September 11th Juno Beach

Mix of sun and cloud today.  Showered forecast for later in the day.  Still nice but fall is definitely in the air.  I got out for a nice walk this morning and when I got back Ian was up and looking at the map.    This usually means we are going somewhere.  It’s a bit like the dog when he sees the leash in his masters hand. After our long drive the other day we said the car was not moving until we headed back to Amsterdam but we changed our minds.  We couldn’t drive all the way here and not see Juno Beach. So off we went.  The GPS wouldn’t bring up Juno Beach so we had to find a town that we thought was in the area and go from there.  We were really surprised at how hard it was to find.  Anyway, the town we chose as our destination was Arromanche.  It was a very convoluted drive through fields and farmland.  Very pretty but very narrow roads.  When we arrived in Arromanche we couldn’t believe this beautiful town right on the sea.  There were lots of tourists but it wasn’t overwhelming. I can just imagine what it would be like in high season. So we got the car parked in a lot and started walking.  The beaches are stunningly beautiful.  Miles of soft, white sand.  But looking out at the water and trying to imagine what it must have been like for all those thousands of young men facing German machine guns and trying to take that beach ........well, it’s impossible to imagine. The beach at Arromanche, we think, is actually Omaha Beach, where the Americans landed. So we found a little restaurant and stopped for lunch.  After lunch we were going to go find Juno Beach where our Canadians landed.  It was 14 kilometres further up the beach. So we get back to the car and try to scan our ticket to get out of the parking lot and it doesn’t work. After scratching our heads for a while and wandering around the lot we sound a machine where you are supposed to scan your ticket and pay for it.  Then you go to the exit and scan it again to show that you have paid.  Seems a bit much to me. And of course all the instructions on the machine are in French.  Whatever.........there were two slots in the machine......one for money and one for a credit card.  So Ian mistakenly put the credit card into the money slot.  Oops!  The machine wouldn’t return the card and the button you push for help is a recorded message in French.  Meanwhile a nice young French girl came over to see what our problem was.  She and her partner were having some kind of a problem as well. And she had a phone.  Smart girl.  But when she called the help number it was a recorded message.  And the mailbox was full.  Good system eh?  Anyway, we then paid cash so we could get the car out of the lot.  Ian was prepared to just leave the card in the machine and cancel it.  But this woman suggested we go to the Tourist information to see if they could help.  Well, by the time we found another parking spot, (which we didn’t pay for) and found the Tourist information office,  this lovely young woman had managed to extract our card from the machine and took it to the TI office.  We thought this was too good to be true and figured by the time we got back to our car it would have been towed.  But not this time!  So off we went to Juno Beach where there were way fewer people and no pay parking lots.  Such a sad place. So we walked the beach,  looked at the memorials and took some pictures.

On the way home we stopped at a MacDonald’ to pick up a bite to eat.  Ian was actually excited to be getting a hamburger.  And by this time it was about 7:30.  Now, I don’t know if we have these self service machines in our MacDonald’s at home, but if they do they have lost two customers.  So we tried to order just two hamburgers and two diet cokes.  Shouldn’t be too complicated. And we were able to get English on the machine.  At least for the ordering part.  It switched back to French before completing the order. There were about 8 young people working there and only one came to our assistance.  And he gave us about 15 seconds of his time. So after the second failure we left and found a grocery store.  Cheese and onion sandwich for Ian and store bought salad for me!