Euro Trip Day 10: Dieppe and Nornandy, France

This turned out to be a very long day. We had intended to stay in Paris for one more day, but decided at the last minute to scrap our plans and head to Dieppe, France instead, a distance of about 200 kms. I had wanted to check out the World War 2 D-Day invasion sights and had figured that Dieppe would be where the Canadian memorial would be.

Turns out I was only half right.

The Dieppe Raid, also known as The Battle of Dieppe, Operation Rutter or later on Operation

Jubilee, during the Second World War, was an Alliedattack on the German-occupied port of Dieppe on the northern coast of France on 19 August 1942. The assault began at 5:00 AM and by 10:50 AM the Allied commanders had

been forced to call a retreat. Over 6,000 infantrymen, predominantly Canadian, were supported by large Royal Navy and Royal Air Force contingents. The objective was to seize and hold a major port for a short period, both to prove it was possible and to gather intelligence from prisoners and captured materials while assessing the German

responses. The Allies also wanted to destroy coastal defences, port structures and all strategic buildings

The D-Day invasion actually occured on June 6, 1944 and Canada was involved, but not in

Dieppe, France. The actual D-Day beaches, like Juno beach and Omaha beach, turned out to be a 2 hour drive down the coast in the opposite direction that we were travelling.

And even though I had got my information wrong, my wife took pity on me and decided we

should make the 4 hour detour to go see the sights and to pay our respects. Unfortunately because we started so late in the day we were only able to see half of them before it got too dark.

It was enough for us to realize just how much of a sacrifice those soldiers made on that beach so many years ago.

Info courtesy of Wikipedia.com

Euro Trip Day 8: Monaco and Nice, France

We woke up on day 8 in the principality of Monaco. What an amazing city Monaco turned out to be, a playground for the rich and famous,

and home of the famous Monaco Grand Prix. The race is set to run May 29th, the week after our visit. but that's OK because I got to check out the track first hand and up close.

And then it was down the road to Nice, France. Unfortunately, this was the first bit of cold weather that we encountered on our journey. We had hoped for a day on the famed beach, but it was too cold, we settled instead for a walk around the market and lunch on the patio.

And then shortly after that at around 2:00 pm the 932 km trek to Paris began. We pulled into Paris at about midnight that night after driving non-stop to get there. This was our first planned full day of driving that we needed to do to get from point A to point B. Too much ground to cover and not enough time for any stops. It wasn't fun but necessary because of the speed limit on highways in France, which really slowed us down. There is also photo radar everywhere, which seriously puts a damper on the speeding. We saw one or two flashes along the way and await the inevitable speeding ticket in the mail. And to top it off, it cost us over 100 Euros in tolls to drive across France. The most expensive place to drive in Europe by far.