Today we had breakfast in Belgium, lunch in Luxembourg and
dinner in France! We do like to share
ourselves around.
We will have to return to Luxembourg, as obviously we
weren’t able to see everything in a lunch hour.
We were in the new city, which looked very chic but as we drove out, we
could see what appeared to be the remnants of a fortress.
Our drive continued onto the wonderful city of Strasbourg. I
would describe Strasbourg as being Bruges on steroids. Everything that is beautiful about Bruges is
amplified in Strasbourg. The old city is
chocolate box perfect, the canals picturesque and the bridges numerous and lovely. It is also much larger than Bruges, so you
don’t feel quite as bombarded by tourists.
It also has the advantage of being situated in the Alsace region so
there is a heavy German influence on the town as well as French.
Previously I mentioned that the cathedral in Amiens was the
most elaborate I had seen. Well, the
Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg makes Amiens cathedral look like the plain
Jane of cathedrals! The cathedral was
the tallest building in the world for 227 years and is simply magnificent
inside and out. There is a wonderful
astronomical clock inside the church however my favourite thing is the statue
of the clock’s maker, which peers over the balcony near the clock.
Michael decided that he would like schweinshaxe for lunch so
we crossed the border into Germany to the town of Karlruhe. We had lunch at a funny restaurant, which was
actually two restaurants side by side.
We walked into one restaurant to look at the menu, but when we couldn’t
see what we wanted, we walked into the other one. We only realised our mistake when the waiter
from the first restaurant suddenly appeared in the second one. I think he thought we were a bit odd.
It was nice driving through the German countryside as there
were mountains and forests, which we have not seen in France. Michael enjoyed driving on the autobahn
although everyone kept overtaking us even though we were travelling at
130km.
We sadly said farewell to Strasbourg. I certainly hope that we can return another
day.
We travelled all through the beautiful French countryside
and returned to the Somme. This time we were to visit my great uncle’s burial
site. I had always known that my great
uncle had died in France but didn’t know any more than that. Michael turned to the family historian,
Christine, and she forwarded some information.
The first surprise was that my great uncle’s surname was Uden not
Beaumont as I had assumed. It turns out
that my great grandmother was married and widowed 3 times – talk about bad
luck! Michael has a theory that she was
the village poisoner. Michael did some
online research and discovered that Corporal Reginald Uden was buried at the
Stump Road Cemetery in Grandcourt. The
cemetery was located along a very overgrown dirt track however, when we
arrived, the cemetery was as pristine as all the others we had visited. We located the grave and as we had been
unable to purchase any flowers, Michael picked some wild poppies, which I
placed on the gravesite. I am glad that
I was able to visit his grave and can’t help wondering how many people have
actually been there. I do know that my
great grandmother visited the place after the war.
I had read, in the Melbourne Age of all places, about an
artist installation at the Thiepval Memorial.
When we arrived at the memorial we discovered a large ceremony was
taking place to commemorate the front line of WW1 July 1st
1915.
There were bands and pipers and
many uniformed soldiers of various regiments.
The art installation, The Lost Men, France consisted of 5 enormous silk
banners showing the artist, Paul Emmanuel, with the names of the missing
soldiers pressed onto his skin. It was interesting to look at.
Le Havre was our destination and it seems that here we made
possibly the only error of our trip. We
had booked to stay 2 nights intending to relax in what we had thought would be
a picturesque harbour city.
Unfortunately we were unaware that the city is very large, modern and
unappealing. Le Havre had been
completely flattened during WW2 and after the war it was decided that it would
be rebuilt in a modern style. The result
is some rather bare and uninteresting architecture. Still, we managed to fill in the time
visiting the MuMa gallery, which had some nice Renoirs and Monets.
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