To Infinity and Beyond

It's not that I have been lazy or anything, or that we have not done
anything, it's just that I haven't got around to writing for a while, put
off today what you can do tomorrow!
We arrived in Paris last Wednesday (13th), and easily found our site at
Maisons Laffitte in the northwestern suburbs. The site was quite large with
quite a few fixed caravans, and a high percentage of English caravans and
motorhomes. Access to Paris was easy via the RER network, the station just a
few minutes walk from the site.
We ventured into the city on the Thursday and trawled many of the main
sights. The RER took us directly to the Arc de Triomphe, and we wandered
from there to the Eiffel Tower. As we had both previously been up the tower
we chose to give that a miss and continued on our stroll eventually ending
up at the Musée d'Orsay. The Musée d'Orsay contains the artwork that fills
the time gap between the Louvre and the Centre Pompidou including the
Impressionist and Post Impressionist movements, e.g. Monet etc. This is more
our cup of tea than the earlier or modern work. The gallery is situated in
an old railway station, which is worth the admission fee itself. After a few
hours of viewing and becoming maxed out on art, not to mention having weary
feet, we called it a day and headed back the Arc de Triomphe to catch the
RER back to Noddy.

On the Friday we decided to make a later visit into the city after lunch so
that we could have dinner out, and a lazy morning. We took in several more
sights in the afternoon, from the weird Centre Pompidou to the amazing Notre
Dame. The only problems with planning to eat out are a) where to eat and b)
waiting to eat. We almost chose to have Tibetan, but instead decided on
traditional French cuisine in what appeared to be a nice restaurant, it was
recommended in our Rough Guide. After a drink at a nearby bar to kill some
time as it had started to rain, we ventured to the restaurant and were one
of the first to sit down. The food was very nice; the service was
interesting, and the cliental mostly American tourists! It's the sort of
place where they write your order on the paper tablecloth! We very much
enjoyed it, but if you generally take life too seriously you would probably
wonder what was going on. Suitably stuffed we wandered back through the
city, which like most cities is a different place after dark. The Eiffel
Tower looked amazing with its display of sparkling lights. Apart from having
diner, we also wanted to see a firework show that was supposed to happen at
21h30 that evening at La Defense. We planned on making it back to the Arc de
Triomphe by the start and watch from there. We made it just, and waited, and
then left after a few fireworks as the show was not as spectacular as we or
the other hopeful tourists had expected. If you were down at the La Defense
I am sure it would have been better, just. Oh well, better luck next time.

Saturday was a day of rest and we enjoyed the sunny weather and did some
shopping in Maisons Laffitte.
On Sunday we again went into to the city after lunch this time to catch the
free organ recital in Notre Dame, oh and have another lazy morning. The
musical choice of the guest organist that day was a bit unknown to us and
quite modern, but still most enjoyable especially when he hit the loud
pedal!

Our next destination after Paris was Amiens and the start of our WW1
battlefields tour. Amiens cathedral, Notre Dame, is actually bigger that its
namesake in the capital, and probably more impressive, and definitely
quieter. They are in the process of laser cleaning the outside, and the half
they have so far completed looks truly amazing. The rest of the city is very
pleasant, and we could not resist the lure of lunch by the canal, a steaming
pot of mussels each, yum yum.

Yesterday, we did a tour of the WW1 battlefields and cemeteries from Albert,
with its stunning church, around and about up to Arras, where we stayed for
the night. It is the first time either of us has visited any of these sights
and it is really quite moving and thought provoking. The cemeteries are all
impeccably kept, and all the information centres completely fascinating. It
is obviously difficult to appreciate what the poor souls endured during the
war, but what has been preserved gives a very good impression of what is
must have been like. It's just a shame that we have learnt nothing over the
last 100 years.

Our final piece of the tour this morning took us to Vimy Ridge, where the
Canadians made one of the most significant breakthroughs. After a few hours
taking in the battlefields, we pushed on and ended up just north of
Brussels. We were going to stop at Tournai just over the border in Belgium
but the site was not great and we headed here up instead. We have not yet
decided if we are going to venture into the city before we turn west and to
Gent and Bruges.
Cheers
M&S