My trip through France was simple: hire a car in Brittany and spend a week driving from the west to the east. I was nervous about driving in Europe and I didn't know how I was going to do. However, I found driving in Europe to be very easy - moreso when driving a minuscule car. Except for the signalling in France, that is. I'm positive the French just put their signals on to confuse the other drivers around them.
Brittany - Roscoff, Morlaix & St. Malo
I didn't know what to expect from Brittany other than I knew that it was one of the most remote areas of France with its own local language and a notion of independence from the rest of the country. I don't feel like I truly gave Brittany a fair shake on this trip, however, as I didn't visit either Brest, Rennes or the pacific coast. That being said, what I did see, I enjoyed.
As with any trip to France, food is an important part of the experience. On my first day I had quiche and crepes. On my second, fresh croissants and fresh strawberries (which were orgasmicly good). I can't think of anything I had there which didn't taste good.
As to the sights - St. Malo and Mont St. Michel are two of the most beautiful places I've ever been. The old walled city of St. Malo is an incredible place to walk through. I felt like I'd stepped back in time - that is except for the fact every single building in the old city is now a tourist trap or a hotel. Mont St. Michel is just an incredibly well preserved island castle that is truly impressive as it sits off shore above the mudflats at low tide. It is a bit of a shame that a highway is being built right up to the front door.
Normandy - Caen & Bayeux
On my way from Brittany to Normandy I really was looking forward to visiting Caen and seeing this old city which had been such an important target of the D-Day invasions for the Allies. While I was stuck in WWII mode I had lost sight of the fact that the rest if the world had moved on - especially Caen. It is a city - complete with city sprawl - and the highway planning was clearly designed around efficiently getting people to and around the city - not seeing the sights from your car window. Shortly after arriving I just didn't like the feel I got from Caen and left after only briefly looking around the centre.
Bayeux, on the other hand, I loved. Bayeux is very small, but it has a beautiful old street filled with shops and cafes, the cathedral is gorgeous (the stained glass, oh my) and the Bayeux Tapestry (one of the main attractions, to me, of all of Normandy) was so significantly better than I expected that it was humbling just to be in the same room as it.
Normandy - Courseulles-sur-Mer & The D-Day Beaches
I was looking forward to seeing the Normandy Beaches on my trip, but I had no idea where to go once I was close to the coast. I had a map from the Bayeux tourist office that outlined, roughly, where the beaches were. I started driving.
Several of the beaches are just that - beaches. If you know what to look for you can spot some of the old artificial harbour in places, but normally it's just surf and pebbly sand. Again, my mindset was wrong. I wanted to see WWII as if it had just happened, but nearly 70 years of wind, surf and sand tend to wipe out quite a lot. Even massive concrete bunkers are already starting to disappear under the sand dunes.
I was driving along the coast, spotting sections of beach while driving through quaint little coastal towns, when I suddenly spotted a Canadian flag between two little grass covered sand dunes. I didn't realize it yet, but I had arrived just outside Courseulles-sur-Mer - one of the most important areas of WWII to both Canadians and the French. It was at the centre of Juno sector, the Canadian beaches, and it was the first place that Charles de Gaulle disembarked in France after the successful D-Day invasion. Humbling to just stumble across, even if it was my destination.
After sleeping right on the beach I drove west visiting the British beaches until I eventually got to Omaha beach. It was a really mind blowing place to visit. The hills look exactly as depicted in movies. The bunkers overlooking the surf are huge, and considering the climb up to them if under gunfire, terrifying. The American cemeteries and monuments are supremely impressive. Omaha beach does an excellent job of honouring those who died, of explaining what happened during Operation Overlord and of making you keenly aware of just how much loss and suffering happened there.
Normandy - Rouen
Rouen was another city that I really wanted to like. The Norman capital since before the time of William the Conqueror - I was anticipating a beautiful and regal city. But, Rouen is just another city, and the old quarter feels surprisingly abandoned. The cathedral looks dilapidated and unmaintained. The streets are more uneven than most cobbled streets, and the little parks are littered with garbage. I'm including Rouen for completeness, it is still the capital after all, but I was unimpressed.
Picardy - Vimy Ridge
A visit to Vimy was one of the musts on my travel itinerary and I was not disappointed. The monument is incredible, massive, beautiful and sobering. The areas around the monument - the shelled No Man's Land now covered in forest with warning signs about undetonated explosives, the concrete trench reconstructions, and the two beautiful cemeteries - should be visited by all Canadians.
Nothing struck me quite as much as visiting the Canadian/British cemeteries at Vimy Ridge. It is one thing to read a report from a battle listing how many men died. It is quite another to stand on a manicured lawn surrounded by row after row after row of simple white unnamed tombstones marking the burials of so many young men. If I'd been born 100 years earlier I could've been among them.
Champagne - Reims
I had a long day of driving to get from Vimy to Metz where I had a hostel booked. Along the way I wanted to stop in Reims, if only to see the famous cathedral in which the Kings of France had been coronated. Sadly, my time was so limited I barely drove through the city before continuing on. I didn't even have a single glass of champagne!
Lorraine - Metz
My final stop in northern France, Metz, was a city I knew a bit of history about. Over the last thousand years it has been claimed back and forth between the Germans and the French and it has been an important defensive town at the confluence of the Seille and the Moselle for 3,000 years.
I really enjoyed my stay in Metz. It felt more like a North American city as it sprawled along the rivers. The people were laid back, the architecture is beautiful and the Quiche Lorraine? Amazing. Metz is a place I would like to return to and explore more thoroughly.
As I left Metz on my way to Luxembourg I headed towards the largest fort on the Maginot Line - Schoenenbourg. The visitation hours of the fort are quite strange, at least from a tourist standpoint, and uniquely French. You can only visit on Sundays, but tours can organize visits. If you happen to show up when a tour is happening you can also tag along, but no one will tell you when that is - oh, and you can't call. I didn't get to go in, but I did look around the area - including a visit to a small church on the top of the ridge the fort is built under. I can understand why the German army just went around it.
Conclusion
What started as a trip from west to east to see and experience northern France somehow turned into a war pilgrimage. I got to see many of the most important sights from WWII while simultaneously driving through all of the most important river valleys and battlefields from WWI. Overall, many of the larger cities in northern France left me underwhelmed, while I really enjoyed the much smaller cities and towns I travelled through.
At this point anyone reading this must be thinking, 'wait, what about Paris?' I didn't go to Paris on this trip. I was in Paris three years ago. I really enjoyed it then and I probably would've enjoyed it again, but I wanted to leave it for another time. For two main reasons: Paris is expensive and I didn't want to drive there. In hindsight, I think the driving aspect would've been fine, and I'm not disappointed with my decision to save a little money and go north instead.
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