Unexcused Absences France 2016 - Week 1 (he said)

France 2016 – Week 1 (he said)

by Kent 18 Jul 2016

July 9 to July 16, 2016. Based on the order of posts, it looks like we jumped right from the Bahamas to France. But the intervening month was filled with lots of work; packing up Miss Adventure for the summer, getting ready for our summer on Après Ski, and four weeks of actual work at NASA. That, plus all the social events with our long lost friends in the DC area, and we didn’t have much down-time in June.

“Après Ski’s” winter home in Lagarde

Once we got to France, none of that changed. We had lots of socializing to do with our boat friends Peter and Jo (who had just arrived in France from Australia), plus finishing up the solar panel installation project on Après Ski, plus provisioning, plus wine tasting. We did take time to watch the France vs. Germany Eurocup semifinal soccer match. The local pizza restaurant in Lagarde, the one that is normally only open Sundays from 7pm to 10pm, opened specially for the match on Wednesday evening. “Opened,” in the sense that they opened the doors and turned on the big TV on the wall, but the “restaurant” didn’t go so far as to serve dinner. The game was excellent, if you’re a French fan; they won 2-0, and would go on to compete in the final a few days later, where unfortunately they lost to Portugal 0-1.

A misty morning in Lagarde

Kitchen closed during the match

Eurocup France vs. Germany game

We made it out of the marina at Lagarde on the third afternoon, and drove a short hour west with Peter and Jo (on Joyeux) to the small halte nautique at Xures. Peter helped us move our rental car ahead to St. Nicolas-le-Port, the nearest canal port with a train station. We are keeping the car for three weeks instead of the normal one, because we have two road trips to make the next two weekends, plus we need to visit our favorite Champagne producer to stock up for the summer. And because we are keeping the car with us, any long-term parking spot for the boat must include a nearby train station so we can retrieve or pre-position the car.

Straw bales somewhere in Lorraine

After St. Nicolas, we cruised straight through Nancy, pausing only for supplies at the Intermarché, and continued to the canal junction with the Moselle River, stopping in Pompey for the night. It’s a nice little town just below one of the big gauge river locks, and we took a stroll through the village before eating Heather’s delicious poached egg salad with a side of rabbit and mushroom terrine for dinner and heading to bed.

Dinner on deck

The next day we cruised upstream on the Moselle to Toul, which has a very friendly and active canal port just outside the city walls. The military architect Vauban designed the ramparts in the 18th century, most of which are still standing today. Once we settled in Toul, I retrieved the car from St. Nicolas and we drove an hour north to Verdun, to visit the newly re-opened WW I museum/memorial at Fleury-devant-Douaumont. This museum was closed the last time we were through here two years ago, under renovation for the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Verdun, which lasted from mid February into late autumn of 1916.

Retractable turrets on a WW I fort near Verdun

The Battle of Verdun was a defining battle in French history, and its impacts still resonates today. Over 70% of all French soldiers in WW I fought in the battle, and it claimed close to half a million French casualties. It was the longest and largest battle of the war on the Western Front. Soldiers referred to Verdun as “the furnace,” for how much suffering and carnage they had to endure. Some 60 million artillery shells were fired during the 10 months of battle, and the landscape in many places is still pocked with overlapping craters.

Here are the Americans!

In addition to the numerous military artifacts, the newly-renovated museum contains a number of paintings and letters by front-line soldiers. It also has a large display on the “Voie Sacré” (the sacred way), which was the 72km supply line from the large train terminal at Bar-le-Duc to the battlefields at Verdun. The numbers on this vital supply line are impressive; 3,500 trucks and 800 ambulances were dedicated to the road, and between March and December 1916 one vehicle passed every 14 seconds. Sixteen engineering battalions were dedicated just for road maintenance. Special quarries were opened up nearby, and 8,500 men worked around the clock to maintain the road and keep the supply lines open.

A marker on the “Voi Sacrée” between Bar-le-Duc and Verdun

After the “official” museum, we visited a smaller museum in Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, one stocked entirely with objects found by one local family. The driving force, Jean-Paul de Vries, began collecting WW I artifacts in elementary school, and when he was 11 he showed up one day with a collection of objects for show-and-tell. The teacher called the principal, the principal called the gendarme, and the school was evacuated while the bomb squad went to work. Some of Jean-Paul’s found objects turned out to be unexploded shells. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and he lived to build an immense collection of WW I artifacts, most of which he’s found in the fields and forests around his home town. The museum is absolutely worth a detour if you’re in the Verdun area.

Just a few of the guns in Jean-Paul’s collection

Old-style American dog-tags

Hundred-year-old canteens of all kinds

That night in Verdun, after dinner at our favorite restaurant, Chez Anna Marie, we saw the July 14 fireworks. The French seem to know their fireworks, and the display in Verdun was no exception. The shells were fired from the main bridge above the canal port, and we had great seats in a cafe overlooking the river. We finally got back to the boat in Toul after 1am, in time to get a little sleep before our long drive the next day.

The Verdun waterfront before the fireworks

Verdun fireworks

Feu d’Artifices

The destination for our first road trip was Paris, but on the way we stopped in to our favorite Champagne producer for a visit. They were bottling that day, so we got to see the action on their vintage equipment; Zimmerlin-Flamant is a small producer, with only two hectares (about 5 acres) under cultivation, so everything at this Premier Cru producer is done by hand.

Bottling at Zimmerlin-Flamant Champagne

Vineyards in the Marne Valley

More bottling at Z-F Champagne

Once in Paris, we visited the Maritime Museum, one that I’ve wanted to see for years. Later that evening was the real reason for our visit; a good friend of ours (an American who lives in Paris) celebrated her 40th birthday by hiring a riverboat on the Seine for the party. Hard to turn down an invitation to sit on a boat and drink French wine and eat French food and cheese under the Eiffel Tower. The party was epic; a bunch of folks we knew came over from the US, and we met some of her French friends, and I think we finally made it back to our hotel at 2 am.