Courseulles-sur-Mer

The town of Bayeux appeared to be a nice small town with a fairly impressive church when we passed through the other day, but in the end we decided not to back track to this town. Instead we went to Juno beach about 20km west of Arromanches. When we woke earlier that morning we headed out with the intention of visiting the museum in town, which we sort of did. On our way we passed by the beach only to see the tide had gone out another 50 feet or so. It was crazy to have seen the water only 15 feet from the break wall and now the water was more than a football field away. We took advantage of this and walked around the beach again. We saw three people on horseback and we figured by the way they were riding them they must have been training the horses to walk in the water. Julie was also grossed out while we walked along the beach. That was due to what she referred to as “fish poo” that covered the ocean floor we were now walking on. We then went to purchase a giant Canadian flag to hang in our window when we’re parked and we also had some awful lunch consisting of microwaved hamburgers and French fries. The museum was on the concrete harbor that Winston Churchill thought up during the war. Since our shoe strings guide explained what the concrete things were, we decided to skip this museum for another. In the entry room for the museum they had on display the list of beaches that were stormed on D-Day and the countries that stormed them. They also had a plethora of information on all the beaches. The beach we were at is Omaha, which was stormed by the Americans. The beach to the west was called Juno and was stormed by Canadians. In the town of Courseulles-sur-Mer they have a Canadian orientated museum(http://www.junobeach.org/Centre/index.html). We decided that we wanted to learn more about Canada’s part in the war. Juno beach was the second bloodiest of all the beaches stormed that day. Utah saw more blood, which was located on the other side of Omaha. The young lady at the counter was from London, Ontario and we chatted for a bit, but because the movie was about to start we were ushered off. The museum starts you off in a small room with screens surrounding three walls. The lower half of the room is designed to look like one of the boats used during the storming of the beaches. The film was about Canada and about what the soldiers could be thinking. It wasn’t what we expected. We figured it was supposed to be moving, but it missed its mark. The remainder of the museum was set up in stages, what was being done in Canada and what troops were in the war. The second last room had to be the best though. On all the walls they had information on the war going on in each country and in the centre of the room they had videos playing. The videos were of veterans speaking of the war, all were matched perfectly from the start to the finish of the war. The last room had a continuous stream of names of all the Canadian soldiers that lost their lives. Apparently to watch it from start to finish it would take 4 ½ hours. Up to this point the museum was on Canada’s contribution to the war effort. Now the museum turned to Canada in its present state. Julie and I felt that this sign was just perfect. (insert photo here). We ended up not hanging around too long in this room as it seemed more like an advertisement of Canada then actual education. We did read some of the quotes that ran around the room. One read “It’s impossible to explain the size of Canada to any European. I mean we will drive 100 km just to see a movie.” We left the museum with Canadian patches for our bags (we haven’t had them and could not find them up to this point) and decided once again, not to buy Maple syrup. €15.50 for 500ml of this golden liquid is insane.