PARIS AND NORTHEAST FRANCE

Ah, Paris, that enchanting city.  Even the gray skies and intermittent drizzle that followed us from Normandy couldn’t dampen our enthusiasm about being there or keep us from taking our customary long walks along its majestic avenues and through its narrow streets.

Having visited many of the major tourist attractions on previous trips, we decided to use our four days to seek out places we’d never been to before, and we were as content just to soak up the spirit of the city as to see the marquee sights.

Highlights included a visit to the small but exquisite Musée Marmottan Monet to see paintings by Impressionists and other artists; an afternoon in the Right Bank quarter known as the Marais, where we visited the elegant Place des Vosges, including the apartment where the writer Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Misérables) lived for a number of years, and the sprawling Musée Carnavalet; a visit to the awesome Panthéon, the final resting place for many of France’s immortals; walking through the lovely Luxembourg Gardens on a pretty Sunday afternoon when it seemed as though toute la Paris was enjoying a farewell-to-summer outing; a stroll through the bohemian and teeming Left Bank Latin quarter; and a visit to the magnificent Palais Garnier (opera house), without spotting the Phantom.

Another highlight was attending a Sunday morning English-language service at First Church of Christ, Scientist, Paris, our first in-person church service since we arrived in France.  To enter the church, we had to wend our way through a chatting group of people who had attended the just-completed French service.

Some photos:

The Place des Vosges in the Marais district.

The Panthéon (the stately dome is undergoing renovation).

Interior of the Panthéon.

Sunday afternoon in the Luxembourg Garden.

Technical Difficulties:  Missing picture of Le Palais Garnier (Paris Opera) named after its 35-year-old architect in 1860. 

The Grand Foyer of the Paris Opera.

The Northeast: Reims, Nancy and Strasbourg

We took a train to Reims, an hour northeast of Paris, primarily to pick up a rental car (we wanted nothing to do with driving in or near Paris).  The city served as our base for visits to four American military cemeteries that resulted from World War I (described below).  But we found Reims to be an interesting destination in its own right.

For us, there were two primary attractions.  First, Reims has a beautiful cathedral in which 32 kings of France were crowned over more than 1,300 years (the tradition started with the baptism of Clovis, the first Christian king of the Franks, in Reims in 496 A.D.).  A plaque shows where Joan of Arc stood during the coronation of Charles VII in 1429.

The Reims Cathedral, where 32 kings of France were crowned.

Second, Reims is the city where General Eisenhower made his headquarters during the last months of World War II, and where three German generals came in the early morning hours of May 7, 1945, to sign a document of unconditional surrender (for technical reasons, May 8 is recognized as the official surrender date).  Protocol required that Ike not be present for the signing, as the German contingent contained no officer of comparable rank, and the ceremony was presided over by Ike’s chief of staff, Gen. Bedell Smith.  We visited a museum in the building where the surrender took place.

The recreated map room where Germany surrendered in World War II.

Painting from a photograph of the surrender (German officers in foreground).

We dropped off the rental car in Nancy, southeast of Reims.  Though we spent less than 24 hours there, that was enough time to see that Nancy – the capital of Lorraine – is a bustling city with interesting sights, notably the large and beautiful Place Stanislas.  (Stanislas Leszcynski, a deposed king of Poland, was made Duke of Lorraine by his son-in-law, King Louis XV, in 1736.)  Nancy was also home to one of the leading schools of Art Nouveau in the early 1900s, and many buildings in this ancient city have surprisingly modernistic design elements, such as doorways, balconies, and railings (Art Nouveau was even more prominently reflected in interior design and decorative objects).

Place Stanislas in Nancy.

Building facade with Art Nouveau detail.

We will also remember Nancy for the kindness of a French woman who, learning that we were lost in the city’s confusing outskirts, figured out the directions we needed and wrote them out for us.

From Nancy we took a train to Strasbourg, in the Alsace region just across the Rhine River from Germany.  Because of its mixed French-German heritage and culture, Alsace was fought over by the two countries for centuries.  In modern times, Germany took Alsace from France in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War; France got it back after World War I; Hitler annexed Alsace to Germany after he occupied France in 1940; and Alsace returned to French hegemony after World War II.  However, for the same reasons that caused this conflict, Alsace has also served as a bridge between France and Germany throughout history.

Strasbourg, though today proudly French, reflects this double heritage.  Germanic influences abound in the languages heard on the streets, in dual-language signage, and in food, architecture and customs.  Strasbourg is also home to the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights, the European Parliament, and other inter-European institutions.

The highlights of our visit included walks through Strasbourg’s medieval quarter, a visit to its unique red-sandstone cathedral with a large 17th–century clock, two restaurant dinners of German “home style” fare, and a visit to the Musée Alsacien, a fine museum housed in an old half-timbered building and dedicated to the preservation of Alsace’s traditional folk-culture (the museum was founded in 1903 to counter the “Germanization” of Alsace after the 1871 takeover).

Half-timber buildings in Strasbourg's old quarter.

Strasbourg's unusual red sandstone cathedral.

Detail of carvings above the cathedral's front entrance.

World War I Cemeteries

As mentioned above, from Reims we visited four military cemeteries with graves of American soldiers killed in the First World War.  (There are about 10 U.S. military cemeteries in France from the two world wars, the most famous being the D-Day cemetery in Normandy.)

The first day we drove west, toward Paris, to visit (1) the Aisne-Marne Cemetery near Château-Thierry [2,289 graves], the scene of fighting in May-June 1918, including the Marine Corps’ famously bloody victory in Belleau Wood, and (2) the Oise-Aisne Cemetery northeast of Château-Thierry [6,012 graves], in the American sector of an Allied offensive in July-August 1918.

Aisne-Marne American military cemetery.

U.S. Marines monument, Belleau Wood.

Memorial to missing American soldiers, Oise-Aisne cemetery.

The grave of an American soldier "known but to God."

The second day we drove east from Reims to visit (3) the Meuse-Argonne cemetery near Romagne-sous-Montfaucon (14,246 graves), associated with the final great Allied offensive – September-November 11, 1918 – that ended World War I, and (4) the St. Mihiel Cemetery near Thiacourt [4,153 graves], where American forces, with French backing, eliminated the Germans’ St. Mihiel Salient, September 12-16, 1918.

Meuse-Argonne U.S. military cemetery, the largest in France.

Statue honoring American soldiers.

St. Mihiel U.S. military cemetery.

The grave of a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient.

These cemeteries (as well as the World War II cemetery we visited earlier near St. James, Brittany) are very similar: At each cemetery the alabaster crosses, some topped with the Star of David for Jewish soldiers, stand in perfectly aligned parade-ground ranks, there’s a memorial to missing soldiers whose bodies were never recovered, and the grounds are meticulously landscaped and maintained.  Even Becky and I will have trouble distinguishing our photos from the different sites.  So why did we visit four cemeteries within a few miles of each other?  Because every soldier killed in battle for the United States is an individual, and every act of courage that leads to a casualty is unique.  Knowing that we were so close to these hallowed places, it was important to us to see them, and we were humbled and proud to honor the sacrifice of these soldiers.

And so, on a solemn note, we end this dispatch on a journey that continues to be filled with delight and discovery.