9:53 AM - We just arrived in the historic city of Caen (see picture left, click for larger), which has a population of around 220,000 people. Most of this city that we saw from the road looked very Americanized and modern - unlike what I'd witnessed in Paris for a week.Caen is known for its historical buildings built during the reign of William the Conqueror (who is buried here) and for the Battle for Caen — heavy fighting that took place in and around Caen during the Battle of Normandy in 1944, destroying much of the original town.
9:56 AM - We arrived quickly at the Caen Memorial to the D-Day Battles. It was nice and sunny and warm when we arrived, and nothing but blue sky ahead. This is a relatively simple building from the exterior, flying the flags of all Allied and Axis countries that were involved in D-Day - that includes Germany.The guide bought our museum tickets for us, and then let us go around on our own through the museum. We have a fairly relaxed schedule here for at least an hour or more to wander around through the museum, get a coffee at the cafeteria if we wish, or shop the gift shop. I hit the museum right away of course.
10:19 AM - the first thing you see, before entering the museum itself, is a full-sized Spitfire (British plane) (see picture left, click for larger) hanging from the ceiling - very cool.The museum starts on the main floor, and walk down a long circular walkway deeper into the 1930s and Nazism (very symbolic), starting at end of WWI. Many believe that the way World War I ended almost guaranteed the beginning of World War II. Germany was penalized deeply and the country suffered dramatically because of the Great War, and Hitler used that to his advantage to rebuild the military and start all over again - to try to re-conquer what they had failed to do before.
The museum continues with the fall of Paris to the Nazis (see picture right click for larger), and continues through the horrible battles of Stalingrad, where they even had a piece of one of the crumbled buildings of the city on display (see picture left, click for larger), which lasted from August 1982 to February 1943. Hitler's Sixth Army was defeated here 
by Russian street fighters who refused to quit, even when nearly 2 million Russian citizens died. It marked the beginning of the end of the Second World War, and gave the Allies their first opportunity to plan a second front - which D-Day brought in Western Europe - with a weakened German army.
I think most striking in the exhibits up to D-Day was a German prayer book and rosary beads - something for some reason that I actually never thought would have been used by the enemy in the war (see picture right, click for larger). The displays ended just as the D-Day landings began.11:20 AM - Then you continue on to a really neat movie theatre with a giant widescreen. A neat idea - the screen was wide enough to be split in 1/2, and they showed parallel movies of what the Germans and Allies were doing before and during D-Day. For example, you'd see British pilots on the left dropping bombs and Germans on the right running for cover. At the start of the movie they showed the Allies relaxing and playing cards, laughing, while the Germans were running around prepping guns, etc. Showed the true moods of both sides. Really great. (see movie below, click play to start - note it's 6 MB so for dial-up you may wish to avoid)
12:00 PM - Right after the movie, we were ushered by our guide to a really great catered lunch, which was all set up for us in a private dining area of the museum. We had turkey with cream sauce, a home-made hash brown and shredded carrot salad. All was laid out for us and waiting when we arrived. I was expecting a brown bag sandwich or something. We had a little glass of local wine as well, and then had salad and dessert buffets (separate). I had some kind of rice pudding and a whole buttload of chocolate. I sat with the Asian family - Mom and three kids from New York City. They were planning a trip soon to Vancouver so had lots of questions, but were really hard to talk to - a bit oo shy.12:40 PM - I excused myself finally from the table ande went to the gift shop. We were leaving at 1:00 PM and I wanted to make sure I got something. I got a really neat newspaper-sized 65 page book for only about 6€ that had all kinds of photos and stories in English about Caen and D-Day - it was amazing.
1:00 PM - we loaded up the bus right on schedule and began the trip to the great sights of D-Day. Stay tuned!
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