Tips and suggestions for a Normandy 2009 trip.

[alleramilitaria]

1. take the ferry, its cheaper and more fun.

2. get a rental car, make it a deisel. the deisel fuel costs only about $4.00 USD a gal.

3. hook up with sic and eric from belguim (will give you the e-mail). they normaly head the belguim group at the beaches.

4. stay away from the US sector on the 6th, see it on the 4th -5th. you will be locked down with probably 100,000 others and be trapped for the day. stay near the canadian and british beaches.

5. visit the smaller museums. sometimes they have much better stuff than the large "official" museums.

6. if you hit one gift shop, you have hit them all.

7. if you start at one end of the beaches, say point duhawk (the west) then you can kinda roll them all up on the way east.

8. stop at a general store and get water and snacks. or it will get real expensive real fast.

9. diep and dunkirk are not too far from normandy, but dont expect to see much there. diep is ok, but dunkirk is a modern port city without much history showing.

10. head to yepers as fast as you can after the 6th, you will be ahead of the flood of people bored with the beaches. there are monuments around there that make the most impressive D-day monuments look like small. the minin gate and aussie, brit, canadian and armored monuments are shocking.

11. if you go to mons there is a amall monument in the center of town that shows where the first AIF troops met the first german troops. its small but interesting.

12. after the WWI battlefields its about 4hrs or so to ninemagen, to arnherm road. with the bridge over the lower rine at the end. the museum there is one of the best in the world.

13. if you want any suvineers there are some great places to visit along the way (AMS militaria, the dumpstore, and others) that will let you walk through the store till you are out of money.

after that just turn around, thats germany and not much to see conserning the world wars.

i would love to come but im saving my money up for another downunder adventure, and i have done normandy 5 times. have fun
dave