesque as Rouen or Bayeux, but we needed more time in Caen to explore the D-Day Beaches and the fantastic museum.
We took a train to Caen the morning of our tour from Rouen. We dropped off our luggage at our hotel, then walked the 2+ miles from he hotel to the Caen Memorial Museum. We love walking in a city, so it is doable. However, after exploring the beaches, we decided our feet could use a break and took the bus back to town. We live in the South and are not used to taking buses to travel in a city. This was a little intimidating to us. Luckily, a French teen told us we could pay for the bus when we boarded. You will need euros, credit cards are not accepted on the bus. Some bus terminals have ticket machines you can pay by card, but this one did not.
We figured out the bus system
Our tour was at 1:00, we grabbed a bite to eat before our tour. The Caen Memorial Museum has a cafe onsite. If you arrive hungry, like we did. They also have free lockers for your belongings. We had dropped off our stuff at the hotel because I was not sure. If your bags do not fit in the lockers. You can bag check them with the front desk. We did this when we toured the museum itself two days later.
Free lockers at Caen Memorial Museum
Our bags at bag check when returned
The D-Day Beaches tour includes admission to the museum the next day. I did not notice this when I booked. I did mention I was booking everything as fast as I could, right? When we checked in for the tour, our guide Ana asked about us when we were visiting the museum, and I explained my mistake. She had the lady at the ticket booth print our tickets for the following day when we could return. This was our error, but they were so accommodating.
Our guide Ana
After we checked in and got our museum tickets for the correct day, our family of four headed out with Ana for the tour. I had no idea this would be a small group tour, let alone that we would get our own tour guide. Again, we had checked our luggage at the hotel on this day, but there would have been room in the back of the van for our backpacks if that had not worked out.
Our tour of the Normandy D-Day beaches in France included 3 stops:
Point du Hoc
Omaha Beach
American Cemetary
Pointe du Hoc is a cliff overlooking the English Channel (fun fact: the French call it the Channel) on the northwestern coast of Normandy. In World War II, it was the location of a series of German bunkers and machine gun posts. Ana did an excellent job preparing us for what we were going to see at Pointe du Hoc. We are history lovers and we still learned a lot this day. The one thing I was most surprised by at Pointe Du Hoc was all the craters still in the ground from 80 years ago.
Crater at Pointe du Hoc
How our tour worked is that Ana would introduce us to the site and then give our family time to explore at our own pace.
Bunker by the sea
After Pointe Du Hoc we headed to Omaha Beach. Omaha Beach was one of 5 beaches used in the invasion on D-day.
My family standing in front of one of the former Floating causeways used in WW2
View from a German Bunker up on the hill
After Omaha Beach, we headed to the American Cemetary at Omaha Beach. We were all emotional attending a lowering of the American Flag ceremony there while they played Taps.
Taps Ceremony
We walked the cemetery and reflected. It is a beautiful place. It was overwhelming that there are so many crosses and stars of David (Jewish Soliders).
Crosses and Stars of David
Reflection pool and Memorial
We all enjoyed this tour. We spent 5 hours exploring the sites. That the tour also includes admission to the museum is a fantastic deal. The museum is incredible. When my post is ready for that experience I will update this page with a link.
If you want to book this tour through Viator, click this link. We had a wonderful time. Ana, our tour guide was amazing.
