Saturday, June 29: Pont de l'arche, France

Just outside Rouen in our campground here in Pone de l'arche, we awoke to rain.  It had rained on and off all night and was supposed to continue all day.  We cannot complain since this is our first poor weather day since we arrived.  We decided to stay right in the campground and have a nice down day after the last couple of days driving wow - 250 miles in two days?   Not much compared to the mileage we did in the States.  In fact, yesterday, was our second diesel fill up since we arrived.  Normally, we fill up once or even twice a day with the huge miles we travel in the USA.

So, we relaxed, took showers, cleaned the RV, did a quick grocery shop before the store closed at noon, and settled in with free WiFi when we changed campsites to be closer to the office.  I was able to catch up with the blog - I feel an obligation since so many expressed interest in hearing about our trip.

The clouds cleared and the sun came out around 5pm, so we took a walk into the great little town.

The church at the top of the hill

 We are parked next to the Seine at the bottom of a hill.  At the top is this wonderful big old church that could use some TLC.

 The town has these incredibly small alleyways with half-timbered homes and shops.  We stopped at the only open shop (a patisserie - pastry bakeshop) and enjoyed a wonderful biscuit-type cookie that we munched as we strolled.

The church on the hill above our campground

Have I mentioned the bells?  We have enjoyed the hourly tolling of bells from the local church in every place we have stayed.

 Pinch me.

Friday, June 28: France - Amiens to Rouen

We drove 150 miles from the campground just north of Amiens southwest to Rouen.  I had read there was a parking area for RVs and I actually had a street name and not just GPS coordinates.  I entered the nearest intersection, and the GPS took us right there.  We parked among the cars and paid for two spaces, not knowing until later that had we gone 1/4 mile further, the RVs had free parking.

We walked across the bridge over the river Seine - hmmm, did I just say that?  I think I will say it again, we walked across the bridge over the river Seine to the city center of Rouen, home of yet another great Notre Dame cathedral and where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake.

The city center was filled with tourists and shoppers walking along the cobblestone streets among the half timbered buildings filled with every kind of shop.

 We came to the ornate Gros Horlage, medieval clock with only an hour hand and walked under it through to the square where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake.

According to the pamphlet we read, she was framed and her mother requested a re-hearing after her death and Joan was found not guilty, but she was not made a saint until 1999.

The memorial is a gigantic stainless steel cross in front of a modern church, both of which apparently are controversial and we can see why.  The ultra modern look clashes with the surroundings and just doesn't seem right.  But then again, we are getting old and crotchety and tend to like old things better than new things.

Okay - here's my brag for the day.  I actually went into a tabac (tobacco/magazine small shop) and asked IN FRENCH if they had a directory for the campground Aires (basic motorhome stopovers) and she understood me!  Even better, she dug one out of a bin under a bunch of other stuff.  I had tried to buy one online from the States, but the publisher was sold out. Now I have a database for regular campgrounds and one for the Aires in France.  

We loved Rouen - its ancient look and feel and its vibrancy.  On our way back to the RV, we stopped at one of the many bakeries for a a macaroon - a specialty of this part of France.  They are more like meringues that we know than macaroon as there is no coconut.  Yummy!

We drove 20 minutes east of the city to a municipal campground in the small town of Pont de l'arche, right on the Seine.  The campground manager does not speak English, but with the few French words I remember and the few English words he knew, we got our campsite and we are set for the evening.

Friday, June 27: Amiens, France

This morning we moved to a campsite that is more level and closer to the electric outlets. Then we went to the little cafe/corner store (called a Bar/Tabac) in the village to check on wifi and buy our bus tickets into Amiens. The bus ride was through local neighborhoods, took about ½ hour and dropped us just a few blocks from the city center. We walked through the pedestrian-only shopping area and Jack stopped and got his watch fixed. It turned out that the battery had come loose and the folks at the jewelry store refused to take any money! They had worked on it for at least 30 minutes because they had trouble getting the back off, so we certainly were prepared to pay for their efforts. Who says the French are not nice?  

Then we stopped at a brasserie called Le Charleston for lunch – an old cafe with excellent open faced sandwiches on a huge slice of bread and a variety of salads. 

