Today we celebrated the 69th Anniversary of the D-Day Allied Landing Invasion of Normandy. What a full and wonderful experience. As always, we were accompanied by our fabulous guide who took us to Ste. Mere Eglise, Utah Beach, Omaha Beach, the American Cemetery, and Pte. du Hoc. My guide is also a dear friend whose Dad was in the French Resistance, was captured in Caen, and who had the unfortunate misfortune (understatement to be sure!) to be sent to Dachau Prison Camp for the remainder of the war. (He survived the war, but not without great pain!)
The A Paris Travel Blog
My company, A Paris Travel offers tours in France and Britain. My goal in these pages is to share my thoughts and ideas on traveling in France and Britain, the places where I arrange tours and other travel services.
Sue Lillie
I am Sue Lillie, President of A Paris Travel. I have been arranging travel to France and Britain since 1997. I was teaching French at the time and had taken a group of parents and students to Paris during Spring Break in 1996. That trip was organized by a large company that had been doing student tours for years. Upon my return, I realized that I could do what I had just done in the way of a tour and could do it much better. The rest is (as they say) "history" since while I continued to teach several more years, I did start A Paris Travel and organized my own group tours. Constrained by my teaching schedule, I could only travel at Spring Break and during summer. Then in 1999, I decided that I wanted to pursue a career as a full time tour operator and stopped teaching. This allowed me to make connections with outstanding France partners which in turn gave me knowledge, confidence, and resources to plan trips for individuals going to France on their own. Still, I continued escorting my own small groups and continue to do so. I've added the knowledge of and love for Britain travel to my travel website and look forward to helping many more new friends who find A Paris Travel on the web as they search for the best way to plan a trip to France and Britain.
Today was a splendid walking tour with our Paris guide. We tasted sausage from the Auvergne, a kouign aman from Brittany, chocolate from somewhere in France (mint…tasted like the mint was picked from my garden, but it melted in my mouth). We marveled at Haussmannian architecture on the Left Bank (I always note it on the Right Bank in Paris, but hadn’t seen so much on the Left Bank). We watched the throngs of Parisians in line for tantalizing pastries and baguettes for their Sunday family dinners.
I arrived in Paris today to begin my annual Normandy and Paris D-Day Escorted Tour. The weather in Paris is gorgeous and everyone is out. People are in cafés, biking down the Champs Elysees, strolling Boulevard St. Germain. It's absolutely wonderful! Saturday is shopping day and it’s bustling right now.
The 2013 French Open has begun in Paris! Like always, it should be another exciting event. Last year's male champion, Rafael Nadal managed to escape defeat in his first-round match against Daniel Brand of Germany. Maria Sharapova also won her first-round match against Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan. Whew! This year's French Open is off to a good start.
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May 8th is not a holiday in the US, but it is in France and elsewhere in Europe. Rightfully so! It's called V-E Day or Victory in Europe Day, for on this day in 1945, the United States and Great Britain celebrated the defeat of the Nazi war machine.
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