Europe, Post 13: Un jour en France!

Bonjour! Okay, I've been slack at getting the final installment of our Europe trip up on the blog, but it's high time to do so as tomorrow we'll be back in Europe – and I'll never get it done if I have all the excitement of a new trip to write about as well! So here it is...

When we found the little village in the north of France where we would be staying on Monday night (my birthday), we decided we should get some cash and fuel before checking in at our B&B. I can't remember the name of the village, but it was 15 minutes from Saint-Omer. Anyhow, after driving around the deserted-looking village for some time with our fuel warning light glaring at us, we eventually came to the realisation that both cash and fuel may need to be sought further afield. This was confirmed by Ben's attempts to ask the only shopkeeper in the town whether there was a “cash automatique” around (thanks Lonely Planet phrasebook): “non”.

After almost an hour and a couple of unsuccessful attempts on Tommy's part (he's the GPS) to lead us to a service station, we eventually got everything sorted out and headed back to our B&B. Well, it was lovely! The room was spacious, charmingly decorated and gorgeously “French”, and the middle-aged couple whose house it was were very friendly and helpful. They had three guest rooms but we were their only guests that night. Along with the B&B we stayed at in Brussels for two nights (with the cats, kids and WiFi), it was our favourite accommodation on the trip.





Following the recommendation of our hosts when we asked where we should go for my birthday dinner, that night we dined in Saint-Omer. On the way, Tommy inexplicably took us down such a tiny dirt road through the fields that we were convinced it was someone's private farm track!! Anyway, we found a lovely restaurant called La Belle Epoque, decided against the snails and frogs legs on the menu as I didn't want unpleasant birthday memories, and ordered an entree of deep fried cheese and mains of duck in honey almond sauce (mine) and rabbit in prune sauce (Ben's). Ben's was passable and mine was scrumptious! :)

The waiter/chef (owner?) was very friendly and told us he had lived in England for a while. When Ben went to pay, he told the man that it was my birthday, so he came over, wished me a happy birthday, and presented me with a pen that had the restaurant's details printed on it (“this is all I have to give you” he said) – very sweet! (It was actually the pen I used for the second half of my exam on Tuesday, after the button from the top of my first pen sprang off and hit the wall.)

The next morning, a previously unheard-of thing happened. For the entire length of breakfast, both of our hosts sat at the table with us in their dining room, and chatted with us as if we were their personal (rather than paying) guests! They told us about their three grown up children's studies, jobs and travels, and we talked about everything from Australia and our travels, to their past jobs and B&B start-up, to what sights we should see in their area that day! It was amazing – such a nice feeling and also a little unnerving to have them watching us eat their breakfast (a bit like it would feel to have the chef sitting at your table in a restaurant, I suppose)! Between them and the waiter, I must say that the French were excellently represented and we saw nothing to indicate the necessity of a “be nice to tourists day” (although, granted, that measure was introduced for Parisians, not French people in general)!

After we checked out, we headed to La Coupole. This description is from the La Coupole website: “Situated in the Pas-de-Calais, 5 km from the town of Saint-Omer, LA COUPOLE is a gigantic underground bunker designed by the Nazis, in 1943-1944, to store, prepare and launch the V2 rockets (first missiles to reach the stratosphere), the secret weapon that Hitler was counting on to destroy London and reverse the course of the war. Rehabilitated as a History and Remembrance Centre, LA COUPOLE reveals, in an impressive setting, the challenges of total war and the stages in the conquest of space, which paradoxically resulted from the V2 technology. ”









Anyway, we had intended to fit a few things in that day, but La Coupole ended up being so extensive and interesting that we stayed for 6 hours! We got to walk all through the bunker and its huge tunnels, surrounded by 5m-thick concrete walls and water dripping from damp bits around us. We had headphones with audio commentary and there were large-screen videos throughout the different sections. There were displays on fighter pilots and planes (biographies, items recovered from crashes etc), models and information on the construction of the bunker and V1s and V2s, and a section on space travel (I think that was the first time I'd ever watched Neil Armstrong's moon landing!).









There was also a lot about the history of WWII and the concentration camps. I found it quite emotionally draining to see so many graphic photos, videos and descriptions of the unbelievably horrific conditions in the concentration camps, but it was good to somewhat increase my limited knowledge of history. By the time we left we still hadn't seen everything, but it was time to find somewhere to eat an early dinner before heading back to England on the train.

After a bit of driving and wandering around the town of Calais, we decided on a sports-themed restaurant called “The Hovercraft”, so called because hovercraft used to be one of the ways to travel between France and England! I had spaghetti bolognese. Ben, to be adventurous and try a new meat for the second night in a row, ordered mussels. An enormous pot of them arrived and while they didn't taste too bad, I found it best not to look at them too closely!! They were also quite fiddly and time-consuming to get out of their shells, so mussels have gone into the “good to try once but we won't be having them often” category!

Not too much later, we boarded our train (much quicker than on the English side), travelled back to England while sitting in our car under the ocean floor, popped up in Folkestone, and drove home! The next morning we were back at work with the strange thought that we'd had tea in France the night before. And that was our trip to Europe! :D