 After lunch, we stopped at the visitor center to get a map of the downtown and to rent an audioguide for the largest church in France – Amiens Notre Dame. Notre Dame is the name of any church dedicated to Mary, so there are many churches called Notre Dame, not just the one in Paris. The Amiens Notre Dame is the largest church in France – so large that two Paris Notre Dames will fit inside. It was built in 1220 to house the skull of St. John the Baptist – on display. This gothic church is totally different than the ones I had seen in England, that were dark and somber--this church is light and airy. The statuary inside and ornamentation outside was spectacular. We were surprised to learn that both inside and outside, statues and walls were painted vibrant colors, so what we see today is a grayed-out version of what it would have looked like when it was built.  

Center Entrance

  

The skull of St. John the Baptist

We wanted to visit a stained glass museum, but it was closed today. Our original plan was to also visit Jules Verne's home where he wrote many of his futuristic novels, but we were tired and decided to skip it and catch the bus back to our campground.

We found the French buildings, other than the cathedral to be uninteresting, especially compared to Belgium. The city seemed gritty and a a bit unkempt. While waiting for the bus we enjoyed some great people watching – a version of the “you see all kinds” found in big cities, but unique to France.

Our grand experiment with public bus transportation was a success as we returned back to where we started without a hitch...just as it was beginning to sprinkle. We made it back to the RV before a major rainstorm hit. A nice first day in France, but it is true that the French speak little English. I am trying to use some of the little French that I remember and it may be helping to elicit a better response than the ugly Americans that expect everyone to speak English. Come to think of it, wouldn't it be great if everyone did speak the same language? Many lives over the course of history probably would have been saved if we understood each other better. I vote for English – and by the way, American English, not that British stuff. The English talk funny.... a campsite is called a pitch, the highways are motorways, and their plugs and electric and stuff are all wrong not to mention they drive on the wrong side of the road! So, just call me “ugly” ------ my last name is American.     

Thursday, June 26: West Flanders, Belgium to Amiens, France

We left the Ypres area on the motorway and quickly crossed into France with just a small sign saying we were in France – no customs, no border. The EU sure makes travel a lot easier. We now have to figure out all these French signs – some are the same as Belgium, but there are a few new ones and of course, any signs with words are only in French. The rural areas are similar to eastern Pennsylvania – some rolling hills and vast fields of corn and grain.

Every town and village has a church with a steeple

We drove through the Somme area of France, another important World War I area mostly involving the French and the British. We saw many memorials and cemeteries and signs marking the front line on various dates.

Our GPS is programmed with the latitude and longitude of an Aire near the French city of Amiens. France has many of these Aire motorhome stopovers with few or no services (and no actual street addresses), but a good place to park for using public transportation, so that we can avoid driving in the city. Well, the GPS malfunctioned and we ended up on these one-lane country roads many miles south of Amiens. When we re-entered our destination, it took us right through the heart of the city. Not quite as bad as our previous in-city driving, but it was not pleasant, and the GPS went completely bonkers telling us to turn left, recalculating, turn right, recalculating go 5 kilometers, make a u-turn. If we hadn't been in such heavy traffic and narrow streets, it actually would have been hilarious.

We finally gave up trying to find the Aire and entered the street address of a regular campground. It stopped giving us crazy directions and got us where we wanted to go. We had noticed over the past year that occasionally in we would find all these strange coordinates in the GPS memory that we had never entered, so apparently there is something very wrong with that part of the GPS.

During our earlier lost stage driving through the countryside towns and villages, we were stopped by the Gendarmes. No English, so I am thinking they would want our papers, but in the end, all they wanted was for Jack to take a breathalyzer test – just a random alcohol screening. They are very strict in Europe on drinking and driving, but really, are there that many folks out there driving drunk around noon? They passed us through without even mentioning our lack of a front license plate.

Our campground is in a tiny village north of Amiens. At first, we couldn't figure out these tiny rural villages we had passed through – riding along the street, all we saw were brick walls, and some looked like homes with curtains on the windows, but others were just walls or looked like industrial buildings. We finally figured it out ….think middle ages manor and village where the peasants all lived in the town. Their homes and outbuildings clustered around tight little streets with the manor home nearby on a hill and the fields surrounding the village and the peasants travel out to tend the lord's fields. Pretty much the same thing here, but the fields are no longer owned by the lord. Our campground is on the manor grounds (here in France, the manor is called the chateau) with massive gates leading to the chateau property which is now a tourist attraction.

