July 6,2012
Day 2 of drivin in France and needless to say I'm now a pro. We left the apartment at 9:30 and headed for the D-Day beaches up North. It was about a half an hr drive to our first stop, Juno beach. This drive was much funner than yesterday's. The roads were like straight from video games. It was all twisty and turny and every now and then you drive through a small town at about 70-80 km/h. Of course I didn't do that... often... but all the other cars on the road kept passing me while I was already going really fast.

We got to Juno beach and it was almost deserted. Did you know Canadians were the only Allied forces to successfully capture their target? Well, don't feel bad if you didn't, it was only briefly mentioned here throughout our whole trip. We drove to the Centre Juno Beach and walked around the gift shop for 10 mins. When we left, it started to rain... then rain heavily. By now it should be expected that everyday involves a rainstorm. As we drove off I kept seeing signs saying Croix de Lorraine, but I couldn't find it so I just took a pic of the sign.

I wanted to go see the bunkers and shell holes and beaches full of anti-tank barriers, you know, like in Saving Private Ryan, and the guide says there are these thins at Omaha Beach, one of the beaches American soldiers landed at. But first, we wanted to wait out the rain, so we headed to Bayeux, a little South-West of where we were, to have lunch. It was a small little town. The moment we walked into a cafe sort of place, it began to pour here too. Like buckets of water on us. All the employees walked to the front door to watch it rain. Rach and I just sat down and ate our food. Storms are no big deal anymore. She got a panini and I got something called quiche Lorraine. Lorraine must be around here somewhere with all these places having that name pop up.

We drove to Omaha Beach, another super fun drive, and arrive at the American Cemetery. It was more of a museum, recounting the history of WWII, which was really good since I can't remember all of it from history class. We probably spent an hr just reading about what happened and how the war unfolded. It then leads you outside, where a cemetery for thousands of American soldiers rested. It was quite moving. The rain also subsided and it was sunny there, so we walk through the cemetery and look outwards towards the beach. We didn't find the bunkers and all the stuff I wanted to see. Should've done more research first.

We drove back to Caen and arrived at about 7. We had to get gas first so we drove around looking for a station. It's hard getting gas when you don't speak a language! Apparently you gas first, drive your car out of the way, then pay. I guess Europeans can still believe in the honour system while we can't.

We did what we did for dinner from the night before, and it only costed us 7 euros in total this time! Plus it was more food than before. Awesome. Not much else happened. I wrote a postcard and just played around with my tablet while Rach planned out her upcoming stops.