Another long travel day, but we’re all home safe. That’s all to report for now – but I might post a bit more of a wrap-up of the entire trip tomorrow.

Photo by Tim Street

Lizzy and Allison laugh while they wait for our walking tour of WWII Paris to begin, behind the Notre Dame Cathedral.

I’m going to keep the travel update rather brief tonight, as I’m short on time and two students have already written up entries about our activities today.

Our last day in Paris was great, spent partially in separate groups exploring the city, and spent partially in a great walking tour of WWII Paris. Our tour guide, Mike, an American, really knew how to talk to our group and was full of knowledge about WWII Paris, including interesting stories and quips about how Paris came to the brink of destruction many times, but was somehow always spared.

Indeed, Hitler had ordered it to be destroyed if the Allied Forces were going to seize it, but German General Dietrich Von Choltitz risked the life of himself and his family by sending a message to the Allied forces in August of 1944, urging them to take Paris as soon as possible. Von Choltitz wouldn’t voluntarily capitulate, but he knew that the sooner the Allies attacked, the greater the chance the city would have of surviving. Because of this – and a lot of luck – Paris survived. Von Choltitz was later awarded the Croix de Guerre and Legion of Honor by the French government, two of France’s highest honors – all for a Nazi general.

That was just one example of the many stories our guide shared with us, including lots of stories about the liberation day of Paris in August 1944.

As a side note, I took a small group of students to the Paris St.-Germain football match at Parc de Princes stadium tonight, and we had a great time.

We’re off early to Charles de Gaulle airport to begin our travel day home. We’re scheduled to arrive in Philadelphia at 3:55 p.m. tomorrow, so if you’re a parent of a student on the trip, you may start to expect phone calls about then, depending on cell phone batteries. Our flight to Indianapolis is scheduled to arrive at 8:26 p.m. We’ll be on US Airways.

Thanks for reading the blog(s). We’ll still post one or two things tomorrow before we wrap it all up.

Photo by Tim Street

Part of the fountain, "La fontaine des Mers," in Concorde Plaza, Paris. Many aristocrats were killed by the guillotine during the French Revolution in this central Parisian square, including Louis XVI and Robespierre.

The end of our trip looms near, but we’re still busy seeing everything we can before we have to come back to the U.S.! Today was our first full day in Paris and we had a great amount to do.

This morning, we had a very special opportunity to meet with John Morris, a 91-year-old veteran of the photojournalism industry. Morris, who has previously worked as a picture editor at Time, The New York Times and many other media outlets, lives here in Paris, near the Bastille memorial. In fact, he invited us – all 34 of us – over to his apartment to hear him talk.

Unfortunately, a blown projector bulb ruled out the slide show he had planned for us, but he talked to us about his experiences as a photo editor, including his time in World War II, where began working closely with famous war photographer Robert Cappa. He also spent some time with Ernie Pyle – and though he said he wasn’t "close" with Pyle, he did share a community tent with him in Normandy.

Photo by Tim Street

Inside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Afterwards, we had some free time, and groups of students split up to get lunch and visit parts of Paris. Various groups went to Notre Dame, Versailles and the Louvre museum, and others went shopping or visited other sights.

In the late afternoon, we took a bus tour of the city, seeing the countless monuments and historic sites of Paris, including a trip to the second deck of the Eiffel Tower. The city really is quite amazing.

Tomorrow, it’s our last day abroad, and we plan to soak up as much of Paris as we can.

Photo by Tim Street

The imposing island abbey of Mt. St. Michel as we approach along the causeway. Tides here are subject to 45-foot swings between high and low, and the waters frequently lap the outermost walls of the abbey.

Photo by Tim Street

Hilary Robinson and Drew Kincius inside the abbey of Mt. St. Michel.

Another day, another few hundred kilometers covered. We departed from Caen this morning and drove down the Norman coastline to Mt. St. Michel, a famous medieval cathedral, abbey and town. We took a guided tour through the massive cathedral, named for the winged biblical slayer of dragons, St. Michael, and also took some time on our own to explore the island town and eat lunch. It was another rainy day in France, but luckily we were inside for a good amount of time.

