Leah Billings Living: Final days in France

On day five we hopped on a train and went to Versailles. I was very excited for this excursion because I didn't get to see the palace my first time through France. The main gates were under renovation, so we didn't get any good shots of the front facade, but here's a small side view.

We toured the main palace seeing, of course, the hall of mirrors,

the king's bedroom,

and Marie Antoinette's bedroom. This is were all the public births took place in the palace. We were told they did it that way to ensure that a switcheroo didn't occur with the royal babies.

Then it was on to the palace gardens, which were amazing!

They were also huge. They made a footprint about eight times the size of the palace. This is the main promenade. It went on for forever.

We did lots of walking and toured the Grand Trianon, a vacatioin home on the grounds. Then we made it to Marie Antoinette's hamlet, the farm-like village she created to get away from the palace atmosphere.

Its been completely restored (except for the inside, can't go any buildings) and it is run as a working farm with gardens and animals.

It was so cool and peaceful that we all decided we wanted to live there.

We lunced at a restaurant on the central canal and then hiked back up to the palace, which was a treat because they had turned on all the fountains in the garden.

Day six started off with another train ride. This time we were headed to Lucerne, Switzerland for an overnight stay. This was much needed at this point. The hustle and bustle(and dirty air) of Paris was all starting to wear on us, so we were very excited to head to a smaller more refreshing area. We loved it. If you ever go to Europe I highly recommend a stop in Lucerne. It's a great little city.

After we checked into our hotel we decided to take a boat cruise around the lake(which is huge). It was a great way to see the countryside.

We headed back to town to do some shopping and touring. We walked across one of the older attractions in the city, a covered wooden bridge that spans the lake in the center of the city.

We, of course, had to have some fondue, and we fed the swans that live on the lake too.

We got home late the next night back to Paris and had to get a few hours sleep in order to be ready for our next train ride bright and early the following morning to the Normandy coast to tour all the WWII sights. We started at the beach where the US built a giant harbor to bring in all the supplies it needed for the big attack. These are the remains of some of the floating structures that were built so that ships could dock out in the deeper water and then unload supplies that were trucked to shore on floating bridges.

We moved on to tour some of the german gun holds. A lot of the things the germans built back then are still intact.

Next we stopped at one of the more heavily hit sights on the coastline. It was interesting to see that the landscape is still scarred.

Then it was on to Omaha beach (think the scene in Saving Private Ryan where they ride in those boats to the shore to make the initial attack). I can't describe what it felt like to be there...a mixture of sadness, awe, and pride. During the first two hours of the attack, no Allies survived. Thousands of soldiers died that day. This is a monument to the first group that arrived. You can see the beach in the background.

Next we stopped at the American cemetary. The land was gifted to the US by France and is considered American soil. If you had a baby while you were there it would have dual citizenship.

There are some 9,000 graves here. All the markers are evenly spaced in a way that they are in rows from all directions. You can kind of see it in the picture above.

Then we made a stop at the German cemetary. It had quite a different atmosphere. Over 22,000 remains are contained here. The mound in the center is a mass grave and the marked graves on the grounds often contain multiples soldiers.