Gates at the top of our campground leading to the Chateau that can be toured in the summer

The woman at campground reception speaks no English and my high school French is pretty non-existent, but we figured it all out and we have a nice grassy site, but with limited electric (10 amps).

Oh, did I mention why we are here at Amiens? To see the largest cathedral in France..tomorrow.

Wednesday, June 25: Ypres and West Flanders, Belgium

Another beautiful day, weather-wise, and are ouplans are to visit one more WWI museum called the Paschendaele Experience.  We drove through the countryside,   In addition to a museum about the battle of Paschendaele, they have reconstructed trenches and underground tunnels used by the British and German troops. We learned that the Battle lasted 100 days and there were 500,000 casualties to gain about 5 miles of ground.

The poppies grow everywhere here and especially poignant here at the trenches

The British began building underground because the field of battle was just mud, craters and dead stumps of trees. The bunkers were used for sleeping quarters, medical facilities, kitchens and toilets....

One of the American items in the museum talked about although we entered the war late, we were crucial in helping them rebuild after the War.  One of the things we provided were wooden houses so the refugees could return to their homeland.  This was billed as an "original wooden American home."  Wood is very rare here - everything is brick.

We had to get through a lot of odd names before we saw the American Cemetery sign near the bottom

After the museum we, stopped for a quick lunch and a nap next to a quiet soccer field. Then we backtracked a bit so we could visit the American Flanders Field Cemetery. It was spotless, serne and beautifully landscaped. The U.S. Entered the war in the spring of 1917 and this is the only WWI American cdmeter in Belgium. Most of the gravestones were dated October and November 1918, only weeks before the end of the war. 368 headstones, 43 missing in action and 21 unknown are buried here.

As we were leaving, a man walked towards us and introduced himself as the manager of the cemetery and an American from Virginia. He knew we were Americans because we had no front license plate on the RV and we had a nice talk. We told him we had just visited Paschendaele and that there were busloads of high school students from Britian. He explained that to the British, Pascheldaele is probably The most important historical battle ever fought partially because of the huge loss of life. The museum had identified the different nations that fought and their casualty rates. The British, New Zealanders, Canadians and Australians suffered around 70% casualties, while the German were 15%. I will have to do some more research to understand those huge differences, but no matter, what a total waste of humanity just so nations can claim more land.

Back again to our sports complex campground as it is on the way to France – next on our agenda.

Tuesday, June 24: Ypres, Belgium

We woke this morning to a chuch bell that rang for about 15 minutes straight. Jack said it tolled 169 times. Maybe in memory of folks who died in WWI on this day 100 years ago?

We needed to resolve the issue with the internet, so headed to McDonald's for lunch and free wifi. I found that the initial information I received was wrong and that I cannot use my phone to connect my computer to the internet. We still have basic email on the phone, but I cannot update the blog with photos from my camera, so we will have to rely on free wifi for blog updates.

After doing as much as I could on McDonald's wifi, we headed to a different named grocery store. This was a much better store than Aldi's, a bit upscale with good selection but jeeze, they are still labeling everything in Flemish – imagine that.

We are finally getting more familiar with road signage and are more comfortable observing roadsides instead of just reading signs. We have begun to notice that they have mostly lazy cows here – most are laying down all the time! Also lots of two-story greenhouses that we finally figured out were for growing produce in the off-season.

Here is one of the unique European road situations we have been encountering...driving down a nice, wide two-lane road, they arbitrarily narrow it to one lane, forcing you to either play chicken or stop and let the oncoming car go through first.

We returned to the same campground at the sports complex after a day of humdrum errands. It also gave us a chance to find out what happened to the man who fell ill yesterday. He is still alive, but in a coma. No one knows how long he was in the field before the man found him, so they do not know if he will have serious brain damage. He was 51 years old and a regular at the sports complex. Very sad.

I did some laundry by hand since laundromats are hard to find and harder to find parking for and campgrounds supposedly will have one small washing machine and maybe a dryer.

 We had a light dinner of appetizers – some wonderful Belgian cheese and crackers and some stuffed mushrooms. We are still struggling with the 6 hour time difference, but are slowly adjusting. We are tired and hungry at unexpected times. It will work itself out, but I wish it would hurry.

