The Novotel at CDG airport was a good find. We slept well, ate a good breakfast and it was very easy to transfer in the monorail back to terminal 2f to collect our rental car for this part of the trip. The Europcar counter had an efficient registrations login PC set up so that the ( sizeable) queue was processed promptly and fairly. We had the keys to our Opel Astra by 9.12 and set off to negotiate the spaghetti network of roads out of the airport and onto the route to Normandy.
I was looking forward to seeing Monet’s Garden at Giverny. We’d tried to visit in 2011 , but it had been Easter weekend with huge crowds, we were running late and so we’d bypassed the garden that time.
The pathway to the garden is very pretty but we were a little daunted by the long queue again on our arrival.
However, we decided to stay and we only queued for around 20 minutes before we finally entered the gates. It’s a really pretty garden, at this time of the year it was colourful with foxgloves, poppies, rhododendrons and various other cottage shrubs and flower beds. It was also full of tourists! However, we still had space to enjoy the flowery paths and the walk down to the famous waterlily pond. The peak time for the waterlilies is July but there were a few early specimens on view, and it was interesting to see the gardeners out on the pond in canopies, clearing the sludgy muck that accumulates through the season.
After we left we decided to pop into a nearby cafe for a tasty charcuterie and cheese platter lunch. A few feisty chickens pottered around looking for scraps, a change for the usual pigeons or seagulls!Back on the road we continued north-west en route to the Normandy beaches. We weren’t alone, we passed a variety of military vehicles heading for the big 80th celebrations.
As we approached the Omaha beach area the traffic got worse and worse , even the back roads were full of people trying to avoid the traffic on the main roads. However, we were very lucky to find a parking spot about a little over a km up the hill from the Omaha Beach memorial, so we snatched the park and set out to walk down to the beach. The roads were a passing parade of military trucks, jeeps and marine vehicles driven by enthusiasts dressed in military gear.
The road was also full of wave after wave of Gendarmes on motorcycles and a selection of mysterious black vans with tinted windows . We’ve been speculating on who could be in those vans!
It was a nice walk down to the beach, we enjoyed stretching our legs after so many hours in planes and cars. The memorial area at the beach has been transformed with two huge temporary covered grandstands which will be used on June 6 for the main International ceremony , attended by Emanuel Macron, Joe Biden, and King Charles to name a few!
We could still reach the beach and walked along to see the wonderful statue in the sand that commemorates the landing here.
After soaking in the excitement and the atmosphere we walked back up,the hill and drove on to Port En Bessin to buy provisions for the next couple of days. We’d spending the next two nights in a studio apartment next to the Omaha Beach Mercury Hotel.
The studio is fairly basic but it’s clean and has a small kitchen. That’s proving very useful as it looks like we won’t be using the restaurant in the Mercury next door. I knew the hotel was booked out but its car park is full of black vans with tinted windows and chauffeurs . It looks like the hotel has been booked solid with high profile people attending the ceremonies.
We had a nice dinner of quiche and salad on our little terrace and enjoyed the view across the golf course.
