We had an amazing weekend experience roadtripping it through France! Our trip consisted of 10 exchange students in 2 cars with Sahil and our friend Peter as the two drivers. Fantastic company, amazing scenery, and a perfect itinerary led to a seamless and beautiful journey around the countryside!
We began our trip by driving to Normandy, France to witness firsthand the battlefields on Omaha and Utah Beach for Operation D-Day during World War II. We left at 1pm on Friday and after our 3 hour drive, we arrived at Hotel Bayeux (a hotel our friend Gary found which we basically took over since January is DEFINITELY not tourist season in any way, shape, or form). We decided to take it easy, get dinner, check out the town, and then have our own party in the private party room of the hotel. After walking around and realizing that most places close early, we ended up at a Brasserie for our pretty tasty dinner. The town of Bayeux is really pretty so we walked around a bit more after dinner before heading back to the hotel to drink wine, eat snacks, and get to know our exchange friends on a deeper level!
We made Friday night the earlier one of the two since we planned to leave at 8am from the hotel on Saturday to explore Normandy, then set off for Mont Saint Michel, and end up at Loire Valley at night. We looked for a breakfast spot on our way to the beaches and came across a small restaurant occupied by 2 local men who polished off a bottle of wine at 830am and a HUGE plate of cheese! Oh, Europe!! After eating breakfast, we drove up to the beach and were pretty much the only tourists there.
It was amazing to see such a historical landmark and be where the German troops had occupied France. We envisioned the Allied forces coming in through the water and saw an actual tank that the American troops used in Normandy. We then climbed into a bunker that the Germans had hid in and imagined being one of the soldiers at that time. Over 75 days, 425,000 people between the Allied and Axis forces died in this pivotal battle during World War II!
We went to the cemetary from there and saw a feature film of 5 American soldiers who lost their lives in Normandy as well as walked through a museum and saw the graveyard of all the brave soldiers who fought for our country and for something so much greater.
With both of us being so interested in World War II history in particular, we thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Normandy. By 1pm, we set off to Mont Saint Michel, one of the most beautiful and popular landmarks of France. It is an abbey church that is 170 meters above the shore and is probably one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture we have ever seen. The girls on our trip agreed that it looked like a fairy tale castle that we all would have dreamt of as children and we fell in love with it as we climbed up to the top.
After spending time exploring Mont Saint Michel and taking in all the beauty around us, we headed out to Loire Valley, the third destination of our weekend road trip. At this point, our car had named ourselves "Le Passat" because we listened to fantastic music, had a club going in our car (which was a Volkswagon Passat), and we pretty much danced our way to Loire Valley. We decided that our song here would be Stereo Love by Edward Maya featuring Vika Jigulina. It's SO catchy and just SO good with this amazing accordian tune that really makes it that much more our Europe song! You HAVE to hear it - once you hear it once, you won't be able to get the song out of your head - its THAT catchy!
We drove to Loire Valley and upon reaching, we realized what a cute find our friend Sandra booked for our stay that night. We stayed in 2 cottages which were extremely accomodating and a ton of fun! We drove to Chinon for dinner and found a really trendy, not too expensive restaurant for dinner with great food: Cafe Des Les Artes. It was the perfect closing to the most productive and beautiful day! After dinner, we headed back to our cottage and got our PARTY on! We played games, drank, ate, and at 4am made it to bed feeling really good about our weekend trip so far!
While Loire Valley is a wine region, most of the vineyards are closed on Sundays so when we woke up, we decided that we would go to one of the most famous Chateaus instead of a vineyard. We drove to Chambord to visit an INCREDIBLE chateau with 426 rooms, 77 staircases, 282 fireplaces with Leonardo Da Vinci's influence in the architecture (a double helix staircase). It was BEAUTIFUL!
After a perfect weekend of seeing beautiful sights, our trip got better as we drove away from the Chateau. It was raining but it was also really sunny - the perfect recipe for a RAINBOW. We saw our first FULL rainbow and that too, two of them on top of each other. It was just gorgeous. As we got back in the car after that sighting, we decided we had pretty much seen it all on this trip!
We made it back last night VERY content with our weekend road trip around France. We bid farewell to our friends and we're back in Paris! This week we have class (Mana has her first French quiz tomorrow!) and then we are off to Rome on Thursday for the weekend. Rome is very special to us because it goes back to our story about how Sahil proposed to Mana, so we are SO excited for that trip!
Have a great week!
No comments:
Post a Comment