Pat and Forrest Meiere recently returned from a European Cruise around Western Europe with a stop at Casablanca in North Africa. Starting in London and ending in Rome, they enjoyed tours of Seville, Barcelona, Lisbon, Casablanca, Cannes and Florence. However, the highlight was a very emotional day spent touring the beaches of Normany with some veterans who landed there years ago. Hurricane Isabel almost derailed everything. A week before departure, Isabel was a catagory 5 hurricane predicted to hit Charleston the day they were scheduled to leave. Then Isabel veered off toward Washington, DC. Unfortunately, Washington's Dulles Airport was their intermediate stop. The airport was closed until noon on the day they left but opened just in time for our 2 pm flight. In fact, Dulles was actually closed when they took off from Charleston but opened while they were in flight. Whew!

One reason for choosing this particular cruise was the opportunity to tour the beaches at Normandy.

The almost endless rows of graves are the dominant feature of the Normandy Memorial, just above the beaches.	The entrance to the Memorial is a beautiful tribute to the many men who fought and died there.

It was hard to imagine fighting ashore across beaches which were strewn with these "Croc Teeth".

There are still remnants of the huge breakwater (seen in the background) and unloading ramps.

We ate an excellent French lunch at a Norman chateau located a few miles inland from the beaches.

Several men in our tour group were veterans who landed at Normandy and fought to Berlin.

We did not quite know what to expect along the French Riveria.

We walked around Cannes and ate lunch there on our own. We expected a tourist trap because of the Cannes Film festival and its location on the French Riviera. Instead, we found a quaint, and quite lovely, French seaport.

We had a decaf expresso at a small cafe in Cannes, just like the "rich folks." (decaf expresso??)

Cannes could not accommodate large ships at the dock. We "commuted" using the ship's lifeboats as tenders.

Click for more " European Cruise Pictures".

An expanded version of this cruise, with more pictures, can be viewed at www.Meiere.com.

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