15-day LONDON TO NORMANDY D-DAY

After our orientation dinner, we will start our visit to iconic sites of the British war effort in the United Kingdom’s capital, London. The best museum to do that is the Churchill War Rooms, the secret underground headquarters of the War Cabinet from where Prime Minister Winston Churchill led Britain to victory against Nazi Germany. In Duxford, you will visit the Battle of Britain Bunker which will show you how the fighter aircraft of the Royal Air Force were controlled from its underground operations room. At Bletchley Park, you will marvel at the intellectual achievements of the Ultra intelligence agents to decipher the secret communications of the Axis Powers. We will remember and pay tribute to the American heroes buried at the Cambridge American Cemetery. The same day, we will travel to see the legendary aircraft on display at the Imperial War Museum Duxford, Britain's largest aviation museum. We then travel to the southern coast of England to visit the medieval Dover castle and its underground tunnel system that functioned as an air-raid shelter, underground hospital and military command center during the war.

We will continue at Littlecote House, a 15th-century manor which was used as the regimental headquarters for the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st “Screaming Eagles” Airborne Division. Easy Company was part of this regiment, and they took off from here during the night of June 5-6, 1944, as part of the Normandy Invasion. Our group will be invited to enjoy a lovely British afternoon tea comprising delicious sandwiches and sweet treats. We stop also at one of the British cultural icons, the prehistorical standing stones of Stonehenge. Our next stop will be to experience the D-Day Story Museum in Portsmouth. You will have the chance to walk on board the last surviving Landing Craft Tank from D-Day and see the Overlord Embroidery, the modern-day counterpart of the Bayeux Tapestry telling the story of the Normandy Landings. Our visit to Portsmouth would not be complete without seeing the Historic Dockyard that is home to HMS Victory, Lord Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, plus the HMS Warrior and many more. We will spend an entire day exploring the Bovington Tank Museum, that houses the largest collection of tanks in the world, including Tiger 131, the world’s only running Tiger I tank. From Britain, we will take a ferry to cross the English Channel to Normandy.

On the second leg of the tour, we will explore the iconic shores of the Normandy Landings. Two days of this segment will focus on the American landing beaches Utah and Omaha, where we will pay our respects to the heroism that contributed to this battle that changed history. On the landing beaches, we will learn more about Hitler’s feared Atlantic Wall and see at remnants of the fortifications how the German forces tried to stop the Allied invasion forces. We will visit the Normandy American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach to discover the sacrifice of those servicemen who paid the ultimate price for our freedom. An entire day will focus on D-Day anniversary ceremonies, giving Passengers a chance to commemorate the occasion. We then visit the British landing beaches, where our fellow Allied troops fought to secure a foothold in Europe. We conclude our journey with a farewell dinner. The next day, our Passengers are brought to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris to catch their flights.