American Cemetery and museum

Yesterday, we started the day at the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach.  The visitor center has a very nice museum (all museums seem to be well done here) with some of the history of WW2.  There is a nice timeline of major events along one wall, beginning with Hitler's rise to power.  

Shortly before school was out, one of my students asked when the US entered the war with Germany, and I did not know the answer.  But now I do--Germany and Italy declared war on us 4 days after Pearl Harbor.  This was much sooner than I thought.

Outside the visitor's center is an infinity pool that faces the ocean.  Hopefully you will have a sense of it from this picture.

The front is a map of the D-Day invasion.

After the visitor center, we went out to the cemetery.  This is just one of many cemeteries from WW2, and there are 9400 graves of just American soldiers.

This was a hard place to visit.  One of the conversations we had was why have there been wars?  Ideals or land?  

As I walked through the cemetery, I kept thinking about the mothers of all those men, the loss of boys, and I say boys because most were around 20.  I know my son wouldn't agree, but I am very thankful he has not experienced war on a long-term basis.  I don't know how you could visit this place and not weep over so many aspects of war.

After visiting the cemetery, we went to a brand new museum, The Overlord Museum.  It had over 10,000 artifacts, including jeeps, tanks, a V1 rocket, thr pre-cursor to the VW The Thing, and a horse-drawn cart that the German's used for pulling guns.

After a full day of WW2, we decided to do something on the lighter side and visited the Drakker chocolate factory here in Bayeux.

We continue to eat really well.  And to let you know that we are having a good time together, we continue to laugh a lot.  And yesterday at breakfast, Bob said something funny enough for Dale to just about snort cheese.  :)

We've spent the last two nights in Bayeux--a town with a church built in 1100, and the same size as Notre Dame in Paris.  It is beautiful.  This is a bit of a glimpse of it.  I love the grandeur of these buildings reaching up to heaven.