My group of ten college friends traveled to Europe for two weeks aboard the Viking Star, visiting 12 ports.
Months before the trip, we selected our excursions. After some thought, my husband and I decided that we wanted to hire a private tour guide to give us an in-depth tour of Normandy. After discussing this option with our friends, they all decided to join us for a group tour of 10. I had been in the travel and tour industry for over fifteen years and so I knew what I wanted in a guide. I read review after review and decided to hire Overlord Tours and we selected a full day tour that would give us the best over view of D-Day. The tour of Normandy with Overlord Tours and in particular with our tour guide Yannick, was the highlight of our trip!
Yannick picked us up at our ship in a beautiful Mercedes van. He led us on a wonderful tour of Omaha Beach, The Amercian Cemetery, Utah Beach, and we visited The Bedford Boys Memorial which had special meaning to us as we are from Virgina. He told us the story of Private John Steele of F Company 505th PIR 82nd Airborne Division who jumped into Normandy on the night of 5th-6th June 1944. His experience was famously recreated by the actor Red Buttons in the film ‘The Longest Day’.
Our entire group agrees that our tour of Normandy with Yannick was the highlight of our entire trip. Yannick was knowledgeable, enthusiastic and a wonderful storyteller. He has many visuals (that we really enjoyed) that helped us understand D-Day. He told us real life stories of some of the people that both lived and died in Normandy during the invasion which made our tour and our learning much more interesting. The best thing that we all loved about Yannick was his passion for history and especially WWII History.