Mont Saint-Michel and Dinan

We woke up early and drove out to Mont Saint-Michel. It took us about an hour and a half to get there from where we were staying in Vierville-sur-Mer. 

The French countryside is beautiful! We enjoyed the drive because of the scenery. Lots of neat little villages and rolling hills.

We were driving along when we came around a corner and then we saw it! I had always thought Mont Saint-Michel looked really cool and it was always somewhere we all wanted to visit.

We parked in a large parking lot, then took a shuttle to the island.

It was really windy when we got off the bus on the bridge. And the tide was out. I bet Mont Saint-Michel looks really cool with the tide in! Not that it's any less cool with the tide out!

 Mont Saint-Michel was very neat! We enjoyed walking through the town and exploring the island. There were lots of little shops and cafes to visit too! Definitely a place you should stop if you're in France! It's at the top of our lists as one of our favorite places we visited. 

As we were leaving Mont Saint-Michel, we spotted this store. We all like the St Michel cookies, so we had to stop! We ended up buying a lot of stuff! Cookies, Madeleines, and some butter caramel sauce. Definitely a great place to stop! (It's right by the entrance to the parking lot of Mont Saint-Michel.)

From Mont Saint-Michel, it was about 50 minutes out to Dinan. My mom and brother had read about Dinan online, and we thought we would check it out. It's a really neat old town.

We spent a couple hours walking around Dinan, checking out the little stores, and taking pictures (as well as stopping for some ice cream which was SO good!) before heading back to our apartment.

Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial

Vising the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial was pretty important to my family. My dad had always wanted to visit Omaha beach and the memorial and cemetery. We are a military family. My dad was in the army and quite a few of my family has served in the military, so it was very important to us to visit the cemetery. And we visited on June 7, 2015. Which is exactly 71 years and 1 day since D-Day. 

We woke up early and took the train to Caen, France, then we picked up our rental car and drove out to Colleville-sur-Mer, France, where the cemetery was located. The weather was pretty nice, blue skies and it was warm. We enjoyed the scenery. Rolling green hills with little villages and farms along the way. 

We arrived at the Memorial and headed into the visitor center/museum. We spent quite a bit of time there, reading all of the information.

 Medal of Honor.

 The image on the right tells the story of the Niland brothers, who inspired the movie Saving Private Ryan.

 Omaha beach.

 After the seeing the visitor center, we headed out to the cemetery.

 Two of the brother who inspired the movie Saving Private Ryan.

9,387 graves. 

Inside the chapel.

I was glad we came. I think everyone had tears in their eyes while walking around. It's pretty hard not to. I was quite surprised at how many French people there were at the cemetery. The French are extremely thankful for what the Allied forces did 71 years ago. I saw more American flags being flown in the towns surrounding the cemetery than I do in my own town here in the US. 

The French have not forgotten and neither should we.