Armistice Day in France

Seeing Juno Beach just two weeks ago was quite well-timed to personally commemorate Remembrance Day this year and I also wanted to attend some kind of service today in Tours.  My housemate figured there would be something, but she didn't know any details.  I saw that something was happening at the Saint Martin Basilica that had a little something to do with remembering the First World War but a lot more to do with this guy around whom Tours seems to have formed (something I've been learning all about in this neat History of Tours course I'm taking and something that I will eventually blog about).  Finally I found some details on the local newspaper's website and this morning I went to check it out.

Apparently there is a "Monument to the Dead" in a square I pass every day that I never noticed!  I still didn't see it since there were people all around and I found myself more interested in the various French military standing around.

Air Force I think.  There is a large training base near Tours and this was the largest group represented. 

Regular ol' infantry I figured.

Some very young looking navy guys

We thought these would be the officers.  Hanging out by the carousel

And...no idea!!  But they had swords!

I missed the laying of wreaths and lighting of a flame, but saw a bunch of military personnel get decorated and heard a group of children sing the Marseillaise.  There was a marching band, but they didn't seem formal enough to be military.  And they played some peppy music, including something that resembled the Last Post (I just learned that that was British and Commonwealth tune).  Then, we all paraded through the downtown to the City Hall where we heard the mayor give a speech.  Some people looked down from balconies as we paraded by and I have images of what it might have been like on the actual Armistice Day.

There were no poppies, there was no silence at 11:00 and we were just following this marching band in a random parade down the street at that time.  There weren't a lot of people overall and we were quite up close and personal with the navy hanging out at City Hall. 

It's more and more apparent to me that the Second World War memory is so indeed very different in France than what I know as my own Canadian "memory" and this French commemoration of Armistice Day felt very different than what is so familiar for me in Remembrance Day.  Yes, there was the same attention given to lives lost in current conflicts as is becoming more and more a part of Canadian Remembrance Day, but overall it did not feel as familiar of an event as I thought it may.  Yes, we were on the same "side" in the two world wars, but the memory is different.  And you might think that here in this city that was bombed and occupied, there would be a greater solemnity to the commemoration of lives lost, but I did not sense this.  My reflection on this is not entirely formed, but I can't help but think of a sentence that a French person said to a British friend of mine here this week: "Oh yeah.  The Second World War.  We won that."  To which the Brit was thinking, "Um, yeah didn't we help you out with that just a bit?!"

Road Trip Day 2: Rouen, Normandy and Juno Beach

Thursday morning we set to work figuring out how to get the GPS working and after reading various online forums (thanks, Google) we realized that we needed to reconfigure it for France and then we had to just wait for about 20 minutes, without moving, for it to locate itself.  What a relief since our whole idea had been to just drive around and figure out our trip as we went.

Photo Credit: Alanna Martin, @ Mont-Saint-Michel

Around this time, my camera battery died and I didn't have the right charger with me.  So I would have to rely on the photo-taking skills of my companions throughout our entire journey in the north.  Fortunately, they are very skilled and well, we were a little paparazzi-ish sometimes!  Lots of great photos to choose from.  Here's some photos a couple of us took of each other taking photos throughout our trip.

@ Chenonceau

Photo credit: Judy Martin

We did some exploring on foot in Rouen, first checking out the very tall and impressive gothic church around the corner from the hotel.  Turns out, it wasn't the famous cathedral, but the Abbaye Saint-Ouen.  It was closed over the noon hours, so we just wandered around the outside a bit.
















Rouen had a lot of medieval colombages style buildings, a lot more than Tours, and it was a very cute downtown.

Photo Credit: Judy

We continued wandering, trying to find various sites of interest, recommended by our trusty friend Rick Steves.  Judy brought along the travel book we had used in 2007 and once again, Rick proved to give us some great background narrative to various places we visited.  We didn't use his recommendations for accommodations in the same way we had four years ago and instead we found ourselves logging onto www.booking.com whenever we could find free WiFi, which ended up being at McDonalds more than I'd like to admit.  The place we booked ON Thursday afternoon FOR Thursday night (yes, it was that kind of trip!) was through this site and it was a great little hotel in a tiny place called, Beauvoir (the place is so small that that link is actually for the hotel!).

Credit: Judy.  Oh hey, that's our car there too!

But that was obviously our final destination on Thursday and there was still a lot to see on the way there. So in Rouen, we finally found the Notre Dame Cathedral of Rouen. Even though it is very, very big and very, very tall, for some reason it seemed hard to find. There were a lot of tall spires around Rouen and the entrance to this cathedral seemed to elude us! 

