Weekend Roadtrip – Part Two (“Oh Geez!”)
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
On our way out of Luxembourg and to Belgium, Keith ended up running over a curb, leading me to say “Oh Geez!” every time he came close to hitting something, which was pretty often. Apparently Belgium has a little bit of the gravitational pull that Luxembourg City has. I also think it has little trolls or something changing the signs around after you pass them. We came to Vintor sometime in the night and spend the next 2 hours chasing 12 different towns that weren’t on the map and ended up bringing us back to Vintor. I even tried calling for logistical support from the states and we lost signal. Everything went wrong!!! Theresa ended up waking up at the end and was able to somehow get us out of there relatively quickly. Thank God!We made it through the rest of Belgium fine and ended up in Reims around 10am, only 3 hours late. Thank God we left early. It was funny hearing Keith say, “Thank God we’re in France.” Never thought I’d hear him say that.
After wandering around for a while, we found a parking spot down the street from the Cathedral. Two interesting things about the Cathedral is that Clovis was baptized there in the 5th century, and was were Joan of Arc stood beside Charles the V as he was crowned. After that, not wanting to try to find another parking spot, we made the long trek to Tattinger Champagne house for a tour. It ended up being more than we thought, so Julian and I were the only ones to take it. It was pretty informative, but not really worth the 10 Euros. Very little champagne at the end for the tasting portion. I wanted to buy a bottle, but ended up buying a bottle of Henriot 1996 Brut elsewhere because of the price. I figure I can always drink it at the end of the semester in celebration of graduation.
After the tour, we met up with Keri, Theresa, and Keith at a bakery around the corner. I’m almost happy they didn’t come with us, because we would have missed the wonderful baguettes. We all ended up buying a couple baguettes for the road. I think Julian had a couple orgasims eating them. Yes, they were THAT good. I came close.Our next stop was the D-Day beaches of Normandy; however, there were two issues. One was the toll roads (50 Euros from Reims to Normandy) and the other was that we needed to go through Paris to get there. Paris wouldn’t have been THAT bad (we stayed on the highways, no side streets), except the time we hit it, it was rush hour. We spent the next hour in stop and go traffic, just hoping some of the motorcyclists would get hit by cars. That annoyed us almost as much as the toll roads. They had no fear speeding between cars. I was almost tempted to open my car door to get one of them, except the car was in my name, which would have been a lot of hassle I didn’t want to deal with. I was just hoping other people would hit them. Apparently you need to be a “special” kind of driver to tolerate Parisian traffic.
We made it to Normandy, but unfortunately it was around 9pm and it was completely dark. We checked out Juno beach and saw an anti-tank gun, tank, and checked out the memorial. We then spent the next hour trying to find Omaha Beach. The signs just point towards a road that leads to all the beaches. None of them actually had the individual beaches on them. On our way, we passed a really creepy church and cemetery with no lights on. We finally talked Keith, who was being a pansy, into turning around and checking it out. The church was locked, but we walked around the cemetery. I think there was actually someone else in there, but no one could see anything. Kind of creepy, but fun. Keith and Keri refused to enter the cemetery.
We finally hit Omaha Beach around midnight. Despite the darkness, we found some bunkers and a memorial. We talked about all the family we had who were in WWII. My grandfather had to go in after the German defeat and clean up concentration camps, Theresa and Keith’s grandfathers were in the Pacific, Julian’s was one that invaded Hitler’s bunker (and actually got a bunker flag), and two of Keri’s great-uncles fought on D-Day, one of which died. It was a pretty intense experience hearing about our family who served, walking around, and envisioning everything. We were going to sleep in the car on the beach, but Keri and Keith felt really weird about it, so we drove til the next public parking area and decided to crash there and visit first thing in the morning.
mrnational
