Day 5: July 6, 2013

Travelling inland, our itinerary took us back to Paris by early afternoon today However, with the souvenir of yesterday’s D-Day tour still very much present in everyone’s mind - a day too when we couldn’t possibly do everything – we thought appropriate to fit an early visit to a Canadian war cemetery in the vicinity of Caen, before taking off Paris. So we started with the backroads of Calvados again, between Caen and Falaise, and soon reached the small village of Bretteville-sur-Laize, which war cemetery contains predominantly Canadian soldiers killed in the later stages of the Battle of Normandy (whereas Canadians killed earlier in the Battle were interred at Bény-sur-Mer). Back in Paris, we checked in the same hotel where we had three days ago, then quickly set off for an afternoon river cruise on the Seine. How nice ! The next highlight of the day was an official 6PM ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe with flags, military band and protocol. We were invited, as if we were on a “state visit” to the French capital: at the end of the ceremony , we even had to shake hands with staff in attendance, as heads of State would have done! We then rallied to Montmartre for a well deserved farewell dinner on the artist-filled square called “Place du Tertre”, and toured the area afterwards.