THE YANKS ARE COMING

 To Utah & Omaha beaches. We spent a day on the US operations on D-Day. Saving Private Ryan is largely fictitious with elements of fact in it. The US cemetery overlooking the beaches is something, absolutely immaculate with all the crosses looking westward to home.

They got into a real mess landing on Omaha, dropping the tanks & troops too early into deep water so most of the tanks sunk & the troops drowned.

We next went to the museum which was pretty good & then on to St Mere Eglise to learn how the US 82nd & 101st airborne got on before the beach landings.

This is portrayed in the film, The Longest Day & may not be true.

The outdoor loos are good here.

The airborne made a bit of a cods up of their glider & paratrooper drops getting them on the ground all over the place so they couldn't fight effectively & took ages to get organised. In the end successful. 

This is the guy from Band of Brothers

Some touching stories about medics who treated both allies & enemy alike under fire. Robert Wright & Kenneth Moore were two young soldiers, one with one week's training in first aid & the other with 3 week's training took over this church to treat the wounded, under fire when a mortar shell came through the roof but failed to explode.

The German cemetery is a bit different.

When you look at the beaches & the well sited bunkers it's no surprise to see what a difficult job it was just to survive the first onslaught.

INTO BATTLE....

 In more ways than one. We always have drama when we leave the flat to go away on a break. We have had flooding from broken mains under the road, the pavement on fire from BT cable. This time poor old Lin was crapped on by an albatross (or flying pig) judging by the size of the brown poo on her blouse. Loads of people that we met en route said that must be lucky, I think they meant lucky it didn't crap on them. We cleaned up the poo, boarded the coach & Lin even tried to divert attention by saying " Is that you trumping, Wally "

Anyway boarded the luxury coach, and it is good. A 56 seater that's kitted out for 35, fully reclining seats & lots of configurations, including face to face. We had the front row with oodles of room. There is a full bar service on board at all times.

The journey on the coach down was excellent, we had a minibus to South Mimms where we picked up our coach with others destined for other places which boarded their final coaches at a purpose built coach centre near Folkestone. Then straight to Dover where the French came on board & stamped everyone's passports in 2 minutes, the guide checked us on the P&O ferry, so straight on the earlier boat. Top notch & even the burgers in the cafe weren't bad!

A nice run down to Caen over some great bridges & lovely countryside to our IBIS hotel.

All in all, a super start, & much better than flying!

BUDA OR PEST?

 Our guide says the only good thing about Buda is you can get a great view of beautiful Pest from it. I wonder which side he lives on?

More stunning weather, lots of state buildings, cathedrals & museums. Go for a Trabby tour if you want.

Market hall was a nice place to wander around, lots to see & buy - food & souvenirs.

Guide was intent on being provocative, telling us why everything was better in Hungary than England & going on at length about England's 6-3 & 7-1 defeats at the hands of Puskas.

It's a fine balance working with the locals, at least Mum only cut off half the bottle & not my head! Dancing with the locals was exhausting - all that stamping & clapping.

Nice night time cruise to see the city lit up, very pretty.

17 degC yesterday, 3 this morning.

BRATISLAVA

Moved just down the river to Bratislava, capital of Slovakia. Weather's has been brilliant, over 30 degC yesterday in Vienna.

 Matej, our guide was brilliant today. Had loads of little stories & quips for us, many featuring his mother-in-law. He said the man at work was typically communist, doesn't move all day, but still takes home the same pay as you. You can see lots of people touch his head for luck - Matej says it's bad luck, as hundreds of dogs piss on his head every day.

Kofola is the communist version of coca cola. It got so popular that people still bought it when the real thing arrived.

Nice town with squares & boulevards in the historic centre, surrounded by drab communist suburbs.

This old derelict house is being converted to flats, it's on the internet with pricing around €1 million. The country has booked with the motor industry moving here making 1 million cars pa with Volvo moving in to make an extra 400k. With a country population of 9 million, it's some industry. They are very anxious about what Trump is doing - bust on the horizon?

Narrowest house in Europe.

Rather grand Post Office, more working counters than in Enfield Town.

This is Matej, he said if you want to get a woman out of your life, buy a mouth organ. Then proceeded to get one out & play us some traditional tunes. He's wearing a shepherds hat with sea shells around it. Apparently, shepherd's took their goods down river to trade at the mouth of the Danube & sewed on a shell after every successful trip. You could then tell if you were hiring a good river navigator judging by the shells.

This was a guy who was jilted on the altar in the early 1900's who never changed out of his wedding suit until he died in the '60s.

The story behind this is that 2 men were building adjacent houses & wanted to marry the same woman. Whoever builds the nicest house gets my hand. This house won & the guy put in this effigy blowing a raspberry & with a big set of family jewels, so the loser had to face it every time he left his house!

MELK, THEN VIENNA

 Ah Vienna....... A beautiful city, very clean wonderful buildings, wide boulevards, palaces the lot.

Spent an evening at the opera in the Lobkowitz Palace, stunning place where Beethoven had conducted. The singers were so expressive.

The ship's lounge.

Wandered around the palaces, saw the Lipitzaner horses, only stallions because the presence of mares causes disruption & fights.

Sat in the park and admired the statuary, especially the golden Strauss only disfigured by posing Koreans???

We waited around for the coach back to the park but we would have been better walking back and taking a trip on the Wine Ferris wheel. Can you hum the Harry Lime theme?

Melk abbey underlines the money that the Catholic Church has. I think Henry VIII may have had a point. The walk up to the abbey was very demanding, a lot of steep steps Linda did well - red, exhausted, but well.