Normandy Beaches
 

Is it possible to visit the beaches of Normandy via rail without renting a car? Does anyone know of any local tour operators and what town they would operate from?

Well, you can certainly do it by bus from Paris. No doubt by train too.<BR><BR>Several choices listed here<BR><BR>http://www.normandy-tourism.org/gb/16tours/indext.html<BR><BR>or here<BR><BR>http://www.normandy-tourism.org/gb/08dday/dday.html<BR><BR>Only oity is that you have to squeeze it into one day - - worthy of an overnighter, if you can swing that. Maybe by train to Caen or Bayeux you could do that.<BR><BR>Best wishes,<BR><BR>Rex<BR>

<BR>Aso try www.Normandywebguide.com.<BR>Gives you choices of tours out of Bayeux

Does anyone else find the D-day beaches cold and uninspiring, especially after seeing the World war 1 battle fields and monuments?<BR>The American cemetery is serene and sentimental but after seeing Tyne Cot and the Ossurary near Fort de Vaux , it wasn't that emotional or overwhelming in it's size. Actually the little sites with 30 or 40 graves along the sides of the roads in Picardie all with the same dates of death were much more heart breaking . The Field of Sabers is so much more evocative, the Devonshire Reg. site( They held this line, they hold it still) so wrenching, even though these events did not happen in my lifetime and D Day did.<BR><BR>About the only thing that really impressed me was Caen Peace Mem. and the Arromanches presentation.<BR><BR>Sorry if I offend but it's my opinion having seen both.

Well, to each his own. My dad fought in WWI so I have some vested interest there. What awed me about the Normandy beaches was HOW FAR you can see from the shore--that is to say, how EXPOSED our troops were. We also have a friend who landed at Omaha and marched down the Champs Elysees as an 18 year old boy/man. It was war and carnage in both wars--not much to choose to like better.

What awed me about the WW1 sites was how CLOSE the lines were..that they could hear the enemy talk and breathe. And I too have 3 relatives buried in those sites from WW1 . And 2 at American cemeteries in France and Italy from WW2<BR>And the scars on the earth of France still remian. I was just saying that the WW1 sites are so much more evocative of the horror of war.

My 14 year old son and I went 2 years ago. We took a tour from the war memorial in Caen France. It was an excellent 1/2 day tour. We drove from Paris (3 hours) but you could take a train to Caen and then take a cab to the memorial. http://www.unicaen.fr/collectivite/m.../indexgb.shtml

for Henry<BR>

No, I did not find the Normandy beaches cold or uninspiring. Visit Point du Hoc, and ponder the sacrifice of these brave men.<BR><BR>By the way, the Caen &quot;peace&quot; memorial is a waste of money.

<BR>TO flsd<BR>I thought I was the only one in this world that found the Caen peace memorial a waste. I actually wept at the beaches and cemetery but found the Caen memorial uninspiring.

Agree with flsd. Visiting Pointe du Hoc will give you goose bumps. Hard to imagine Rudders Rangers scaling up those cliffs. It's a must see at the beaches.

I personally thought the memorial in Caen was very good! We are a military family and even the children were moved by what they saw there. I think it would be a shame to go to the Normandy area and miss the memorial.

Pointe du Hoc is a moving destination, but if memory serves me correctly, it's only partly the scaling of the cliffs that sends chills up your spine.<BR><BR>When the Rangers got to the top (which took only minutes for the first guy up), there was essentially no one there. The Germans had moved the six large guns that were believed to be there several kms inland, and replaced them with plywood mockups.<BR><BR>But then the nightmare began. The Rangers were pinned out on this point under heavy German fire, and no possibility of relief/replacements for something like almost 72 hours. The egg-crate surface testifies to the shelling these 200+ soldiers took.<BR><BR>Only 80-some-odd were alive when they were rescued on June 9.<BR><BR>================<BR><BR>I wrote this from what I read while I was there, and it 's a somewhat sketchy recollection. Here's a more accurate and complete version:<BR><BR><BR>http://www.worldwar2history.info/D-Day/Pointe-Du-Hoc.html<BR><BR>http://www.worldwar2history.info/D-Day/cliff.html<BR><BR>and<BR><BR>http://www.worldwar2history.info/D-Day/cannons.html<BR><BR>

We went to Paris last Spring and took a one day tour of the Normandy beaches. We booked with a tour operator who picked us up at our hotel in the morning and returned us in the evening - about a 13 hour day. He took 4 of us in a van for about 400 euros total (not per person) - that was cheaper than if we had taken a train to Normandy and then a tour. You can contact them at http://www.artventures-paris.com/ The man who drove us was named Didier Jourdan - he is one of the owners of the company. It was well worth the money for the convenience. We found the beaches and the cemetery to be a very emotional experience.

P.S. I just realized that our email addresses are not listed here since registration. If you have any questions, you can contact me at [email protected]<BR>