England transitioning to France

Following five great days in England everyone packed their bags and boarded a bus that led us to Portsmouth. While in town we visited the D-day museum and the nearby castle. On June 6, 1944 allied troops gathered in Portsmouth to storm the beaches in Normandy. The museum depicted the story of the events leading up to D-day.          

After dinner there was a two hour wait before anyone was allowed to board the cruise ship. During the wait we took a quiz on what we had learned while in England and this helped summarize our experience so far. Our teachers informed us that there would be Wi-Fi on the cruise so everyone got excited. From land the ship looked very large and luxurious, but once we got onto the ship we were let down. The Wi-Fi only worked on a deck higher than us, and even there nothing would load due to a poor satellite connection. Most students wanted to talk to their families back home.  Up to this point in our trip, Wi-Fi was not readily available, so for most of us this was the first opportunity to communicate through our electronic devices. The biggest problem on the cruise was the size of the rooms. Most rooms had four people assigned to them, and each room was about fifteen feet by ten feet. There were two bunk beds and enough space for one person to walk in and out of the room or into the bathroom. My roommates and I had to put our luggage in the bathroom so we would have enough space to get to our beds. Trying to fall asleep was worse than getting into the rooms. I had not slept on a boat before and laying down felt very unusual. The boat rocked back and forth, and every once in a while the rocking would make a car alarm go off. At first everyone in my room was confused because we did not know that on the lower decks the boat was transporting cars over to France.

The night seemed very long as the cruise ship finally arrived in France. Afterwards, a bus took us to the D-day museum in Caen which was very different from the museum in Portsmouth. Besides seeing the photos in the museum we had a chance to visit Omaha and Utah beach and frolic through the fields where holes from mortars and destroyed bunkers remained. Nearby, there was a cemetery for all of the American soldiers that died during the assault on Normandy. There were rows of white crosses and the occasional Star of David. In World War II not all Jewish soldiers listed they religion on their dog tags, which was the only way to be identified, for the fear of additional persecution if captured by the Germans.

The next day we visited a cheese factory in Normandy that smelled very atrocious. A cheese sample was given out to every student and it tasted very different than the cheese that is available in America. From the factory the bus went to the town of Rouen where the famous Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, and this was the last stop before our departure to Paris.