Credit: Alanna

 Then we finally found the square where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake and the church and monuments that are now there.

Credit: Judy

After burning some rubber, I did make it out of the scary, steeply-inclined parking lot and we were on to the direction of the sea!  We hoped to make it somewhere near Mont-Saint-Michel (we still hadn't booked the hotel in Beauvoir and didn't until we find internet at a McDonalds around 5 pm!) and we knew we wanted to find some Normandy Beaches from WWII, particularly Juno Beach because of its Canadian significance.  Rick Steves also mentioned Honfleur as being a worthwhile Normandy town to pass through, and so we did!

Credit: Judy

We also saw the impressive Bridge of Normandy from a distance.

Credit: Judy

It was a fun drive, jumping off of the Autoroutes and winding around some remote roads (still with 90 km/h speed limits!) and seeing some quaint Normandy villages.

When we finally got to the beaches, it was dark!  But we made it!

Credits: more from Judy!

And then, finally in our nice quad room, Judy put the pots of gourmet French yogurt on the windowsill and we went to bed.  It was the second of many more packed-full days to come.

Credit: Alanna

Road Trip Day 1: Tours to Versailles to Rouen

In 2007, I had the privilege of travelling around France, Switzerland and Italy with three friends and I wrote all about it in this blog starting with the post post here (click)!  We ended the road trip that summer in Versailles and here are my thoughts and photos from that trip.  This time in France, my slightly different group of four started our 7-day tour of France and Spain in Versailles.  I rented a wonderful car from Europcar again, this time through the discounted website of Auto Europe (they served us well in 2007 and their prices are still the best)! Here are Mel and I posing beside our suave car.

It is an Opel Insignia--I finally got to drive a French car!  It was very nice.

So on Wednesday, I drove Jenelle and I to Versailles (from which she was continuing on to Paris) where I was meeting Judy, Alanna and Mel.  Jenelle and I were trying to avoid driving on any toll roads, but right outside of Tours, we came across a strange detour that instructed us to go back to Tours!  It seemed ridiculous and we weren't the only drivers who decided to ignore the signs and find their own way.  We were following this little red car and ended up at a farm!  The driver of the red car was asking the farmers where to go and we learned that we really did need to follow the detour signs!  I decided to just take the Autoroute with its tolls after all, at least for a bit until we could find another highway.

There's not much new to write about Versailles this time.  The leaves were changing colours and there were no flowers; they'd added a couple of ugly, modern sculptures.  And we were able to go inside this time.  Here's a statue of the the guy responsible for Versailles with a bird on his head!

That curved copper thing in the background is one of the new items

He liked his gold.

They changed the tree pruning since last time.

My camera battery died inside Versailles right around this photo...

We ended up leaving Versailles a little later than we planned and we still had a ways to drive to our planned destination of Rouen, the "historic capital of Normandy".

 We also couldn't get our GPS working right!  Mel had brought a Canadian GPS on which she had made sure to upload European maps, but it wasn't locating the satellites at all!  And we didn't have any maps so we had to do our best to figure out how to find the suburban hotel we had in mind.  We ended up missing it and ended up in downtown Rouen.  Fortunately we found a quad room available at the Hôtel Versan that was reasonably priced and right where we ended up!  It also seemed to be right near the main attraction of Rouen, the cathedral.  Or so we thought--that is the next day's story.  The only downside was the angle of incline on their underground parking--I went to bed feeling quite nervous about the forthcoming and inevitable ascent. 

But we arrived successfully, got settled in and set out to wander around and find somewhere to eat at 9:00!  Something that would fit everyone's craving for vegetables and salad (apparently the other three had been lacking in this department during their three previous days of travel and in Paris).  We asked some locals for their advice, but didn't end up taking it (they sent us to a place that served tapas, but no salad) and instead found the very nice Restaurant 16/9 who made some mean salads (huge!) and amazing cheese and spinach ravioli and served some nice wine!  All in all, a little crazy and stressful at times (particularly concerning the GPS) but all-around good first day!

7 Days, 2807 kms, 4 Canadians around France and Spain...

Some of you will know that I have been negligent in the blogging department because I have been driving a lot lately!  France has holidays at the end of October and beginning of November and I had the pleasure of receiving some friends from Canada and of travelling around with them!  Anticipate lots of blogs, details and photos to come! 

Here we are, over-dressed on the coast of Biarritz in French Basque--this was a one of those places we pleasantly stumbled upon and loved!  Picture mountains to the opposite side...more photos to come...but this was Day 5, so you will have to wait until I post deets about the North (Normandy, Brittany, etc.).