France in a hazelnut shell...yes i just made a nutella reference

Sorry for the crappy updates during the France leg of the journey but I didn’t really have much access to the internet and everything was so whirlwind I cant really remember where we were and all that for everyday so you are going to have to deal with just some of the main highlights and important moments.
So to start out I met everyone at the airport and amazingly found them right as they were coming out of the baggage area then we mistakenly walked to the car rental area and then got sent to another car rental place in another part of the terminal where we were promptly told we were in the wrong place and then we had to walk all the way back to where we were in the first place. We finally met up with the Quebecois and the other leaders. WE had to go and split up into 3 vans and set out to Amiens in the north of France, we stayed there for 3 nights. Generally it was a nice city but we didn’t spend much time in it we took day trips all over that part of France including Vimy Ridge and Passendale the Somme etc. And one day we drove out to Belgium to Ypres(Ieper) where there is a memorial museum. Ieper is so beautiful and where we were supposed to spend our three days but one of our leaders forgot to book it so we had to do more driving per day than was really necessary. We had a really good time in Ieper we had an amazing picnic dinner in the park with the sun setting and then we played on the rope jungle gym…I really only made it half way up because well im a giant pansy and would have probably fallen off.
From Amiens we drove to Dieppe which was pretty amazing we stayed in a hotel right across the road from the beach which was amazing. We did a cool dinner on the harbour that first night and then some drinking and playing on a large wooden ship…..jungle gym….this is starting to become a trend. Anyway and then we did the morning on the beach at Dieppe there is so many memorials to Canadians so it was a bit of an over load.
And then I think we went to Normandy and arrived at our new and amazing hotel called Moulin Morin and it was an old converted mill stone walls running rivers etc. It is gorgeous at some point I will post a link for pictures. And again there was a playground on the grounds sooo some people played I didn’t I had apparently had enough of the whole jungle gym deal.
From this place we did all of our trips for the next 8 days. The best part of this place though was that due to spreading people out….I got my own room….it had a bunk bed set and two single beds and I just spread everything out alllllll over which was actually pretty great. So from there we went to the beaches of Normandy…Gold first but only from the top, then we went to Juno beach and had lunch and then went to the centre…which I thought was lame. We also got to visit Omaha beach which is massive about 5 km and we got to spend the afternoon walking along it playing in the ocean and just having a great time. And then we walked up to the Omaha centre/American cemetery. It was pretty incredible most memorial museums are tame and simple but this one was all glass and crazy security check and metal detector….which is a bit of a problem still because I have some shrapnel in my purse from the shrapnel hunt we had in the first week….Anyway so then we went to the HUGE American cemetery which is just ridiculously big and over the top.
The Moulin Morin was just a km away from the town Bayeux and we got to spend an afternoon there to see the Bayeux Tapestry which was possibly the best thing of life! I loved it it was so beautiful! And then we went for an awesome lunch and found about 10 veterans from the British Airborne division who ate at the same restaurant and we talked to them and took hysterical pictures with them. And then we stayed for dinner and had an awesome walk back it took about 45 min to get back which was pretty awesome.
We also got to go to all these cemeteries we did Polish, German, British, Canadian and Australian. They were pretty intense. And then we went to Caen for a while we went to William the conqueror’s tomb in a strange little church and then we went to his “summer home” which was a flippin huge castle. So the medieval peeps and I had a little bit of a OH WOW day and there are OH WOW pictures to prove that!!!

We also got another day to go to Mount Saint Michel which is a lovely castle island with a cathedral on top at about 7pm the tide comes in and they used to say it came in at the speed of a running horse….and while there is a small tidal wave of water that sweeps through at 7pm VERY ODD its not quite the racing horse its more like a swiftly moving current but still. We got to spend the day there in the abbey and having lunch in the small winding streets…think Harry Potter definitely Harry Potter!!

On Dday we were supposed to go to a bunch of ceremonies for the landings but we were all so pooped from the day before…I cant remember exactly what we did….BUT it was ridiculous two museums and endless cemeteries and memorials. So we didn’t do any of the huge ceremonies that go on on the beaches. The next day though we went to a ceremony of Caen where Canadians were killed and they do a ceremony for us every year and two representatives from our group laid a wreath along with some important looking highly decorated soldiers. After that we got a police escort to the next site, around Hell’s Corner where 20 Canadian soldiers were prisoners of war and were murdered by German soldiers. I realize that this sounds insignificant but prisoners of war were not allowed to be harmed under the Geneva Convention and in this instance the Germans ran them over with their cars and tortured them. So the people of this little town come out to the site and take part in a ceremony to commemorate them, it’s the same men that lay wreaths but for this one we got to lay a maple leaf down for each soldier as they called his name. I ended up laying one for a 19 year old and another for the final victim. Very moving! And then after that we had a little briefing and then we were free to pack or do whatever. So a bunch of us got driven in to Bayeux again and had a few drinks and then we walked home and decided not to go to sleep as we had to be up at 4 am to drive to the airport….so we stayed up watching “Britain’s got more talent” and trying not to fall asleep!
We made it I tried to get 10 min of sleep but totally got woken up by one of the drunk guys soooo it was a bust and then we drove to the airport and said our goodbyes…I didn’t get to say goodbye to my friends cause they went one way and I went another it was heart breaking!!!!

So…..onward next instalment is coming up!