Parthemores in Poland

As soon as we returned from our Baltic trip, we headed off to Normandy, France so Eric could check out the battlefields of the Polish 1^st Armored Division.  This was a pretty neat trip, because the place names were a good combination of vaguely-familiar history (Verdun, Falaise) and delicious things (Camembert, Calvados).

Instead of boring you with the nitty-gritty of the various places we went, I’ll instead share some of my impressions.

I soon found that most of the French words I know aren’t remotely useful in everyday situations.  “Voila,” "peloton" and “laisse faire” will not help you when trying to order a meal.  I had the bare basics down (hello, thank you, please, etc.), which is more than I can say for most non-Slavic countries we’ve visited.  But instead of replying to the “parlez vous anglais?” with “non,” which I would have understood, everyone responded with a lengthy answer.  Here is what I imagine they said:

“I will continue speaking French and watching you struggle until the point of complete distress.  Only then am I legally and ethically allowed to give you one word in English.”

We didn’t starve or eat anything unidentifiable, so that counts as success in my book.  Although we think Eric accidentally ordered horse cheese instead of goat cheese at one place.  Good thing horse cheese wasn’t actually on the menu.

We stayed at an awesome B&B, L’Orangerie. 

The “town” it’s in consists of about 5 buildings, one of them being the multipurpose town hall/post office.  Because it was so tiny, it wasn’t really on the road signs, which made navigation difficult.  Our GPS saved the day on multiple occasions, but did route us on some exciting roads.  Note:  “Exciting” usually meant “perilous.”

Speaking of roads, the French kill you with tolls on the highways.  We spent over 50 euro in one day!  If you are on a non-toll road, it will invariably have a roundabout every 500 yards. 

Other destinations on this trip:

Cologne, Germany.  We just stopped there overnight, but we walked into town to see the cathedral.  They had a nice riverfront area with tons of restaurants and stores.

Ypres, Belgium.  This is a big tourist destination for Brits and history buffs, since there are many WWI battlefields in the area.  It has a beautiful town square:

And since it’s Belgium, there’s no shortage of awesome beer, chocolates, or mussels.

One of the most interesting parts of town is the Menin Gate. This WWI memorial is a giant white limestone arch (similar to the Arch de Triumph), inscribed with over 54,000 names of British soldiers whose remains are still missing.  Every day at 8 pm, buglers conduct the Last Post ceremony, a tradition which has continued since 1927.  I thought it was one of most moving war memorials I’ve ever been to.

Overall, we really enjoyed our trip.  France (minus the French speaking) was great and it was kind of cool to get so far off the beaten path.