Normandy Beach

Maria, You might check with the cruise line, as I suspect they will offer a D-Day excursion while in port there. It will probably be expensive, but probably the quickest and easiest solution if your budget will allow. Happy travels!

Yea, thanks, Ken. That's always an option. We were just looking for an alternative to the ship excursion, but you may be right - in the long run it might be the simplest. Our only other thought was to see about renting a car at the port and going on our own. Any thoughts on that? With all of Rick's information in his book, would we be able to just as easily see the same things that a tour covers?

You can do it on your own but: Figure something like seventy bucks for a car, twenty-five for tolls, and maybe fourty for gas. Mapping software says the drive is an hour and a half one-way to Bayeux. That's not right - - it's over an hour from the south side of the Normandy Bridge and you can spend another hour just getting to the bridge from the cruise terminal. It will be worse heading back since you don't have the big target to keep working toward. Also figure an hour to get from the terminal to the car place and dork around picking up the car - - about the same on the reverse end. It's darn close to six hours of pure logistics time. I can tell you exactly where to go and which way to point your face for the highlights and any number of minor spots. But, if you haven't studied war, and especially amphibious warfare, you're not going to appreciate what you're looking at. On the other hand, I have no idea what the cruise tour would cover. The only tours I've ever heard of from Le Havre (and I can't name a one) need X prepaid/preobligated people or they won't touch it.

Ed, thanks so much for the sound advice. Looks like the excursion off the ship is probably going to be our best bet. I really appreciate your input and straight-forward advice concerning the logistics - things we had no way of knowing.
Thanks, Marla

Marla - if you join the forums at www.cruisecritic.com and join the Roll Call for your particular cruise, you may find people are organizing small group tours that should be lower cost than what the cruise ship offers. You can also check the Ports of Call section to see if there are any private companies who offer shore excursions from Le Havre.

Dina thanks for reminding me of Cruise Critic. I actually hadn't thought of joining the Roll Call; I will do that and check out all of our port stops.
Thanks.