Our next stop was at Arromanches-les-Bains. Arromanches is a quaint little town sitting on the banks of the English Channel. The architecture of the town was amazing and the village was absolutely beautiful. We eventually made it through the narrow streets to arrive at the Arromanches D-Day Museum.
Here we took a guided tour of the museum and learned that Arromanches was actually the center of the Normandy D-Day landings and was assigned the code name Gold Beach. There were a total of five designated beached used on 6 June 1944 and each one was associated with British, American or Canadian military forces. Gold Beach was a British designated beach and units of the British 50th Infantry Division assault the beach and took it from German Troops on D-Day.
Since Allied forces were not able to land at any of the other ports due
to the German-occupied Europe along the Western European
Coast during World War II. As a result, United Kingdom's Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the building of artificial mulberry harbors in Arromanches and other surrounding beaches. It was interesting to see how the engineers developed the Phoenix breakwater barriers and the docks. In addition, many of the factories who produced the materials were in different areas, and it was fascinating to learn about how the pieces were pulled across the water from the English coast and set up the harbor successfully in time for the invasion.
After the visit at the museum, we took some time to stroll along the beach to see the remains of the some of the barriers that were still in the harbor. It was kinda of eerie to see all of the blocks of concrete tumbled up on the beach and to see lines of battered concrete in the harbor. Looking at some of the photos from D-Day, it is still hard to imagine what the beach would have been like, and what those soldiers were thinking when they landed there.
This post marks the last place that we visited for the day. We headed into Caen to go to our hotel, where we had enough time to check-in and get refreshed before heading out to dinner. Since it was pretty late, we decided to just have dinner at the hotel. We were really tired and looking forward to continuing our weekend in Normandy.
Here we took a guided tour of the museum and learned that Arromanches was actually the center of the Normandy D-Day landings and was assigned the code name Gold Beach. There were a total of five designated beached used on 6 June 1944 and each one was associated with British, American or Canadian military forces. Gold Beach was a British designated beach and units of the British 50th Infantry Division assault the beach and took it from German Troops on D-Day.
Since Allied forces were not able to land at any of the other ports due
to the German-occupied Europe along the Western European
Coast during World War II. As a result, United Kingdom's Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the building of artificial mulberry harbors in Arromanches and other surrounding beaches. It was interesting to see how the engineers developed the Phoenix breakwater barriers and the docks. In addition, many of the factories who produced the materials were in different areas, and it was fascinating to learn about how the pieces were pulled across the water from the English coast and set up the harbor successfully in time for the invasion. 
After the visit at the museum, we took some time to stroll along the beach to see the remains of the some of the barriers that were still in the harbor. It was kinda of eerie to see all of the blocks of concrete tumbled up on the beach and to see lines of battered concrete in the harbor. Looking at some of the photos from D-Day, it is still hard to imagine what the beach would have been like, and what those soldiers were thinking when they landed there.This post marks the last place that we visited for the day. We headed into Caen to go to our hotel, where we had enough time to check-in and get refreshed before heading out to dinner. Since it was pretty late, we decided to just have dinner at the hotel. We were really tired and looking forward to continuing our weekend in Normandy.
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