Monday, June 23: Ypres, Belgium

Birds!!! They have these mourning doves/pigeons that are incredibly noisy. They sound something like our cooing mourning doves, but with a couple of extra notes plus a megaphone. They were in Brugge and also here in Flanders.

Very flat countryside

We are getting a lot of attention in the campgrounds. A favorite activity is to walk around the campground and check license plates to see where folks are from. They have huge license plates both front and rear, and we are sitting here with nothing on the front at all and a skimpy little plate that no one can figure out on the back. Lots of consternation as they walk by and try to find a license plate since we typically back into a campsite and only the front is visible.

 We are in World War I Flanders Field area. We stopped in the little town of Kimmel at the tourist office to get tickets to a recently discovered German trench area from World War I. The trench site was in the middle of a farm and the roads to the area were 1 ½ lanes wide at their widest.

Two way country road only 1 1/2 lanes wide.

Meeting an oncoming car meant pulling into the weeds on the side to let each other by. We found the site, but had to back up ¼ mile to the last pullover to park and walked into the trenches area.

 We walked down into the trenches and followed them around. Hard to believe the death and destruction from that time period when looking out at the peaceful farmland spread out below us from our slight ridge.

Underground bunker

Photo from WWI

Central Ypres Square

After leaving the trenches, we headed to Ypres (or Ieper) to visit the World War I Museum – In Flanders Fields Museum in the rebuilt Cloth Hall.

  The Cloth Hall building, originally built in 1304 to sell and store cloth (Ypres, along with Ghent and Brugge were major textile cities). The building was mostly destroyed in WWI and reconstructed faithful to the original plan. The Museum was excellent filling in the gaps of our memory of WWI history and providing an idea of what it was like to live in the area that saw much of the most brutal fighting in WWI.  

Legally parked on a Ypres side street

 Oh, did I mention that this museum is in the town center square of Ypres, a small city? Yup, narrow roads, little parking and lots of one-ways, do-not-enters- and other signage that we weren't sure what was being prohibited. Jack did manage to find on-street Legal parking!

 After visiting the museum we walked down to the British Memorial Menin Gate where they play Last Post every evening.

We decided to call it a day and go to the nearest campground. Our GPS took us to a gated road with no one in sight and no way to get through the gate. We eventually figured out I needed to walk in, but the office was closed from 12-4 and it was 3:45. Next door was an automated machine to get a reservation and pass for the gate. By the time I figured it all out and received a technical error message, the office was open. I walked next door where she told me they were full. On to the next campground about 8 miles away. The drive there was on decent roads through small towns. We turned into a sports complex with huge soccer fields outside and indoor tennis and gymnastic rooms. I went inside and asked where the campground was and he said, right here. They had eight spots behind the building, very close together, but grassy with electric and water and dump nearby – for the grand total of 12 Euro or about $16. We had the place to ourselves with everything we need. Perfect.

After finishing up with the paperwork, a man came and knocked on the manager's door saying someone was down on the track on the far side of the field. I watched as he headed out with an EMT kit and calling an ambulance. He gave him CPR along with some other runners who had stopped by until the ambulance arrived. They took him away in the ambulance with the sirens going.......

Sunday, June 22: Brugge to Ghent, Belgium

Awoke to cloudy skies and 62 degrees – great sleeping temps needing no heat or air conditioning. I cannot get my IPhone to work as a hotspot,so no internet for computer, and will contact the phone company on Monday for assistance.

Getting fresh water here is turning out to be difficult. They have spigots every 10 campsites, but they are on the one lane driveway and we clog the whole place up when trying to load up with water. The water pressure is very low. So, Jack moved the RV to the first spigot on the driveway so we were blocking the fewest folks and luckily, the water pressure was much better and we were able to fill the tank in about 10 minutes.

Next up was figuring out how to dump our gray (kitchen and shower water) and black (toilet) tanks. In the States, we typically dump both in the same tank, but this campground has two different tanks and their black tank is very small because it is meant for small portable chemical toilets. Fortunately, the man at the desk told us he could open the large tank where their other tanks drain to so we could dump both our tanks there. Easy fix this time, but what about the next campground?

Full fresh water and empty waste tanks and we are heading to Ghent. Before we leave Brugge, we stopped at the ancient wooden windmills just outside the moat of Brugge. There are three windmills on a hill and we climbed up to see them and the view of Brugge's church spires in the distance.