After that, we boarded our coach for the last time to embark for Paris. We’ve enjoyed our traveling, but I don’t think anyone was particularly sad that it was our last time taking a coach trip for a while. The drive to Paris took about 4.5 hours, and we arrived at the Hotel Rochester a little before 7 p.m.

Our hotel is located near the Champs-Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe, near where the Tour de France finishes every year. Most students split up into groups of four or five to grab dinner at a local restaurant, as there are plenty nearby.

We’re calling it an early night tonight, as tomorrow we have a full day of visiting Paris, including a trip to the top of the Eiffel Tower (which some of us are lucky enough to see from our hotel rooms). Just a few days left in our trip now!

Photo by Tim Street

Students look at names on the Wall of the Missing at the American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer.

 

Just reporting in to say that all’s well and our group has had a great day in Normandy.

We started off today by meeting our local tour guide at the hotel in Caen and driving through a bevy of small French villages to Omaha Beach. Our guide, Helen, was a Bayeux local and was very knowledgeable about the area.

We spent some time on Omaha Beach, giving students a chance to walk around on the beach. We then traveled to the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, which Rosemary has blogged about.

We continued our busy day in the afternoon – immediately after we left the cemetery, we drove down the road to the french town of Longues-sur-Mer, where a battery of German 150-mm naval guns was still mostly intact.

Photo by Tim Street

The Musee du Debarquement in Arromanches, France.

We then lunched in the French town of Arromanches, home of the Allied forces’ amazing engineering feat: the temporary harbor that supplied the invasion forces. Originally Winston Churchill’s idea, the temporary harbor supplied the invasion forces with critical food, supplies and ammunition until a larger, more heavily-defended port – like Cherbourg or Le Havre, could be captured. In Arromanches, we visited the Musee du Debarquement, a small museum devoted to the harbor.

The day still wasn’t over, as there was still much more to see – we visited Bayeux, one of the few Normandy towns that had entirely escaped being bombed or destroyed during the war. There, we saw the famous 230-foot long Bayeux Tapestry, which pictorially tells the tale of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and Norman conquest of England.

Just down the road in Bayeux was the brand new "Memorial des Reporters," which contained the names of many reporters who were killed in the past fifty years. Students stopped to find Ernie Pyle’s name on the 1945 panel. We also spent some time directly across the street at a British war cemetery.

After that our day was finally complete, and we loaded up the bus and completed the half-hour drive back to our hotel in Caen.

Photo by Tim Street

Lizzie Street on board the Pride of Calais.

Rosemary will be taking the day off from blogging today, and I won’t be posting Colin Dugdale’s blog entry until the morning, so I’ll go ahead and provide some more details than usual this evening.

First of all, apologies if some of you have had trouble accessing the blog today. I know lots of you are reading and counting on updates to know what the group is doing. It turns out the entire journalism web site was out for a time today because of a power outage on the Bloomington campus. When the journalism school doesn’t have power, the Web site can’t be accessed. It also precluded me from posting earlier.

Today was a day devoted entirely to travel. We embarked southwards this morning on a coach bus from our hotel in London to travel to Dover – where, as we can all now attest to, the cliffs really are white.

There was a bit of confusion with our ferry ride across the channel to Calais. There are two major operators that run ferries across the narrowest part of the English Channel between Dover and Calais – Seafrance and P&O. Our tickets were originally scheduled with Seafrance, a French-operated company. However, the workers of Seafrance went on strike last week, so we had to get our tickets transfered to the P&O ferry.

The ticket confusion was compounded by the fact that the ferry companies were incredibly busy today because yesterday’s high winds kept all ferries in port. As such, there was a huge backlog of commercial traffic trying to get across the channel. The trucks (or "lorries," as the Brits would call them) were lined up for quite a distance.

Despite the travel drama, the group remained in high spirits, and we traveled across the channel and arrived in Calais only a couple of hours later than we had originally planned. Most of the students had never been on a ferry the size of the Spirit of Calais before, and as such, it was a unique experience. The channel was a bit choppy, but luckily no one got very seasick. You can certainly see how soldiers in the landing craft of the allied invasion force would have gotten seasick on D-Day, though.

