Does anyone have a recommendation for a tour guide of the Normandy beaches, American Cemetery and the museums? We will be staying in Bayeaux for a few days, and we will have a vehicle.
Posted by
Vancouver Wa
260 posts
That’s where we stayed in Oct and we booked the 2 day Bradley tour from Overlord Tours. I highly recommend them! They picked us up at our hotel around 8:30am.
Posted by
Middletown, RI
1227 posts
Smart to have a car in Normandy. Search this forum and you will see tons of recommendations for tour guides. Most people just simply and highly recommend the one and only tour guide they have ever used. I personally haven't used any of them.
Posted by
Wilmington, NC
180 posts
My advice is don't get a guide. Everything you need to know about the sites you want to see you can find from their websites, youtube videos, multiple forums and reading guide books. Some of the sites are very large and on a guided tour you will not have the time to explore the site. If you do get a guide, do a private tour and customize it to only the sites you want to see.
Posted by
Paris
7303 posts
I respectfully disagree with the poster above. To me, a D-Day beach without the historical background is ... just another beach.
For the cemeteries and the museums, a guide is not as necessary, though.
Posted by
Wisconsin
32 posts
We booked a private tour with Dale Booth for our upcoming trip to France.
Posted by
Wilmington, NC
180 posts
For us on our trip, the all day tour was not needed. I had put in a ton of research on the sites we were going to. Including all the beaches. Our guide was impressed with how much I knew. Everything you need to know you can find online and you can move at your own pace without being rushed back to the van to drive to the next stop on the tour.
On our tour we didnt have time to explore the Gun Battery at LSM, Point Du Hoc, The American Cemetery etc. And Balso is right, forget about museums on the tour. You wont have the time to go through them. At St Mere Eglise, by the time we had lunch we only had 20 minutes to see the museums there and they have 3 buildings worth of museums at SME. We had to meet our guide back at the church for his story and walk through.
Thankfully we did have another day to see the American Cemetery but we didnt have time to go back to SME, PDH, or the Gun Battery at LSM. That was a big disappointment. For us, I wished we had not booked the tour. We had our own car, these places are easy to find and it would have saved us almost 300 Euros. Anyway, hope you have a wonderful trip.
Rick Steves has many good videos on youtube on Normandy as does History Underground and Walking D Day.
Posted by
Washington DC
28082 posts
The Overlord Tour stop at St-Mere-Eglise was just about long enough to see the Airborne Museum if you grabbed a sandwich at a bakery (pointed out by our guide) and scarfed it down while sitting on a bench. There definitely wasn't time to both see the museum and have a sit-down lunch. I have since recommended a few times that folks consider taking some sort of lunch along with them on the tour. That would save the few minutes otherwise required to buy something at the bakery.