Normandy beaches half day trip from bayeux

Pay tribute to the soldiers who fought at Omaha Beach on this afternoon tour of the Normandy beaches from Bayeux. You'll visit the famous battlefield sites of World War II and gain invaluable insights into the wartime experience of the soldiers who fought and died there. Your minivan holds a maximum of eight passengers, and a small group tour is the perfect way to get to out-of-the-way places in one day.

From Bayeux you'll drive to Pointe du Hoc, where the infamous German gun position threatened the Allied ships all the way to Utah and Omaha. The site was attacked by the elite 2nd U.S. Rangers, commanded by Lt. Col. James Rudder, who scaled the cliffs to get there. With its huge fortifications blown to pieces, the important site remains as it was when the Rangers left it and looks like a lunar landscape.

You'll then drive along the coast to Omaha Beach, where soldiers of the Vierville 29th and Colleville 1st Divisions landed, fought and died. This operation was the bloodiest of the five beaches and almost failed, but the bravery of those young men turned this operation into a victory. The two stops along the 4-mile beach will give you an appreciation of the sheer scale of the events that took place.

Overlooking the eastern end of Omaha Beach, the American cemetery holds the bodies of 9387 soldiers who came from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean to liberate Western Europe from the Germans. You can see the graves of some of the 307 unknown soldiers or visit the resting places of the more famous, such as the family who inspired the film "Saving Private Ryan" or General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. You will end your tour at the Normandy Visitor Center, which provides the all-important, and very moving, background details to the scenes that took place on Omaha Beach in 1944.