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2013/07/06 France Day 19: Mont Saint Michel Abbey, Normandy D Day beaches and museums, Pointe du Hoc, Arromanches
π 2013-07-06 01:01 in France, France2013, Ntrips, Trips

Due to the strike at Mt Saint Michel due to the Veolia fuckers, we were not able to see the Abbey the previous night, so we did first thing the next morning. It was reasonably nice to see with few crowds, although we were not able to get an audioguide due to the strike too. On the plus side, it was free, and they forgot to close/man a door that let us access some very small stairs we were able to take to the top of the Abbey, somewhere visitors are definitely not allowed usually, so it wasn't all bad.









Then, we had a pretty painful trek back to our car carrying luggage back down from our room to the buses that are way too far from the city entrance (fuck you very much Veolia again), and very late in the morning we got on the road for Normandie to see D Day beaches and museums.



We went directly to the Utah Beach Landing Museum which was quite good, and had a quick look at the beach. It was good enough to be worth several hours, included a 1H guided tour which explained the basics of how the débarquement worked out to us. It was quite interesting.













From there, the day had gotten late a bit already, so we had run out of time for the American cemetery. As a result, we went to pointe du hoc, which doesn't close. It was a location where Germans had long range guns, and it got bombed to hell, so it looks like swiss cheese, and you can still see the bunkers that didn't get damaged much at all despite the bombings.







From there, we went directly to Longues-sur-Mer to see its Gun Battery that's pretty intact and headed to Arromanches for dinner, walk by the beach, sunset, and sleep. Oh yeah, it does have remnants of port winston (artificial floating harbour from WWII), but honestly, there isn't much left to see.







remnants of port winston, the floating harbour
remnants of port winston, the floating harbour




More pages: June 2013 July 2013

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