The maps and GPS were easy to follow on the way to Ghent as long as we stayed on the highway, but we decided to go side roads and quickly got lost in the rural countryside. We enjoyed driving through the cornfields and potatofields (I think), although they are small fields compared to the huge American farms. The houses are all brick and the architecture looks like what I always thought of as Dutch with tiled, steep roofs with stepped fronts. Every house has massive shrubs surrounding the house to provide privacy and they are sheared to perfection. One of us with OCD is loving it.  

Bicycle art in the center median of a small town

Tram only no vehicle road, except us.

We plugged our destination back into our GPS and got back on track, but it led us directly into the center of Ghent. Okay, we knew we did not want to drive in old European city centers, but here we were. The streets were extremely narrow and although two-lane, parking is legal on one side so if there is an oncoming car, somebody has to scoot into a space between parked cars to let the other pass. Well, we are an RV and we do NOT scoot into little spaces. It was completely nerve wracking and we could not find a place to park – at least not legally. Jack drove around and around and around, usually on the same streets because most streets are one way or restricted to bicycles or pedestrians only. Finally, Jack said I am just driving where I want (wrong way on one-way streets and down a “no vehicle” road reserved for trams) until he found a spot we could park. It was behind the cathedral in a construction area and totally illegal, but it was neither blocking or bothering no one. I was a wreck.

We searched for the entrance to the church that was under major construction and finally found it. Once inside, the noise and confusion of the city was replaced with a choir singing and the serenity of a church. We were there to see the Adoration of the Lamb – the alterpiece that was the co-star of the Monuments Men (along with the Madonna and Child). We could get very close (protected by glass) and they had audioguides that explained the technical artistry as well as all the religious symbolism and meanings. We were both astounded with the beauty and the meanings of the art, but of course, no photos allowed. Afterward we sat and listened to the choir for a little bit before getting back to the RV, happy to find it had not been towed away and no tickets or police waiting for us.  

Jack managed to get us out of the downtown without any incidents and used the motorway to get to West Flanders. I chose a real, full-service campground that was in the country – just what I wanted after a stressful city day. The campground had that wonderful country fresh scent of cows (you know, THAT smell), green grass and precisely trimmed hedges all around.

Dinner was a prepackaged chicken something that I had picked up in the store. I knew it was chicken and cheese by the french words, poulet and fromage, but everything else, ????? Turned out to be quite good pre-breaded chicken patties with melty cheese inside.

A great day – we loved seeing the altarpiece panels and it was worth the significant additional gray hairs I now have.

June 21 Saturday: Brugge, Belgium

Jack's computer died. It was a netbook and we hardly ever use it at home, so we will not replace it. My netbook is working, but occasionally acts a little strange. I am backing up everyday, just in case!

We arranged for another night's stay here in the same campground, since we still haven't seen old town Brugge and that is why we are here. We bought a discounted package of ten bus tickets so we can go back and forth to the old town today and tonight, but when we got to the bus stop, we found the bus drivers were on a one-day strike. These one-day strikes are fairly common here.

 So we walked the 1 mile to the bridge over the moat that leads through the ancient gates into the town center and then walked another mile to get to the central square. This old part of town is large, probably two or three square miles and we spent the day wandering all around. We had lunch at an outdoor cafe that included a glass of Belgian beer – wonderful! We were surprised to find that none of these tiny streets were pedestrian only and traffic and tourists all competed for the small cobblestone sidewalks. And then there are the bicycles! We have never seen so many bicycles – not even in Colorado! They are everywhere, making walking and driving quite a challenge, especially in tight spaces and at crossroads.  

Grand Square where we had lunch

We took a horse carriage tour so we could get an overview of the city that is interspersed with canals and these wonderful swans.

We then went directly to the church with Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child. This is reportedly the only Michelangelo sculpture that left Italy and is the one in the movie, Monument Men that they rescued from the Germans (and Russians) by pushing it out of the mine near the end of the movie.
 It was quite a distance away, so could not make out details and it appeared smaller than we expected, but we did notice that it seemed unusual that Mother and Child are looking away from each other.

We loved Brugge, but walking on cobblestones is very hard on the feet and legs, so when we had enough we grabbed a taxi back to the campground where they refunded our useless bus tickets. A quiet evening sitting outside in the beautiful weather. Are we really here????