Once we arrived in Calais, our charter coach met us just outside the ferry, and we loaded our luggage and departed for Caen. After a brief bit of trouble with a curious backup on the French highway – apparently traffic jams for no reason aren’t unique to the United States – we were on our way.

We’re all here now at the Nôvotel in Caen. We checked in, ate dinner, and are relaxing in our rooms. Tomorrow, we’ll spend the day hopping on and off our coach at various Normandy points of interest, including the Embarkment Museum, the American Cemetery, Omaha Beach and other interesting places with WWII history. We’ll be back again in Caen tomorrow night with two student blog entries.

Apologies for some trouble we’ve had with the blog. Between a power outage at the Bloomington campus and some internet access issues here "across the pond," it’s been a rough 24 hours for blogging.

Because of our travel day today, there will not be a new entry from Rosemary tonight. We do have a new post from Kristi Oloffson below about Monday’s activities. Colin Dugdale’s post about today’s (Tuesday’s) travel activities will be posted tomorrow morning, then we should be completely back on schedule.

For more details about our travel day today, check out travel updates.

Photo by Tim Street

Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament on a soggy London afternoon.

The rain and wind came to London today, but apart from a few wet heads and inside-out umbrellas, it didn’t cause us any real trouble. The sun even came out a few times during the day.

In fact, it was because of the wind that our first event of the day was delayed by a half hour. John Burns, London bureau chief for the New York Times, couldn’t catch a train into London because of the inclement weather. He ended up driving to London just to meet with us, which we really appreciated. The students really enjoyed what he had to say, but I’ll leave it to them to talk about it in the blog.

Other events during the day included a trip to St. Paul’s Cathedral, where we visited the crypt and climbed up into the whispering gallery, and an afternoon trip to the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum.

In the morning, we’ll board a charter bus (or "coach," as the Brits call it) to Dover, where we’ll ferry across to Calais and then hop aboard another bus to take us to our hotel in Caen. We should arrive at our hotel in Caen around 7 p.m. CET (Central Europe Time).

As a note, the UK is currently 4 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time, and France is 5 hours ahead.

Photo by Tim Street

The group on the upper level of the Imperial War Museum.

It’s Sunday night in the United Kingdom, and all is well with our group. This morning, we set off on a nice London day to St. Bride’s, a Christopher Wren church in London proper. The church, made famous by its "wedding cake" steeple, has made itself into the patron church of journalists. After visiting for a bit, we walked down Fleet Street to Trafalger Square, then took the tube to the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth. There, we were led on a guided tour and visited exhibits on wars involving the British commonwealth over the years – particularly World War II. Following the war museum, we split up into groups for sightseeing and dinner.

Everyone is in high spirits and has been enjoying their time. Tomorrow we’ll continue our London experience by visiting The Frontline Club, Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms and St. Paul’s Cathedral. The weather forecast for tomorrow isn’t the greatest – a healthy dose of rain and gale winds are being predicted – but we’re hopeful that it won’t be too bad.

After a long day and night of traveling, the group arrived in Europe at 8:30 a.m. this morning. We were fortunate to not have any delays or problems with our flights, as some other Friday flights out of Indianapolis did.

We landed right on time at Gatwick Airport, and after clearing customs and collecting our baggage, we boarded a charter bus to take us to the Earl’s Court Ibis hotel in southwest London. We took a break for lunch before re-boarding the bus for a driving tour of London. On the driving tour, we made stops at Kensington Palace, St. Paul’s Cathedral and Buckingham Palace. We also drove through several other scenic parts of London, including Westminster, Trafalgar Square and Fleet Street. We ended the day by visiting the Tower of London. Everyone enjoyed the day, but most everyone is quite tired from the flying, as well. We’re getting rest now so we can have another full day tomorrow.

School of Journalism students who traveled from London to Normandy as part of a class, In the Footsteps of Ernie Pyle, blogged about their experiences. Read their reports.

The group is preparing to leave tonight. We’ll leave at 1 p.m. Friday from the Indiana Memorial Union and travel on a charter bus to Indianapolis. From Indianapolis, we’ll fly to Charlotte, N.C. where we’ll board our flight for Gatwick Airport in London.