A Paris Travel Blog

Today we celebrated the 69^th 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!)

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.

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.