November 8, France Trip

11/8/2018

We were up early, but our fearless leader Bernie Sise had a little bit of a come to Jesus meeting about getting along, and being considerate of one another.  Nothing too serious, but what we needed to hear to operate with 14 type A leaders.  It was the "Bernie breakfast chat."

                                                          General Patton, leading from the front

Proceeded to the Luxembourg American Military Cemetery who was supervised by a gal named Jennifer from upstate NY.  She had a super informative tour of the grounds, the history of the Battle of the Bulge, and some great human interest stories about some of the occupants of the various graves.  Such sacrafice the U.S. gave to fight on foreign soils.  She told us a lot about the history of overseas graves for fallen service members.

We kind of split up with our car and went towards Verdun, and saw a French cemetery, having travelled from Luxembourg back into Paris.  Verdun was a WWI site that had a great museum and a little bit of hiking, especially down to an old bunker and by a little town that had been completely decimated in the Great War.  

The drive from Verdun to Reims later in the afternoon was about 2 hours, and started out with a little drive that was on a forest lined hilly road that could’ve been Skyline Drive in October with the leaves turning.  Stunning views of the trees.

We got to Reims in the evening, and it seems to be a city of some size based on its traffic, and once again were in an Ibis Hotel with very slender beds, not even twins that are pushed up against each other, and a bathroom that is hard to turn around in.

One great thing today was going into a local French grocery store for lunch and getting some cheese, bread, a French version of an empanada, and olives, etc for a great meal.

Dinner with the rest of the group at an Indian restaurant called “Taj Mahal”. There was some language barrier, but we ordered a bunch of entrees and shared.  This was down a local street that actually looked like Georgetown with a lot of “kids” spilling out of the bars on a fall night with their jackets and scarves on.

Last stop for the night was in a British pub that was pumping out some  old school 80s rap and hip hop.