The Stuck at The Airport cruise team recently sailed as a guest on the Viking Radgrid on Viking’s Paris & the Heart of Normandy itinerary.
Here are some snaps and notes from the trip in case you’re thinking of heading that way once all the stories start flowing about the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics and the June 4th anniversary marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings along the Normandy coast during World War II.
We took advantage of a day and half docked in Paris to join a walking tour, visit a museum, ride the Paris Metro and take a food tour during which we drank wine and ate cheese and macarons, of course, but also spied some other edible treasures.
A few stops to savor
The village of La Roche-Guyon, about an hour from Paris on the Seine, is home to Château de La Roche-Guyon, a curious 12-century castle that’s been transformed over several centuries.
Fans of Vincent Van Gogh make sure to visit Auvers-Sur-Oise, the town where the artist painted and drew 74 pictures in a fervish 70 days and where he is buried alongside his brother, Theo.
Rouen, France
Joan of Arc, the patron saint of France, was burned at the stake in a marketplace in Rouen, France in 1431. But the town is also known for the Notre Dame of Rouen Cathedral, a much-photographed 14th-century astronomical clock, museums, and more.
Normandy: Caen Memorial Museum, American Cemetery, Omaha Beach
Many book this cruise for the full-day excursion that includes a visit to the Caen Memorial Museum, the Normandy American Cemetery and the Omaha Beach Memorial.
The museum is immersive, with sections (often very graphic) detailing events the causes, consequences, key players and decisive battles of World War II, the D-Day landings and the Battle of Normandy.
It is shocking and difficult to see some of the images and read many of the documented stories in this museum, but we were heartened by the sight of this crystal radio receiver hidden inside a vegetable can that and used by a French Resistance fighter.
The cemetery contains the graves of 9,387 military dead and, On the Walls of the Missing, an additional 1,557 names, with rosettes marking the names of those since recovered and identified.
And at Omaha Beach, the Les Braves (The Brave) memorial by Anilore Banon was installed in 2004 as the offiical sculpture of 60th anniversary commemoration of the World War II Normandy landings.
