WWI: Back to the Île de France

November 8th, 2011 | General, Travel

The change in terrain is almost overwhelming.  Gone are those rolling hills of Lorraine and the flat expanse of the Pas-de-Calais. Here the Grand Morin winds through a deep valley, a location appreciated by neolithic tribes in the millennia BCE, centuries of farmers...

WWI: O Canada

November 6th, 2011 | General, Travel

In 1917, Canadian troops, with extraordinary valor and grotesque losses, took ground held by Germans since 1914. Vimy is now an enormous park; the terrain, grassy and green, retains the topography created by shellfire and the craters left my mines exploded in tunnels...

WWI: City of Nature in the City of Arras

November 4th, 2011 | General, Travel

  What do you do with an old concrete building and barren land in the industrial outskirts of a gracious grande-dame of a city like Arras? Turn it into a giant and sneakily educational playground, of course! And what a playground Cité Nature is!  The conversion...

WWI: Memory Becomes Legacy

November 3rd, 2011 | General, Travel

The skies wept over Ypres and Passchendaele. This was the place that my Dear One felt most drawn to. On the drive up, he read me key passages from Leon Wolff’s In Flanders Fields. I had spent little time studying that corner of the Front. I had read The Danger Tree...
WWI: The Roads Less Traveled By

WWI: The Roads Less Traveled By

November 2nd, 2011 | General, Travel

Serena our GPS seems to have an affection for countryside and tiny rural lanes. When departing Nancy, for instance, we found ourselves turning abruptly off what seemed like a sensible main road, twisting through a tiny village and up a steep track through a forest of...

WWI: Ah-Rahss not A Rat

October 31st, 2011 | General, Travel

What is not to love about this set of light-filled rooms on the second floor, with their old beams and serene quiet. The occasional vehicle rumbles by on the street beyond the kitchen. From the other side horses nicker conversationally. Gîte Les Tilleuls, “Lime...