Normandy WWII Tours | Paris-Normandy Train Day Trip | D-Day Itinerary | Omaha & Utah Beaches & More

Hey everybody! Today we are hopping on the train in Paris and doing a day trip to Normandy. I did this a few months ago with my dad and I'm so excited to show you what to expect, what you can get out of a private tour, and all of the very humbling sights in Normandy. Let's go! All right, today we are heading to Normandy. This is such an easy day trip to add on to Paris. I did look into having a transfer done, but it's actually quicker to go over by train. We took the first train out of Paris at 6 12 in the morning. The tour company said that that would be the best so that we could see our way around. Here's where San Lazaro is. This is where all the Normandy trains are going to go out of. This is what the train looked like. There's going to be a little bit more of a train tour at the end, and this was my cost for four round-trip tickets. If you're new here, don't forget to like and subscribe to this video and check out our travel savings guide down below. Once we arrived in Normandy, we were picked up at the train station in Bayeux by Normandy Sightseeing Tours. Information below. So our first stop of the day is at the German cemetery. This was a truly interesting experience, and the memorial is very beautiful, very well done, but as I feel like an American child learning about World War II and how bloody and wild the D-Day invasion was, I guess I wasn't anticipating there to be a German cemetery. After we spent some time there, we were on to our next adventure. All I kept thinking driving through this area was Snoopy and the Red Baron. It just kind of gave that vibe and aesthetic for me. So we made a little detour to a drop site for a few airbornes since my dad is 101st 82nd from Vietnam. This is a big passion of his. So we made a little stop. Let me show you some footage. One of the reasons I would really advocate for you to do a private tour out here in the Normandy area is because you can really customize your tour and see the sites that you particularly want to see. My father, for example, is very interested in seeing a lot of the airborne sites, learning a bit more about those, so your tour can really be customized to what you're looking for. Like I said, their information is down below, but I cannot wait to show you the church over here by this area because there's a really unique piece inside of it. I love the stained glass memorial. Now on to the next spot. It's going to be the last one. You're going to have any veterans of World War II still alive. The village we're crossing right now is the village of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. This one was an objective of the 101st Airborne. Especially they were trying to take the village because you would control the roads moving around it, and so if you control the village, you control the roads. They also tried to take control of the church because that way they would have a huge point of observation of the surrounding area. Most of the buildings, most of the houses that you see in the village are actually original ones, simply because the fighting here was done after a few hours. One of the most humbling things that we learned as we drove through this area is being told how the different farmlands around here operate. Like you would flood some of the fields and whatnot, and the Germans actually used these field flooding opportunities as ways to sabotage the ally invasion. So there were a lot of paratroopers that ended up just drowning to death in some of these fields because of that, and that was such a powerful and wild thing to wrap our brains around. Next we are heading to Utah Beach. They would arrive slightly before the infantry in order to attract some of the German fire onto them and not on the men. The thing is, on Utah, you've got a few things that went wrong, that didn't went according to plan, but they actually helped the situation. See, for example, the men did not land it on the right place. They landed like this. Normally they were supposed to land here, but they ended up landing where we are, one mile more into the south. Why is that? Well, because the bombing was very effective. The bombers, same thing, did not follow the plan. Normally they were supposed to make one passage and then fly back, you know, to the UK, but here they decided to go very close to the ground, you know, below the cloud line, and they made a run like this. They used basically the shoreline as a guideline in order to have a very, well, very effective bomb run. It is wild when you walk out to the beach because it is so serene and beautiful and calm, and to think about what that day must have looked like is absolutely wild. As we stood on the beach, we saw horses and people going up and down the beach. It was truly beautiful, but humbling. Well, not here, unfortunately, because they were, well, unfortunately for them, they had the time to actually do it, but we still have some dragon teeth on Salt Beach. You've got the Belgium Gate also, you have the log rail, and then you have the asparagus, which were also found sometimes in the ground, you know, that would prevent planes from landing, and it's the presence of all those, how would you say, all those obstacles that made the Allies forced to land at low tide. Here are some of those beautiful horses that I was talking about, and right around this area here at Utah Beach, there are several memorials. There are also a few museum-type buildings around here. Now, keep in mind, if you are planning your trip in the off-season like we did, a lot of these museums are not open. They are just open during peak season, usually May through October, so keep that in mind when you are visiting. From here, we headed over to St. Marguerite's, which is a huge point for the airborne. They have a little dummy that's hanging off the church. The tale was that somebody was actually stuck there for a while and actually managed to survive. There is a museum and some gift shops over here as well, but they weren't open when we were there. Of the paratroopers, did not even landed on a radius of five miles of their intended drop zone. Some of the paratroopers were found by American forces in July, like a month after the initial occasion, after the initial landing. Oops, so much scattering. Then it was time to head inside of the church where we got to see some more beautiful stained glass and learn more about how instrumental this church was as a hospital and all of the historical significance that comes with that. With the red handle and the Americans were the only one that were using that on D-Day. The British, some paratroopers, but the British high command told them, don't take the emergency chute because you're going to jump from such a low altitude that if your main parachute doesn't function, it doesn't matter if you've got the emergency or not because it won't have time to deploy and stop. From here, it was time to take a ride over to Pont du Hoc, which was a really important point on the beaches. Like that, they had wheels and a whole system to be able to, you know, rotate and be moved around. About 634 tons of bombs. So lots of bomb craters. So it's a well-defended position. You've got two lines here and here of barbed wire. So down here, we're able actually to walk down where the German officers would have stayed, beds, etc. It's kind of creepy and eerie to walk in now. French were actually able to tell like the guns never made it inside because that's what they Pont du Hoc was captured by the 2nd Battalion of U.S. Army Rangers. It is wild to think that the war could have been completely different. D-Day could have been completely different if the Germans had actually finished installing the artillery weapons here. This was built as a fortress and they just were not prepared here, which led to the Allies being able to be successful. It was then time to make the trek to Omaha Beach. I will tell you, this might have been my most humbling moment. Seeing this small, sleepy little beach town area be so peaceful and knowing what happened here. It's truly extraordinary. Now like I just mentioned with the other areas, there are multiple museums and stops along the way. They are not generally open in the off-season though. After this, it was time for us to finally make our way to our last stop, which is the American Cemetery in Normandy. This is an absolute must-do and I would definitely do it the way that we did it again. We came here about an hour before closing and at 5 o'clock, there is a big salute, which I'm going to show you, where they take the flags down. It is a truly humbling experience. If you can coordinate your day so that you're able to see this, I highly recommend it. This is a truly memorable experience that we will never forget. It is humbling, but I highly encourage it. It's something that I think everybody should do. It was time for us to head back on the train. Now one thing I did not show you guys earlier is that we did have a lunch break stop, so you're not going all day without eating. This is what the train looks like. It's the same type of train that we had coming back from Paris. It's very comfortable, very clean, very modern. We had a lot of space for our portable wheelchair that we had with us. Now it is important when you look at your train ticket to make sure you're getting on the right carriage because some of these trains do split, so make sure you are getting on the right carriage, but it was very comfortable. Our guide also let us stop on the way back and grab some treats and snacks to have on the plane. Bayou is beautiful. If you are going to stay in the area, I would highly recommend Bayou. It looks like a storybook village, but as you can see, we were all pretty tired and it was time to head back.