For some reason we're both feeling really tired and sluggish today, probably from non-stop touring and filling our brains with LOTS of interesting information. Luckily, we got to 3/4 of the main Somme sights yesterday, so today we just have two or three to visit and we can make it a short day. First we stopped at the boulangerie down the street to pick up breakfast (jambon, fromage, and buerre - better known as ham, cheese, and butter on a baguette). It's so tasty! That plus a crispy Gala apple is a perfect start to the day. I don't' think I've mentioned this, but our other travels in Europe have taught us that we never get as many fruits and veggies here as we're used to in the U.S. So on the last two vacations we've made sure to stop at a grocery store every couple of days and buy apples and carrots to snack on. The first week in Normandy we had to eat carrots with the peel on them because we couldn't find a potato peeler at the grocery. But yesterday we found one at the Maxi Coop (grocery), so today we're going to get to peel our carrots! I know, not that interesting to you, but it's definitely a treat for us! :-) Another big treat is that yesterday we dropped off a week's worth of dirty clothes at a laundromat, and we get to pick them up all fresh and clean this afternoon! It doesn't sound like a big deal, but whenever we can get our clothes to a real laundry instead of washing them out in the sink, we are very happy! :-)
Our first stop of the morning was supposed to be a big WWI museum in Peronne, but unfortunately it was closed on Wednesdays. That's what we get for not paying attention to the days of the week! :-) But we are very flexible, so we just decided to head for a couple of other sights that we were saving for tomorrow. So onward to the Rancourt Souvenir Chapel (Chapel of Remembrance) and cemetery. It is a French memorial for fallen French soldiers of The Somme, and it's the first completely French cemetery we've seen in this area. It was opened by a private citizen who dedicated it to the fallen young men of France.
The chapel is beautiful, with a deep purple wooden door, names of soldiers inscribed on plaques placed all around the inside, and a flowered altar up front. It felt very serene and sacred when we stepped in.
Behind the chapel, extending for several hundred yards to either side, is the cemetery. The French use simple grayish white stone (or maybe concrete) crosses that are smaller than the white marble ones in the American military cemeteries. The name plates are metal, and each plot has two crosses snugged up back to back (one name on each side). As we walked through the field of crosses, they seemed to stretch on forever.
There were also a few rounded markers with the Star of David for Jewish soldiers, like we've seen before, but for the first time we also saw rounded markers with a crescent moon and star for fallen Muslim soldiers. Their stones are beautifully engraved in Arabic.
(Sorry if these top few pictures are a little blurry. I was using my iPad instead of iPhone and the camera wasn't nearly as good.)
After the brief stop in Rancourt, we headed an hour away to Vimy. Vimy Ridge is one of the well known battles of WWI, and it's where the Canadian soldiers really established themselves as a presence of their own, without being overshadowed by the British. We watched a little video clip in the visitor's center and it referred to the young Canadian soldiers as farmers, loggers, and cowboys who knew how to use their wits as well as their muscles. It reminded me of exactly the kind of thing a historian would say about American soldiers of WWI. :-)
The Vimy Ridge National Canadian Memorial is so impressive and emotional that I know the pictures won't come close to conveying it's impact on people. First of all, it is absolutely towering! We drove through a heavily forested area to get to the memorial, and as we came out of the trees we saw it's stunning two pronged sculpture rising to the sky in front of us.
From far away it's hard to tell what's carved on the two sides of the split, but as you near it you can see different emotional scenes represented through Grecian-type figures: the youth, Mother Canada, wounded men, weeping mothers, etc.
And all around the white base are the names of the 60,000 Canadian soldiers who died at Vimy. It's extremely powerful!
This is the view down from the memorial! It's absolutely breath taking!
The huge park around the memorial, for miles around, is pitted with shell craters and old trench lines. Near the visitor's center is a whole series of restored trenches where the soil has been blocked up with cement "loaves" instead of the sand bags of WWI. It was really interesting to walk through them without the sloping sides we saw at Beaumont-Hamel (caribou sculpture) yesterday.
The sides are a lot higher when they're restored, and you can really see how isolated and narrow the soldier's view was from inside the trench.
This whole park area around the memorial is littered with live munitions, so all the pitted grass is roped off with danger signs every few yards. Because it's too dangerous for a person to mow the grass, they've installed a large number of sheep to graze across the park. They're light enough (with weight distributed on four feet) that they won't set off any of the live rounds. It was really quite fascinating to explore this beautiful park!
As we were sitting in the parking lot at Vimy programming the GPS to take us back to Albert, Tammy noticed a tall structure on a high hill several miles away. We had no clue what it was, but we thought it might be an interesting memorial that wasn't on our list. So Tammy did a little searching on Google maps and discovered that it was another ruined abbey!
So we immediately reprogrammed Emma (GPS) to take us there, and 15 minutes later we were standing underneath the sky high ruins of the Abbey of Mont St. Eloi. These ruins weren't as amazing as the ones we saw a couple days ago. There wasn't anything left except the front entry towers, but it was still so cool to stand underneath them and gaze straight up at the towers without any vaulted ceiling blocking the view. Plus, we were up on this huge hill looking down over the most beautiful rolling farmland dotted all over by little towns.
l also learn something new (or maybe I was just reminded of something I've forgotten), which is that the abbeys all across France were closed, plundered, and the monks often killed during the French Revolution. It wasn't just the nobles and aristocrats who were targeted. Abbeys were seen as examples of the church having too much wealth and owning too much property, so they were often destroyed. That's why there are so many abbey ruins across France. So I'd say this little jaunt was well worth the detour!
That's the end of our sightseeing around Albert. Now we get to go pick up our clean clothes, grab an early dinner, and pack for our move to Ieper tomorrow. (Ieper is also spelled Ypres - one version is Flemish and one is French.) Oh, and guess where I'm uploading today's posting? McDonald's! Yep, I'm in the middle of France with the best food in the world, and I had to have dinner at McDonald's because it's the only place in this crazy little town with reliable Wi-Fi! Isn't that just too funny!!! :-)
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May I please have a Big Mac, fries, a Coke, and an hour of McWiFi.....too funny
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