Normandy 2019 - Day 3 - a photo on Flickriver

Normandy 2019 - Day 3

            Normandy holds a special place in my heart. In 2004 my nephew and I first went there to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the D-Day landings. We thought we could just waltz in and out which turned out to be far from the truth. It was an inaccessible madhouse and almost put us off from visiting ever again.

Subsequent 9 visits were better planned and cemented a lasting love for the region. The last time I visited was my 10th time in 2013. Then I entered a long hiatus of 6 years due to different circumstances until my nephew messaged me around May this year saying he would really like to go back to Normandy to see if the 'vibe' was still there. I immediately said yes to the idea to revisit this stunning part of France but we didn't want to go during the 75th D-Day Anniversary in June which has been an even bigger chaos with almost a million people visiting the region. We chose to go in September, way past the madness. We decided not to go to any museums, we visited outdoor spots of interest and see whether the latest commemorations had commercialised them. For some reason we were afraid that that might have happened. Luckily we were wrong.

I'm glad we did go in September, it was an epic trip. Apart from a few places that have changed considerably in the past years everything that makes this a special place on this planet are still there. The thing that struck me most was that the American Cemetery in Colleville was just partly accessible even three months after the June commemorations due to the damage caused to the grass by the sheer multitude of people that had walked on it.

Apart from that we got blessed with excellent weather, sunshine all around, deep blue skies, the smell of the sea which is so strong there, the old villages, beautiful churches, excellent seafood and drink and the remnants of war strewn around all over the place which have propelled this once sleepy rural part of France into one of the most important spots on the planet when history earmarked it as the place where the greatest invasion in history would take place.

The visit has sparked a renewed interest in Normandy and is hopefully a start of a new string of visits!

Some rights reserved

Taken on: November 8, 2019

Tags:

D-Day

Normandy

Invasion

World War 2

France « less

Sets appears in: • Normandy 2019 - Day 3

Stats: 165 views

go back

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder