From Saturday, September 14 to Monday, September 16 we travelled along the Belgium and French coastal countryside, in search of Canadian war memorials. We found most of what we were looking for, but for me this was a very emotional, heart wrenching journey. I was sickened by the loss of life of soldiers and civilians, imaging the horror, pain, starvation, pain and death that had taken place in what is now such a traquail piece of the world. Somehow, visiting the Canadian War Memorial at Vimy Ridge helped settle me, from what was truely two very mentally painful days.
Dunkurke is all but a forgotten place, as we quickly learned that any place of defeat had little recognition of the sacrifices made by soldiers and civilians. We did visit a small but enlightening museum tucked away under a road.
Dieppe is a beautiful place with it's steep rocky shore line. Many Canadian soldies were slaughtered here.
Caen - Juno Beach. Thousands of Canadians died here in the D-Day invasion. In addition to the 30,000 citizens who had remained in Caen, 17,000 were killed or wounded during this invasion.
Vimy has Canada's most majestic war memorial. We went there in the early morning. The air was cool and crisp, the surroundings peaceful.
Graves along the way.
Passchendale
We left Paris this morning, travelling by train to Bruge, Belgium. Upon our arrival we took a taxi to the car rental office and much to our surprise they had a lovely Mercedes SUV for us... bonus! After that we made our way to our hotel near the old city centre. As with our hotel in Chur, this hotel is a very historic building with wooden plank floors and very high ceilings. The views from our room is quite nice (photo one). The down side is that Delmer and Ron had to park the rental car about a kilometre away. There is little parking near the hotel as the streets are very narrow, and what spaces there are cost 3.50 Euros per hour.
By 4:00 p.m. we were off in search of some old world city scenes, chocolate, waffles and last but not least a good feed of mussels and frites. We found it all. Tomorrow we are off to the battlefields and memorials between here and Caen.
We spent the last two days sightseeing at Versailles and viewing the many treasures found at the Louvre. We have mastered the subway system.
Paris is a lovely city, but it is time to move on as we have tried pretty much everything on their menus. We sampled canard, steak, salads, seafood. We didn't try frogs or horse, but I tried the foei grau (duck liver pate).
Versailles
Inside the Louvre
More sights in Paris
The only way to really experience Paris is to get out and walk through the streets, eat in the neighbourhood restaurants and blend in to the life that florishes here. The locals are friendly, helpful and very polite.
We have spent the last two days exploring neighbourhoods around us. having an apartmen in the Marais has allowed us to really get the feel of Paris and its people.
Our explorations during the past two days have taken us to Notre Dame (photo 1, 2 and 3), National Opera House, Cimetere Du Pere Lachaise (Jim Morrison of the Doors is buried there as well as thousands of others) (photo 4), Bastille Memorial (photo 5), Place Des Vosges Memorial. Delmer and I also took a boat ride along the Seine. I had lots of photos but for some reason I am unable to download about half of them. We were planning to go to the Versaille today, but there was a one day strike by government workers.
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