July 15, 2017

July 15, 2017

Yesterday was Fete Nationale, or as we refer to it, Bastille Day. I wanted to watch the fireworks, but the closest one was several towns away and late at night. So instead Aimee and I watched a male group sing what sounded like French folk songs. The stage was just outside our hotel. On several occasions groups from the audience would join and do some kind of line dance. It was all entertaining.

Aimee and I need a little down day, so today we hung around Arromanches. We started with coffee at a little street-side cafe and then perused a sale that sprung up along the streets. It looked like a town garage sale with some antiques thrown in.

We followed that up with a couple hours inside the local D-Day Landing Museum. There are literally dozens of museums in Normandy about D-Day. The one here has a lot of general info but focuses on the Artificial Port that was built here. It was nicknamed Port Winston because of Churchill’s determination to design it. D-Day heroics on the beaches get a lot of press, but behind the scene actions like these massive innovative engineering projects were key to invasion success. Germany had all the harbors heavily fortified. Without a means to deliver the necessary supplies, the breakout from Normandy would have dragged on for years.

The museum had a great movie and very intricate models that illustrated how the port was assembled and operated. First old ships and concrete boats were towed across the Channel and sunk to protect the harbor from the nasty weather that plagues Normandy. Then floating docks and causeway roads were arranged to offload ships. Half of these were lost in transit crossing the Channel. An identical harbor at Omaha Beach lasted only days, but the one here survived for months.

We then had a long lunch at a street-side cafe with a big bottle of cider. It is too cold here for grapes, so cider is the alcoholic beverage of choice. Arromanches is a very popular beach resort. We lingered at our table to people-watch. This included a group of Americans touring Normandy on tandem bicycles.

After lunch we walked uphill, where we get a great view of the dozen or so surviving elements of the harbor. Also here is Arromanches 360, a circular cinema that shows a film called “Normandy’s 100 days”. Aimee and I weren't expecting much but it was well done. It conveys a lot of the emotions of the invasion through the flashing of photos on the many screens combined with a stirring cannon-laden sound track.