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- Europe Vaction
2023 - Milan, Lake Como, Sardinia/Corsica and Normandy
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In late June we traveled to Europe for
the first time in over ten years. This trip include a vist to
Milan, Italy where we met up with Ethan who was on his own post-college
European adventure with his friends. From Milan we took in a
day trip to Portofino, before moving on to Lake Como for three
days were we met our good friends Mario and Cristina. After Lake
Como we joined a Backroads adventure in Sardinia, Italy and Corsica,
France where we enjoyed spending six days with new found friends.
Finally, we concluded our vacation with a weekend in Normandy
taking in the historic sites.
See below for the Best of Europe 2023 pictures,
a condensed presentation with select images from location.
Or jump to a specific place:
Europe
2023
Select Highlights from each
day of our Europe trip
Normandy
Having a few days extra and knowing
we would fly out of Corsica to Paris, we decided when planning
to add on a quick 2 day Normandy visit before returning home
to Colorado. There we took in various historic WWII site such
as Omaha and Utah beaches, the American Cemetery and other sites
in the area. We also were able to visit the Bayeux Tapestry and
enjoy the picturesque town of Bayeux.
Day 13 (continued)
On this day we arrived in Paris in the
late afternoon and took a train from Charles de Gaulle aiport
to the Paris St-Lazare station where we could catch the SCNF
train to Bayeux in Normandy. This connection turned out to be
pretty tight and we had quite an adventure figuring out how to
navigate the French train system which was a change from the
Italian system we had gotten used to. This was further complicated
by finding no one that spoke English well, but this little travel
adventure was one of the highlights of the trip actually.
- The streets of Paris...
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- Dinner and snacks for the ride to Bayeux
from Paris...
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- First evening glimpse of the Catherdral
in Bayeux...
Day 14
We booked an all day tour of the historic
WWII Normandy sites and this included Omaha Beach, the American
Cemetery, Utah Beach, the Airborne museum and the Angoville-au-Plain
church which was turned into a hostipal for both Allied and German
forces. Our tour guide was excellent and really brought the history
alive not only with overview of the major historical events,
but of so many smaller anedotal stories of various individuals
involved in the fighting.
- The hallowed sand of Omaha Beach, a
code name for one of the landing sites of the Allied invasion
to reclaim Western Europe from the occupying Germans
- Looking up at the terrain the Allied
soldiers had to take while under a hail of fire from embedded
German defenses...
- Entering the American Cemetery in Normandy.
The cemetery is on the site of one of the former temporary cemeteries
and was dedicated in 1956. There are 9,388 Americans buried here
including two of the Niland brothers - whose story inspired the
movie Saving Private Ryan (one of 45 sets of brothers). Only
a portion of Americans killed in Normandy are buried here as
families had the choice to bring bodies back to the United States.
There are 304 unknown soldiers buried here as well as a memorial
for 1,557 service members missing in action and not found.
- This sculpture is called - "Spirit
of American Youth Rising from the Waves"...
- One of the unknown soldiers - all inscribed
with the same inscription...
- Visiting one of the German bunker fortifications...
- IIn the village of Sainte-Mère-Église
there is the Aiborne Museum dedicated to the paratroopers and
combatants of the D-day invasion.
- This is the church Sainte-Mere-Eglise
wher on the night of June 5th/6th, paraptrooper John Steele hung
for two hours after his parachute snagged on the spire. The 82nd
Airborne was mistakenly dropped on the village which was occupied
by the Germans. After two hours, Steele was capured and taken
prisoner by the Germans. The movie The Longest Day (about D-day)
made this incident famous. There is an effigy of Steele hanging
from the spire as you can see in the picture.
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- Arriving at Utah Beach...
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- The church in Angoville-au-Plain where
two US Army Medics established a hospital treating both Allied
and German wounded soldiers. The fighting in the area went on
for days and this area changed hands several times between the
Germans and Americans. The Medics, Bob Wright and Ken Moore,
decided initally that they would treat the wounded regardless
of which side and that weapons were not allowed in the church.
These decisions allowed them to continue even when Germans controlled
the area. Blood on the pews from the wounded can still be seen
today. At one point in the fighting a mortal fell through the
roof but did not explode and two days after D-day two young German
soliders who had been hiding in the belfry came down and surrendered.
- The hole in the roof where the mortar
came through, but did not explode...
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- And the crack in the floor where the
mortar landed and miraculously did not explode...
- The home of the Bayeux Tapestry - an
embroidered cloth tapestry that is 230 feet long and depicts
the events leding to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 led
by William the Conquerer who at the time was the Duke of Normandy.
- The Bayeux Tapestry telling the story
of the 1066 conquest of England by the Normans under William
the Conquerer, it was likely commissioned in the 1070s and lost
to history until 1476 some 400 years later when it was listed
in the an inventory of the Bayeux Cathedral. It survived the
sacking of Normandy by the Huguenots, the French Revolution,
the Franco-Prussian war and the Germans in WWII who breifly took
it to the Louvre and who were planning to take it to Berlin.
- The Bayeux Cathedral, orginally concecrrated
in 1077 in the presence of William the Conqueror, the Duke of
Normandy. It was rebuilt after damage in the Gothic styole starting
in the 15th century, but not fully completed until the 19th century.
- Dining along the quaint streets of
Bayeux...
Day 15
Our last day in Europe was a travel
day from Bayeux back to Paris by train and then connecting to
local Metro service to the Charles de Gaulle airport...
- Lunch in Paris on a sidewalk cafe just
to say we did....
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- Arm wrestling with some interesting
Ukrainian young men who challenged for reasons unknown...
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