Versailles

The next day we packed up our stuff and got in our rental car and headed to Versailles. We took some pics as we were leaving Normandy. We decided we wanted to go to the Chateau de Versailles. We heard it was pretty there. It took us about 3 hours to get there. The whole way we jammed out to an American radio station! I thought that was fun, but weird at the same time. We finally found a parking spot at the Palace and parked our car. We went up to the gate and the guards told us that it was closed on Mondays! We were so mad! Luckily we were still able to take pics of the outside of the Palace and go around the back and look at their beautiful gardens. It was super windy and rainy so we got our shots and headed back to Paris so we could catch our train. We left in plenty of time to catch the train since the palace was closed. It was a good thing we did, because the stupid GPS took us to 3 WRONG gas stations! Haha...It was absolutely ridiculous trying to drive in Paris! There are NO LANES and of course we didn't understand the road signs! The scariest place to drive was the roundabout at Arc De Triomphe. It was a big free for all. In Paris there are so many cars and pedestrians it's crazy. It took us like 2 hours to get like 2 miles! It is by far worse than Los Angeles traffic. We were not able to find the place where we were suppose to return our rental car, but luckily I took another look at our contract and found the address. (It was a different place than where we rented it from.) We were so glad that we paid extra money to have a GPS. It would have been impossible to find our way around France! We finally made it after having to park it in a whole different parking garage because the normal one was full. We made it back "home" to London and we had a great trip.

Our Bed and Breakfast and our rental car in St. Mere Eglise.

I didn't know John was taking my pic right here, hence the surprised look.

This little church is famous in Normandy because during World War II a parachute landed on top and they still have it there today as a memorial.

The GPS that was a life saver!

This is what their road signs look like! We wanted a picture of this one because we went there.

This is in Versailles.

They had beautiful tree lined streets with Fall colored leaves.

The golden gates to the Palace.

This picture cracks me up! It was so windy my umbrella flipped inside out!

The back of the Palace.

The grounds were huge!

This was before we were about to enter the death round about.

That is the End of France. Oh how I will miss you. I loved you enough to go there twice!

Normandy, France

Our last trip was to Normandy, France. John really wanted to go there because there is so much history there! I didn't know too much about it beforehand, but John filled me in. John loves Band of Brothers and this movie took place after The Battle of Normandy. We took the Eurostar train again to Paris. Then we got a rental car with a GPS (thank goodness...) and we headed to Normandy. It took us awhile to get there. It took us about 3.5 hours. There were several toll roads on the way. John said it felt really strange to drive a car again! Haha...Now that is strange. We finally made it to our cute little Bed and Breakfast around Midnight. The next morning we drove to Utah Beach. Strange that you have to go all the way to France to get to Utah Beach. j/k... There was a really neat museum with artifacts from World War II. We watched a little movie, then had a look around at everything. Then we went out to the beach and took some more pictures. The one bad thing about our trip, was that is was FREEZING!!! It was super windy and raining the whole time. Bad luck I guess. Oh well. You will be able to tell how windy it was from my hair in most of the pics. Then we headed to the American Cemetery. There was a little museum at the beginning then we headed to the cemetery. It was overwhelming to see all the white headstones and hear about all the great men that fought for our county and died! It was a huge cemetery! Omaha Beach is connected to the American Cemetery, so we went down the trail and checked it out. I found some fun little sea shells and John snagged a couple of rocks. Our last stop of the day was to Pointe Du Hoc. It was a point of attack. It was a cool little area where they took shelter. There are some ruins there and some big holes in the ground where they hid. We got us some McDonald's and called it a day. Have you had their potato wedges BTW? They are so good! Normandy was really interesting and I'm so glad we made it out there before we came back to America! Our last day in France we stopped by Versailles. Stay tuned for that post.

The cute little room we stayed in...

Watching the movie at the Utah Beach Museum.

Utah Beach.

Utah State Flag.

An old "trashy" magazine.

These were so the boats could not come up on the land.

A picture of old war veterans that got together.

Me in front of the Museum.

A tunnel we drove through.

While we were getting gas, a huge wind and rain storm came.

The museum at the American Cemetery.

An aerial shot of the cemetery. (we did not take this picture.)

A video of a memorial at the cemetery.

The American Cemetery.

Collecting sea shells on Omaha Beach.

Pointe Du Hoc.

John inside one of the bomb shelters.

One of the big holes caused by a bomb.

Some ruins...